NGSS Developing and Using Models

Along with a group of fellow science teachers, I’ve been thinking about using models to teach science to my students.  I had always thought of models as like scale model airplanes from kits we used to assemble or as anatomical models where you can take out the heart, lungs, and liver and then stuff them back into the body cavities of a vacant looking plastic human model.  And, of course, the formal models that intrinsic to well-developed theories in science.  In fact, some sources believe that “the primary goal of science is the construction and evaluation of scientific models” (Jadrich & Bruxvoort, 2011, p. 12).

With this conception of models in mind, I hadn’t given much thought to the use of models in teaching science.  However, in learning more about the new Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), I began to realize that models were more useful and more prevalent that I had previously thought.  NGSS presents models as representations of actual objects, systems, or processes that help us understand these phenomena.  As such, they define models to include diagrams, physical replicas, mathematical representations, analogies, and computer simulations. 

So if this was true, then the small blue plastic “flippers” in the FOSS Variables kits we used were model catapults.  True, that were really simple catapults but, as the NGSS web site reminds us, “although models do not correspond exactly to the real world, they bring certain features into focus while obscuring others” in Appendix F.  We used these “flippers” to investigate the effects of angle of the flipper, mass of the projectile, and compression of the Popsicle stick used as a springboard on the distance, as the FOSS guide suggests.

Following these science investigations, I started having my students build catapults of their own design, not only to have fun, but also to help illustrate the relationship of science and engineering.  These too were models, I realized.  The two or three stages of prototyping we did before making a final version were also models.   When we watched a NOVA video from their Secrets of Lost Empires series about a group of master builders who reconstructed a trebuchet used to lay siege to a medieval castle, I realized that too was a model.  Suddenly, models were everywhere!