Teaching the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) with CLEAN Resources

All resources have been aligned with the NGSS!

Below we provide you with links to CLEAN resources that can be bundled together to address a given NGSS Performance Expectation. Here's how to search the CLEAN Collection for specific resources that address a given NGSS Performance Expectation:
Back to NGSS at a Glace »
History of CLEAN and NGSS »

1) Select the NGSS Performance Expectation that you want to address:

Here are 4 example Performance Expectations that are well supported by CLEAN resources. You can use the links below to explore resources that can be used to address the full breadth of each specific Performance Expectation or select one of the connected Disciplinary Core Ideas to see topically related resources.

Middle School

MS-ESS3-5 Ask questions to clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the rise in global temperatures over the past century.

MS-ESS3-4 Construct an argument supported by evidence for how increases in human population and per-capita consumption of natural resources impact Earth's systems.

High School

HS-ESS3-5 Analyze geoscience data and the results from global climate models to make an evidence-based forecast of the current rate of global or regional climate change and associated future impacts to Earth systems.

HS-ESS3-2 Evaluate competing design solutions for developing, managing, and utilizing energy and mineral resources based on cost-benefit ratios.

NGSS Browse Facet
Screenshot showing the position of the NGSS browse facets in the main CLEAN search interface.[creative commons]
Provenance: Sean Fox, Carleton College
Reuse: This item is offered under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ You may reuse this item for non-commercial purposes as long as you provide attribution and offer any derivative works under a similar license.
You can also explore the CLEAN resources that support other Performance Expectations and Disciplinary Core Ideas using the NGSS-specific search facets on the right side of CLEAN's main search page.

2) Once you've found a resource, you can learn more about how it relates to NGSS components

1. At the top each catalog record you'll see this notation in the bottom half of the lead green box:


2. Clicking on the green text "See how this Activity..." takes you further down the page to this box, where the NGSS components addressed by this resource are identified for middle and/or high school, as appropriate:


How did we select these particular components?

Each resource was carefully reviewed with the NGSS in mind. Connections to different middle and high school NGSS components were identified and flagged if the resource was found to do any of the following:
- engage students in any of the Science and Engineering Practices,
- help students connect Cross-cutting Concepts, or 
- enable a deeper understanding of a Disciplinary Core Ideas.

Here's where the coding (such as MS-ESS2.D1) comes from:

The text and labels for each component are drawn directly from the published Next Generation Science Standards, with two additions. The published standards provide labels for the Disciplinary Core Ideas (e.g. ESS2.D) but these labels often encompass multiple bullet points. We've added a numeric suffix (reflecting the order in which the bullets appear in the standards) to indicate specific bullet points (e.g. ESS2.D1 or ESS2.D3). Likewise, the printed standards provide no labels for the Crosscutting Concepts or Science and Engineering Practices. So we've labeled these individual bullets to reflect the grade level and their order of appearance in appendices F & G of the standards. So HS-C6.2 refers to the 2nd bullet of the 6th of the Crosscutting Concepts at the High School level.