David Ng
David Ng
Aug 9, 2017 · 2 min read

Hi Michael, do you feel your students are actually constructing their own understanding of HS LS 1–1?

I’m a former middle school science teacher and curriculum specialist, and I’ve given quite a bit of thought to how I would introduce these concepts if I had complete control over the middle school science curriculum. Sadly, we’re not providing anything like the kinds of experience I think kids would need to construct an understanding of cell biology in middle school. Instead, all we’re doing is trying to transmit knowledge via formal instruction, while making it a bit more interesting through interactive activities and hands-on experiments.

In Mindstorms, Seymour Papert envisions Mathland, a land where kids learn math as easily and naturally as kids in France learn French. Papert believed the key to creating Mathland is putting materials in the landscape that would enable kids to construct the underlying intellectual structures to think mathematically. The reason why I bring up Mathland is because, at least in Massachusetts where I taught, our middle school students don’t have access to the materials needed to construct the underlying intellectual structures to understand HS LS 1–1, so they’d have to construct everything from scratch in your classroom in a month or two. That seems impossible to me.

Honestly, when I read HS LS 1–1 with my middle school science curriculum specialist hat on, I feel as though we’ve failed our students and tied your hands. There’s so much that would need to change in K-8 science before our students are remotely prepared for a standard like HS LS 1–1. I’m curious to hear your thoughts and what your experience has been.

David Ng

Written by

David Ng

Founder and Chief Learning Officer of Vertical Learning Labs