Despite the emphasis the Next Generation Science Standards place on sensemaking, there are very few finely grained accounts of how chemistry students should be prepared to figure out the cause for phenomena, how this might be assessed, or what the proper balance of “figuring out” versus “learning about” should be for an introductory high school course. Here we will discuss how learning environments might be designed to support students in connecting atomic/molecular behavior to the world they can see and touch. In particular, we will focus on 1) how core-idea centered instruction can help students discuss macroscopic phenomena in terms of particulate-level interactions, and 2) how we can elicit evidence that students can and do engage in molecular-level sensemaking. This session is intended as an interactive workshop and, accordingly, participants will be engaged in refining and critiquing 3-dimensional assessments as well as discussing what it means for a curriculum to be aligned with the NGSS.

Supporting and assessing molecular-level sensemaking

2019 Spring National Meeting

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