Kindergarten - Gateway 3

The materials reviewed for Amplify Science Kindergarten meet expectations for providing teacher guidance with useful annotations and suggestions for how to enact the student materials and ancillary materials, with specific attention to engaging students in figuring out phenomena and solving problems. Materials provide comprehensive guidance that will assist the teachers in presenting the student and ancillary materials. Examples from all units include:

• The Teacher Guide, Unit Overview introduces a real-world problem, which serves as the anchor phenomenon, and its relevance to our lives. It also gives an overview of how students will build knowledge in order to solve a new problem.

• The Teacher Guide, The Progress Build explains how knowledge about the phenomenon deepens as the students progress through the unit, specifically noting bolded statements.

• The Teacher Guide, Getting Ready to Teach specifically details what the teacher needs to do to prepare Before You Present the Lesson, While You Present the Lesson, and After You Present the Lessons.

• All Chapters, Lessons, Digital Resources, Classroom Slide|Powerpoint and the Google Slides suggest teacher talk and teacher actions.

• All Chapters, Lessons, Lesson Brief, Activity, Instructional Guide, Step-by-Step provides the instructional strategy and precise teacher talk and teacher action. 

• All Chapters, Lessons, Lesson Brief, Activity, Instructional Guide, Teacher Support provides background information about the three dimensions of the Next Generation Science Standards featured in the activity as well as the Rationale behind the teacher action and instructional suggestions. 

• The Teacher Guide, Unit Overview, Printable Resources, Coherence Flowcharts provide teachers with a graphic organizer for each chapter in the unit “that helps students see the connections between the phenomena and questions that drive students’ experiences, the evidence they gather, the ideas they figure out, and the new questions that those ideas generate.”

• All lessons, Overview, Lesson at a Glance briefly describe student activities and suggested time allocation for each activity. 

The instructional guides for each lesson from Kindergarten include suggestions about instructional strategies and guidance for presenting the content, which often includes identifying, with limited room for more targeted approaches to addressing student naive conceptions. Examples from all units include:

• The Teacher Guide, Progress Build Section(s) provide prior knowledge (preconceptions) that students may bring to the lesson, foundational knowledge needed for student understanding and growth throughout the lesson, and progress build levels describing conceptual growth that students are expected to experience throughout the unit.

• The Teacher Guide, Eliciting and Leveraging Student’s Prior Knowledge, Personal Experiences, and Cultural Backgrounds, supports teachers by introducing the phenomenon and consistently eliciting students' initial ideas related to the phenomenon. Also, this resource provides support for teachers to document ideas throughout the units on a class chart for ongoing reference and to help students add, revise, and reflect on their ideas. 

With regard to addressing how to support students in figuring out phenomena and/or solving problems, the materials support the teacher in seeing connections between the phenomena and questioning, but miss the opportunity to clearly articulate/illustrate how the students’ understanding of the phenomenon deepens throughout. Evidence of connections between phenomena and questioning includes:

• The Teacher Guide, Unit Overview, Printable Resources, Coherence Flowcharts provide teachers with a graphic organizer for each chapter in the unit “that helps students see the connections between the phenomena and questions that drive students’ experiences, the evidence they gather, the ideas they figure out, and the new questions that those ideas generate.” 

• Within each Activity, there is also an Instructional Guide with step-by-step guidance that is present for teachers to support their understanding of which Science and Engineering Practices (SEPs) are the focus and how to support students in using them as students figure out the phenomena or solve the problems. 

All units conclude by asking students to apply the knowledge acquired throughout the unit to a new problem. Teachers are provided support via the PowerPoint slides and include suggested teacher talk to frame how engineers solve problems, in context with the ideas students learned and also teacher action to help students consider and discuss solutions.

The materials reviewed for Amplify Science Kindergarten meet expectations for containing adult-level explanations and examples of the more complex grade-level concepts and concepts beyond the current course so that teachers can improve their own knowledge of the subject. The materials include support for teachers to develop their own understanding of grade-level concepts and content knowledge beyond the scope of the current course. 

Support for teacher understanding is present across all units. The Teacher Guide section, Science Background provides adult-level science background related to the unit. This section contains expository explanations of scientific background for the three dimensions of NGSS pertaining to the unit, with grade-level appropriate student background as well as common preconceptions by both students and adults. The Teacher Guide explicitly states that the information is meant to guide the teacher in teaching the correct content, but is not meant as student-facing material.

