Week 5A

The Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks provide teachers, students and families with clear and shared expectations for what all students should know and be able to do at the end of each year. They represent a promise of equitable education for all students. They formalize the expectation that all students in the Commonwealth have access to the same academic content, regardless of their zip code, background, or abilities.

Labeling/Coding of the Standards

The Massachusetts STE standards are labeled using the NGSS system, as shown here:

• The first component of each label indicates the grade (pre-K to grade 8) and/or span (middle or high school).

• The next component specifies the discipline and core idea.

• Finally, the number at the end of each label indicates the particular standard within the related set.

Maintaining the labeling system from NGSS is intended to allow Massachusetts’ educators access to curriculum and instruction resources developed across the country. This occasionally results in standards that appear to be out of sequence or skip a number (because some NGSS standards are not included in the Massachusetts standards), but the benefits of consistency with NGSS outweigh those of renumbering. Note that the order in which the standards are listed does not imply or define an intended instructional sequence.

Components of the Standards

Many standards include clarification statements (which supply examples or additional clarification to the standards) and state assessment boundary statements (which are meant to specify limits to state assessment). Note that these are not intended to limit or constrain curriculum or classroom instruction: educators are welcome to teach and assess additional concepts, practices, and vocabulary that are not included in the standards.

Relationship of Standards to Curriculum and Instruction

The standards are outcomes, or goals, that reflect what a student should know and be able to do. They do not dictate a manner or methods of teaching. The standards are written in a way that expresses the concept and skills to be achieved and demonstrated by students, but leaves curricular and instructional decisions to districts, schools, and teachers. The standards are not a set of instructional activities or assessment tasks. They are statements of what students should be able to do as a result of instruction.

In particular, it is important to note that the scientific and engineering practices are not teaching strategies—they are important learning goals in their own right; they are skills to be learned as a result of instruction. As the standards are performances meant to be accomplished at the conclusion of instruction, quality instruction should engage students in multiple practices throughout instruction. Students cannot comprehend scientific practices, or fully appreciate the nature of scientific knowledge itself, without learning the science and engineering practices.

This Framework uses the term “practices” instead of terms such as “inquiry” or “skills” to emphasize that the practices are outcomes to be learned, not a method of instruction. It is also important to note that the standards identify the most essential material for students to know and do. They are not an exhaustive list of all that could be included in a student’s science education; students should not be prevented from going beyond them where appropriate.

Teachers have the flexibility to arrange the standards in any order within a grade level and add areas of study to suit the needs of their students and science programs. Including various applications of science, such as biotechnology, clean energy, medicine, forensics, agriculture, or robotics, would nicely facilitate student interest and demonstrate how the standards are applied in real-world contexts (see Appendix IX).