🔬 NGSS + Diffit Toolkit

Whether you're exploring Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCIs), Crosscutting Concepts (CCCs), or Science and Engineering Practices (SEPs), Diffit equips you to differentiate complex science texts and tasks so all students can access and engage with rigorous, three-dimensional instruction.

Customizable & Standards-Aligned
With Diffit, you can align any resource directly to NGSS during the customization process. This ensures your supports stay connected to your instructional goals.

How to Use This Toolkit

NGSS encourages students to explore scientific concepts through phenomena and hands-on investigations. This toolkit bridges that vision with accessible, inclusive supports from Diffit. Use the strategies alongside differentiated science texts to enhance student comprehension, reasoning, and discourse.

Start simple by choosing one or two routines that align with your current unit or lab. Over time, these practices can become go-to tools for helping students read, write, talk, and think like scientists. Each is adaptable across grade levels and flexible enough for whole-group, small-group, or independent learning.

1) Asking Questions & Defining Problems

Students pose “why” and “how” questions (science) and define or delimit problems to be solved (engineering).

• Open Ended Questions — prompt students to generate their own scientific questions.
• Short Answer Questions — help clarify variables, constraints, or conditions in a problem.
• Read and Annotate — lets students mark “need to know” or unclear details in a text.
• 3-2-1 What I Learned — surfaces lingering questions after reading or investigation.

2) Developing & Using Models

Students create and use models (diagrams, visuals, simulations) to represent and explain phenomena.

• Visual Summary By Paragraph — helps students translate text into diagrams or sketches.
• Flow Chart Map — organizes sequences and cause/effect relationships.
• Causes and Effects — shows interactions among system components.
• Draw and Explain — lets students illustrate and narrate their thinking.

3) Planning & Carrying Out Investigations

Students design and conduct investigations to answer questions or test ideas.

• Read and Take Notes — supports extracting key steps from lab directions.
• Cloze Reading — reinforces experimental procedures and vocabulary in context.
• Short Answer Questions — guides students to plan what data to collect and how.
• Reading Passage — builds background before designing or conducting an investigation.

4) Analyzing & Interpreting Data

Students organize, analyze, and find meaning in data to identify patterns and relationships.

• Making Inferences — encourages drawing logical conclusions from data sets.
• Answer and Explain — requires students to justify interpretations with evidence.
• Multiple Choice Questions — target identification of trends or anomalies.
• Short Answer Questions — prompt comparisons between different data sources.

5) Using Mathematics & Computational Thinking

Students apply math and computational methods to represent, analyze, and solve problems.

• Short Answer Questions — allow practice with calculations and units.
• Multiple Choice Questions — reinforce quantitative reasoning through problem sets.
• Cloze Reading — strengthens fluency with formulas and math language.
• Read and Annotate — helps track known and unknown quantities in text problems.

6) Constructing Explanations & Designing Solutions

Students build evidence-based explanations (science) and develop or test solutions (engineering).

• RACE Short Answer Question — structures clear, evidence-based responses.
• PEEL Short Answer Question — guides logical, multi-step explanations.
• RACER Short Answer Question — scaffolds solution design with reasoning.
• Reading & Summary — ensures students gather evidence before writing.

7) Engaging in Argument from Evidence

Students evaluate claims and counterclaims by marshalling evidence and reasoning.

• Answer and Explain — asks students to defend or critique claims directly.
• CER Open Ended Question — reinforces the Claim–Evidence–Reasoning framework.
• Claims, Evidence, Reasoning — provides structured practice in argumentation.
• Claims and Evidence — sharpens skills in selecting and connecting evidence.

8) Obtaining, Evaluating, & Communicating Information

Students find, assess, and share information from texts, visuals, and others’ work.

• Reading Passage — builds knowledge from science texts.
• Reading & Summary — distills key takeaways into concise notes.
• Key Vocabulary with Images — supports precise communication with visuals.
• Read and Annotate — develops critical evaluation of text credibility.