Also in the Teacher Guide, Planning For the Unit, Digital Resource Tab, Unit Map, there is an outline of the expected student practices for each Chapter. It presents a Chapter guiding question with an explanation for the teacher regarding how the students will develop understanding through lesson activities. 

The Teacher Guide, Science Background provides detailed adult-level science background regarding each unit’s science content along with a description of the extent to which this content is to be shared with students. The Science Background section includes cited references to inform teachers of the pedagogical research-based approaches to support grade-level content delivery as it is presented in the materials. In the Connections to Future Learning section of the Science Background, there is support for teacher content knowledge beyond scope of the current course. For example, in Grade K, Unit: Sunlight and Weather, Planning for the Unit, Science Background, Connections to Future Learning, there are detailed paragraphs on how this content connects to learning to come in 3rd grade as well as middle school. It provides adult level explanations about climate such as "The most widely used names for climates come from the Köppen climate classification system, which identifies five broad categories of climate based on average temperature and precipitation: tropical, dry, mild mid-latitude (or temperate), cold mid-latitude (or continental), and polar."

The materials reviewed for Amplify Kindergarten meet expectations for including standards correlation information, including connections to college- and career-ready ELA and mathematics standards and that explain the role of the standards in the context of the overall series. The materials contain NGSS correlation information in multiple locations. All grades contain examples in the Teacher Guide:

• Planning for the Unit and Standards at a Glance include a listing of the NGSS Performance Expectations (PEs), Science and Engineering Practices (SEPs), DIsciplinary Core Ideas (DCIs), and Crosscutting Concepts (CCCs) addressed in the Unit. 

• Teacher References, 3-D Statements outline three-dimensional statements for the unit level, the chapter level, and the lesson level of each unit for all grades.  

• Lesson Guide, Overview, and Standards sections provide a listing of the NGSS PEs, SEPs, and CCCs that are addressed in the lesson. The Lesson Progression at the beginning of each unit shows how each NGSS standard connects to and builds upon the previous grade level.  

The materials also include an explanation for the role of the NGSS standards in the context of the overall series. The Teacher Guide, Teacher Reference, Standards and Goals lists the PEs, SEPs, DCIs and CCCs that are covered in the unit. This section also provides an explanation of the core ideas across the K-8 grade span of the materials in a subsection titled “Trajectory of Core Ideas.”

The materials also provide lists of corollary Common Core ELA and mathematics standards. The Teacher’s Guide, Planning for the Unit, Standards at a Glance  and Standards and Goals (under Teacher References) all list the corollary Common Core ELA (CCSS-ELA) and Common Core Math (CCSS-Math) standards addressed in each unit. Lesson Guide, Lesson Brief, and Standards include a list of the CCSS-ELA and CCSS-Math addressed in each lesson. The materials offer suggested connections with ELA and/or Math and consistently provide specific explanations regarding how the standards are aligned with the context of the lesson and/or series. For example, in Grade K, Unit: Needs of Plants and Animals, Teacher References, Standards and Goals there are detailed bullet points for each identified CCSS-ELA and CCSS-Math standard. These bullet points  explain how and where students are engaging with these standards. For example in ELA, "CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.K.4: With prompting and support, ask and answer questions about unknown words in a text. Students have the opportunity to ask and answer questions about unknown words in texts as they read to gather information about what plants need to live and grow. For example, in Lesson 2.1 students participate in a Read-Aloud of the reference book, Handbook of Plants, for the purpose of asking and answering questions to identify words that name the different parts of plants, such as root, leaf, and stem." An example for math is, "CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.K.CC.4a: When counting objects, say the number names in the standard order, pairing each object with one and only one number name and each number name with one and only one object. Students have the opportunity to count objects and say the number names that represent the number of objects as they learn about how plants grow. For example, in Lesson 2.2, students count and say the number of leaves on plants at different points in their growth cycle." 

