Responding to the 2nd Draft of the National Science Education Standards

The National Association of Geoscience Teachers invites you to give your feedback on the 2nd draft of the Next Generation Science Standards. This document will guide science education in our schools and teacher preparation courses, and provides an opportunity to place geosciences on an equal footing with other scientific disciplines in our schools. The review period closes on January 29th.

NAGT invites you to be part of the NAGT comment on the 2nd draft of the NGSS through these events:

Part 1: Dr. Michael Wysession, Associate Professor of Geophysics in the Department of Earth and Planetary Science at Washington University, St. Louis, and NGSS Writing Team Leader, will lead a webinar highlighting the changes between the first draft and the second draft of NGSS.

The webinar will take place on Tuesday, January 22 beginning at 2:30 p.m. Central Time (3:30 p.m. Eastern, 1:30 p.m. Mountain, 12:30 p.m. Pacific). Dr, Wysession will give a 30 minute presentation followed by time for questions. In preparation for the webinar it is recommended that you review the Framework document, and the standards document.

Part 2: After reviewing the draft standards, please join us for a forum discussion on Thursday, January 24 at 12:30 p.m. Central Time (1:30 p.m. Eastern, 11:30 a.m. Mountain, 10:30 a.m. Pacific). The focus of the forum will be to provide comments and reviews to inform the NAGT Critical Stakeholder Review of the NGSS 2nd draft. NAGT organizers will synthesize the input provided through the forum and send it to the NGSS team.

We will use Blackboard Collaborate and a conference call phone line for the webinar and forum discussion. Instructions for connecting to the video and audio streams for both events are available on the NAGT website: http://nagt.org/nagt/policy/ngss.html#connecting. Note: you will want to be able to start connecting before the start time of each event as if can take several minutes for the Blackboard Collaborate program to get up and running.

If you would like to send comment but cannot attend the forum, please send your written comments to Aida Awad (aawad@maine207.org) or Susan Buhr (susan.buhr@colorado.edu). You may also leave a comment on the NAGT web page – http://nagt.org/nagt/policy/ngss.html#thread. The deadline to submit comments for inclusion in NAGT's response is Sunday, January 27, 2013.