Standards

We will discuss standards only briefly here because other courses in preservice teacher education programs often emphasize standards and how to use them. We find it useful to spend some time diving deeply into the science standards in our state. This is because unpacking the standards in science is critical to teaching science or integrated STEM in the early and elementary years. In addition, seeing the way in which both the knowledge (what we want students to know) and the practices (what we want students to be able to do) are both integrated into the standards in our state of TN as well as in the national NGSS standards. The crosscutting concepts area also evident in the standards. The Unpacking Standards tool that we have adapted from a local school district to support our standards unpacking activities is included in the Appendix.

When considering the role of standards in science and integrated STEM projects, we have found success in first identifying a focal or anchoring standard and then identifying the one or more supporting standard(s). We have most frequently first identified a science standard, then built projects around those. However, we have also successfully started with math as the focal standard, then asked our pre-service teachers to build a project integrating at least one science standard that way. An example of such a project is in the Math unit.