The materials for Kindergarten meet expectations for providing explanations of the instructional approaches of the program and identification of the research-based strategies. Information about the instructional approaches is present throughout each grade, units, and lessons. In each Unit Overview, Teacher References, and Standards and Goals section, the materials explain an instructional approach that incorporates the strategies of Do, Talk, Read, Write, and Visualize in coordination with the NGSS crosscutting concepts (CCCs) and the disciplinary core ideas (DCIs) associated with the specific unit of instruction. These strategies and others are further explained in each Lesson in more explicit detail. Examples at the Kindergarten level include:

• Kindergarten, Unit: Pushes and Pulls, Teacher Guide, Lesson Guides, Lesson 1.1, Activity 3, students are actively engaged in building their language repertoire. Learning the language of science is an important goal for this unit. This vocabulary routine is designed to provide a multimodal introduction to key unit vocabulary that students will encounter and use throughout the unit. This routine includes an opportunity for students to hear, see, and say the word and connect the word to a student-friendly definition. This routine provides a consistent way to introduce and practice new words as students encounter focal vocabulary throughout the unit.

• Kindergarten, Unit: Needs of Plants and Animals, Lesson 1.4, Activity 3, Hands-On Investigation, Teacher Support indicates that the goal in “Doing” this activity is to highlight the crosscutting concept of systems/system models and that “[it is] not necessary to use the words systems or system models with students this young. The goal is for them to start to see and build models in their minds of the connection between different parts of a system…Consider having the class help you draw a model of the connections.”

The materials provide some explanation for the research-based strategies that are used in the design of the program. While the Program Guide, Science Program Guide, Designed for the NGSS, and Program Development sections explain the Do, Talk, Read, Write, Visualize pedagogical approach that drives Amplify Science, there is a missed opportunity to incorporate explicit citations or references in the teacher materials. Instead, the references for “Research Behind the Program'' exist on a website outside of the teacher materials.

The materials for Kindergarten meet expectations for providing a comprehensive list of supplies needed to support instructional activities. In the Teacher’s Guide, Unit Overview, Planning for the Unit, Materials and Preparation section for each unit, a thorough list of the materials needed over the course of each chapter and lesson is present. Every list includes the quantity needed to support a class of 36 students, a description of each item, and which lessons the item(s) will be used for. It also contains a comprehensive list of materials that need to be provided by the teacher or school, the quantity needed, item description, and the lessons requiring these materials.

In addition to the unit overview, each Lesson Brief contains a lesson-level Materials and Preparation section outlining the materials needed for the class, groups of students and/or individual students and preparations needed before the start of each lesson. 

The materials for Kindergarten meet expectations for embedding clear science safety guidelines for teachers and students across the instructional materials. In the Unit Overview, Printable Resources section, an Investigation Notebook is provided for student use. Each Investigation Notebook contains a section titled, “Safety Guidelines for Science Investigations.” It is important to note that teachers should always locate and adhere to local policies and regulations related to science safety in the classroom. In each Unit Overview, Materials and Preparation, Materials at a Glance section, there is a reminder: “Note: Check and follow your district’s safety regulations pertaining to the use of proper equipment and procedures for students participating in hands-on science activities.”  

Additional safety notes are located in the teacher print or digital materials within lessons which have specific safety notes for the teacher to communicate to students.

One example of an additional safety note includes:

• Kindergarten, Unit: Sunlight and Weather, Lesson Brief 2.1, Materials/Prep section provides this safety note, “Caution students not to touch the bulbs or the lamps in Activity 4. They may be dangerously hot to the touch.”

The assessment materials for Kindergarten are comprehensively designed and aligned within the Units. It is clear for teachers where the assessments are, the type of assessments that are provided, and to what standard(s) each assessment opportunity is intended to be aligned. For instance, in the Kindergarten Teacher’s Guides, any Unit, Teacher References, Assessment System, each assessment opportunity throughout the Unit is listed in a chart in relation to the Lesson, type of assessment, and NGSS standard intended to be assessed. In addition, in the Teacher Guide for every Kindergarten Unit, under Printable Resources, there is a document titled 3-D Assessment Objectives, this document contains the 3-D Statement and accompanying objectives, their pertinence in the Unit, and the type of assessment aligned to that objective. “Each table includes the Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCIs), Science and Engineering Practices (SEPs), and Crosscutting Concepts (CCCs) included in that Performance Expectation and specifies the location of assessments associated with these three dimensions.”

The materials provide information detailing how assessments build toward the standards for the grade level or band. In the Teacher Guide of each Unit, Teacher Reference, Assessment System, Monitoring Progress section, there is a discussion of Critical Juncture Assessments with an outline of each Critical Juncture concept and assessment in each Unit. The Critical Juncture assessments provide the teacher with specific three-dimensional statements to assess before moving forward in the Lessons. Lessons that provide Critical Junctures or On-the-Fly Assessments also provide an Assessment Guide or a Hands-On Flextension Lesson Guide in the Lesson Brief,  Overview, Digital Resources section which states the DCI, SEP, and CCC.

