So finally, let's talk about the content.
Scientific understanding is a combination of the practice
of science and the factual content of science.
And then it's all linked together by the crosscutting concepts.
Fortunately, they've actually worked hard.
To limit the number of big ideas they've articulated,
that they think are important for students to understand.
Because this is a course about the dynamic Earth system, we're
going to focus in on Earth and space sciences, and what the
National Research Council has done is, they've identified
three big ideas within Earth and space science.
So we have Earth's place in the
universe, Earth systems, and Earth and human activity.
So these three areas encompass the full range of content in Earth and
space sciences that we want to explore with
our students from Kindergarten through 12th grade.
And what's really interesting about how this is
done is that each of these big ideas is
broken up into component ideas, and there's not a huge number of them.
So for Earth, space, and the universe, it's three.
Earth systems is five.
Earth and human activity is four. So we can see that across these three
big ideas within earth and space sciences there's actually a total of 12.
So it's 12 big ideas that we're expecting our students to master from kindergarten
through 12th grade.
And this is a big departure from some prior approaches to
doing standards where it sort of becomes a laundry list of all
the different facts that we want our students to, to master
and memorize and know as they progress from kindergarten through twelfth grade.
So I think this is a really powerful approach for us as educators.
Not only that, but they've chosen the big ideas so that
they are, they link many cross-cutting concepts together, they are relevant
to students' lives, and, and therefore, it makes it easier for us to
plan our instruction, to engage students in
them, and get them excited about learning.