Developing Understandings Expressed in NGSS Performance Expectations
Overall, we want to develop a series of lessons/tasks that work together to help students build understanding of a performance expectation or series of performance expectations.
Structure of Next Generation Science Standards
•The Next Generation Science Standards are expressed as performance expectations.
•Performance expectations integrate practices, core ideas, and crosscutting concepts into statements of what is to be assessed.
•Performance expectations require that students demonstrate knowledge-in-use.
•Performance expectations are not instructional strategies or objectives for a lesson.
•Performance expectations state what students should be able to do at the end of instruction for grades K – 5 and for grade bands 6 – 8 and 9 – 12.
•The NGSS performance expectations are arranged by topic and by disciplinary core idea. A K-12 overview is available at
Strategies for Teachers to Plan Instruction to Meet Performance Expectations (PEs) - A good way to think of this is that we need to scaffold the development of understanding expressed in the PEs. The ideas expressed in a PE need to be carefully developed in multiple lessons over time.
•Carefully plan instruction to help students develop an understanding of the disciplinary core ideas, crosscutting concepts, and practices as expressed in the PEs.
•Develop a series of learning tasks that blends together various practices with the core ideas and crosscutting concepts.
•Integrate the disciplinary core idea(s) with various scientific practices. To develop, understand, and be able to use scientific practices, they need to be blended with various core ideas. The disciplinary core ideas and scientific practices work together, serving as tools to build understanding.
•Take into consideration prior performance expectations that serve as the foundation for the current PEs. Ask: “What prior knowledge about the core ideas and scientific practices did students develop in previous grade levels?” (See progressions of disciplinary core ideas, practices, and crosscutting concepts in NGSS Appendices E, F, and G.). What pre-conceptions or common misconceptions might need to considered and addressed?
Developing Lessons to Meet a Performance Expectation (or Series of PEs)
Step 1: “Bundle” related performance expectations, typically from one topic area.
Step 2: Read and study the performance expectations, clarification statements, and assessment boundaries.
Step 3: Identify disciplinary core idea(s), practices, and crosscutting concepts coded to the PEs.
Step 4: Look more closely at the core idea(s) and PE(s). What understandings need to be developed? What content ideas will students need to know? What must students be able to do?
Step 5: Select practices that work with the core ideas.
Step 6: Develop lesson level expectations. Call these learning performances as they guide lesson development and student learning. Learning performances (knowledge-in-use) are similar to performance expectations in that they blend core ideas, practices, and crosscutting concepts.
Step 7: Determine the acceptable evidence for the assessment of the learning performances.
Step 8: Carefully construct a storyline – help learners build sophisticated ideas from simpler ideas, using evidence that builds to the understanding described in the PEs. Describe how the ideas will unfold. What do students need to be introduced to first? How would the ideas and practices develop over time?
Step 9: Ask: “How does task(s)/lesson(s) help students move towards an understanding of the PE(s)?”
Developed for the Introduction to the Next Generation Science Standards
CREATE for STEM Institute, Michigan State University, May 28, 2013
Developed by CREATE for STEM Institute, Michigan State University and Michigan Department of Education