In addition to listing intended standards alignment in the Teacher Guide of all Units, Teacher References, Assessment System, and the Formative and Summative Assessment Opportunities sections list the DCI, SEP, and the CCC addressed in each assessment. These also include strikethroughs of the portion of the standard that is not assessed in the Unit. While strikethroughs indicate which portion of the standard is not being assessed, there is a missed opportunity to state how the assessments contribute to building toward the end of grade-level performance expectations.

The materials for Kindergarten meet expectations for providing an assessment system with multiple opportunities throughout the grade, course, and/or series to determine students' learning, sufficient guidance for teachers to help them interpret student performance, and suggestions for following-up with students. 

Examples of the assessment system that provide support for interpreting student performance and/or for following up with students:

• In each Unit, the Assessment Guide for the End-of-Unit Assessment provides three rubrics, one each for the DCI, SEP, and CCC, as well as questions to support teachers in determining students’ initial understanding of the standards identified for each assessment. For example, in Kindergarten, Unit: Sunlight and Weather, Lesson 5.6, Digital Resources, Assessment Guide: Assessing Students’ End-of-Unit Explanations About the Temperatures of the Playgrounds: provides rubrics that give teachers questions to use to guide their grading of student assessments.  The guidance does not tell teachers how to assign a grade, but tells them to use their discretion.  “If you would like to score students’ explanations for grading purposes, we recommend using a 5-point scale (0-4). An explanation that provides an accurate and sufficient response to each question listed in the rubric should score a 4.  An explanation that does not provide an accurate response to any questions should score a 0.  For explanations that provide accurate responses to some, but not all questions, assign scores from 1 to 3 at your discretion.  For guidance on what could be considered an accurate explanation for each question, see the Possible Accurate Student Responses table on pages 4-5” (pg. 2 of guide).  The guide gives possible accurate student responses.   

• Further, the Assessment Guide for the End-of-Unit Assessment rubrics include suggestions for Follow-Up. For example, in Grade K, Unit: Pushes and Pulls, Chapter 6, Lesson 6.3, Activity 1, Assessment Guide there is a chart at the end of the document titled Suggestions for Follow-Up. In this chart there are detailed suggestions for the teacher with "specific suggestions for follow-up with students who need additional support based on the results of the assessment." There are suggestions for DCIs, CCCs, and SEPs. A CCC - Cause and Effect suggestion is "If students did not describe an appropriate example of cause and effect from the class pinball machine or explicitly identify the cause and effect: Use the pictures on pages 14–15 of Talking About Forces to prompt students to think about causes and effects. Ask, “The hammer pounded the nail, and the nail moved down into the wood. What caused the nail to move? What effect did the hammer have?” [The hammer caused the nail to move. The nail moved because of the hammer.] Connect back to the End-of-Unit Assessment. Ask, “What caused the pinball to move in different ways?” [Responses will vary: When the ball was hit with a gentle force it moved a short distance. When the ball was hit with a strong force it moved a longer distance. The launcher applied a force in different directions. The bumper applied a force that made it change directions.]"

• The Embedded Formative Assessments, The Critical Juncture and On-the-Fly Assessments, provide guidance on what to look for among students who do not demonstrate understanding. For instance, in Kindergarten, Unit: Pushes and Pulls, Teacher Guide, Teacher References, Embedded Formative Assessments, Lesson 4.3, Activity 2, Critical Juncture Assessment 4: Students’ Understanding of Redirection as Caused By Forces, Assess understanding: “Students’ marking forces in their diagrams is an opportunity for you to assess their understanding that when a moving object changes direction, it is because a moving or still object exerted a force on it.”

The materials for Kindergarten meet expectations for providing assessment opportunities for students to demonstrate the full intent of grade-level standards and elements across the series. The assessment system consistently incorporates the three dimensions. The assessment system also provides a variety of assessment types, but constructed response is the predominant modality. The Pre-Assessment, On-the-Fly, Critical Juncture, and End-of-unit assessments require written responses. They consistently assess a DCI, CCC, and SEP. There is a missed opportunity for students to demonstrate all of the SEPs, but there is a consistent focus on the practices of constructing explanations, argumentation, and modeling. Both versions (A and B) of the summative assessment ask students to provide written explanations. Version B provides students with sentence starters. Overall, the assessments in Kindergarten rely heavily on oral communication skills. Examples of assessments in this grade can be found in the reports for Indicators 1b and 1c.

