The goal of the secondary science teacher is to build on the elementary foundation to strengthen students' ability to make sense of the world around them. The eight practices constitute a single system of sense-making that work together to build coherence.

NGSS views instruction as building coherent story-lines, in which questions are grounded on phenomena, leading to investigations. Students develop explanatory models through scientific argumentation that are constructed by interpreting evidence from investigations and critiquing the practices of those in the science community.