In addition to summative assessments, Conversation Rubrics found throughout the resources offer prompts, look fors, and/or suggestions for how to evaluate students, but most focus on a singular dimension. In Kindergarten, there are rubrics that provide questions to develop understanding of the students’ ability to demonstrate each dimension. These rubrics provide scores for complete student answers.

The materials for Kindergarten meet expectations for providing strategies and supports for students in special populations to support their regular and active participation in learning grade-level/grade-band science and engineering. In Kindergarten, several strategies are provided for students to support their regular and active participation in learning. Strategies and supports include extra review time, strategic partnering and working with small groups. Specific evidence of each is listed below:

•  In Kindergarten, Unit: Sunlight and Weather, Teachers Guide, Lesson 3.4 Brief, Specific Differentiation Strategies for Students Who Need More Support, “Class charts and the classroom wall provide a visual summary of key ideas up to this point in the unit. Some students may benefit from having time to review and discuss these materials prior to the Shared Writing in Activity 4. This may be especially supportive in the context of a small group that allows each student to contribute to a guided discussion.”

• In Kindergarten, Unit: Sunlight and Weather, Teachers Guide, Lesson 5.2 Brief, Specific Differentiation Strategies for Students Who Need More Support, “Students will work with partners to investigate models and record observations of models in this lesson. The hands-on investigation in this lesson will work best with thoughtfully created student partnerships. Thinking ahead to create good working partnerships will be an essential component of success for this lesson.”

•  In Kindergarten, Unit: Pushes and Pulls, Teachers Guide, Lesson 1.1 Brief, Specific Differentiation Strategies for Students Who Need More Support, “If you anticipate that some students will benefit from working in a small group in Activity 2 (the Movement Hunt), you may wish to demonstrate how to make an object start to move and model the appropriate guidelines to a small group. You can give students the opportunity to try the activity independently after they understand the directions and expectations for the activity more clearly”

The materials miss the opportunity to draw a clear connection between specific strategies and supports for “students who need more support” and any below grade-level knowledge or skills.

The materials for Kindergarten meet expectations for providing extensions and/or opportunities for students to engage in learning grade-level/grade-band science and engineering at greater depth. Materials provide multiple opportunities for advanced students to engage in grade-level/grade-band science at a higher level of complexity. In multiple instances, the program differentiates for students who need more challenge. For example, in Unit: Needs of Plants and Animals, Teachers Guide, Lesson 3.3 Brief, there is an example of this differentiation, "Reading about unusual ways plants get light. To provide opportunities for students to engage in learning grade-level science in greater complexity, during Activity 3 assign students who need more challenge to read about the barrel cactus on pages 14–15 and/or the pine tree on pages 22–23, rather than reading about simpler examples in the book. The barrel cactus does not have leaves, but it gets light with its stem. The pine trees’ leaves are needles, which students may not know are a kind of leaf." This allows students who need more challenge to incorporate more complex leaves into their analysis.

Additionally, in the digital platform, the Programs and Apps icon, Other Resources, Science Program Hub, Additional Unit Materials, any grade, any unit, Unit Extensions; teachers are provided a list of recommended extension activities such as field trips, integrating STEAM activities, incorporating forms of art, and conducting a research project in a group that can be offered to all students. Each document contains a statement similar to: “The experiences above can support the Disciplinary Ideas addressed in this unit, as well as practices such as Designing Solutions and crosscutting concepts such as Structure and Function.” These extension activities are activities that all students can benefit from. The extension activities are optional, but do present extra work for students who are asked to complete them. For Instance, in Kindergarten, Unit: Pushes and Pulls, Teachers Guide, Lesson 2.1 Lesson Brief, Specific Differentiation Strategies for Students Who Need More Challenge, Further Investigation, “Students who need more challenge could be given an additional shoelace to set up a medium-distance space in their ball-rolling area in the Exploring Distance activity. With a longer area to work with, students can be encouraged to use comparative language as they work on rolling the ball and describing its movement in terms of a short, shorter, or the shortest distance, or moving the ball a long, longer, or the longest distance.”