Hi all,
This is a very affordable opportunity for upper elementary and middle school science teachers in the Puget Sound Region to dig into STEM education and equity.
Here is the link if you are interested in signing up:
http://tinyurl.com/Nov29Registration
Below is information copied from the registration site…
Wed, November 29, 2017
8:30 AM – 4:00 PM PST
Microsoft Conference Center
16070 NE 36th Way
Redmond, WA 98052
I’m always looking for powerful examples of engineering to share with teachers and students. This is one of my current favorites- the story of designing an elegantly simple microscope and centrifuge that can save countless lives around the world. Enjoy!
OVERVIEW: I have had several conversations with teachers and administrators about how learning targets, objectives, and success criteria should look different in science learning than they might in other content areas. Some of these conversations have been greeted with skepticism (to say the least) so it will be nice to have a resource to help guide this topic in the future. The latest STEM Teaching Tool #46 is titled: How to define meaningful daily learning objectives for science investigations… and it looks like a brilliant overview of this important topic.
PURPOSE: This STEM Teaching tool provides clarity and examples for how learning targets in science can be public, helpful, constructed with students, and designed in a way to not “give away” the concept being learned.
AUDIENCE: district and building administrators, teachers of science, PD providers, teacher educators, curriculum writers
LINK: http://stemteachingtools.org/brief/46
OVERVIEW: Dr. Phil Bell at the University of Washington was recently asked what pre-service teachers should know about the Next Generation Science Standards. He responded with a series of Tweets or a Twitter Essay. (As an instructor of multiple science methods courses I’m considering making this a part of my syllabus.)
AUDIENCE: Any teacher educators of K-12 teachers of science (I think this list also applies to practicing teachers of science and those who provide science professional development.)
PURPOSE: This Twitter essay provides specific resources and reminders about how the teaching of science is much more than just putting a bunch of content into the heads of learners. My personal favorite is recommendation #3:
Make equity & social justice a central, daily focus of your science teaching practice —not an add-on stemteachingtools.org/sp/uses#equity
LINK: https://twitter.com/philiplbell/status/805927250210144259
I also highly recommend following Dr. Bell on Twitter if you don’t already:
https://twitter.com/philiplbell
Here is a short video of Dr. Bell discussing the role of play and personal engagement in science learning.
OVERVIEW: The National Academies Press recently released a report on the state of science literacy titled Science Literacy: Concepts, Contexts, and Consequences. Like all of the NAP documents you can read it FREE in your browser, download for FREE or order a hardcopy (Not FREE).
AUDIENCE: Science teachers, educational researchers, policy makers, administrators, others
PURPOSE: This report provides an overview of the state of science literacy in several areas and provides a number of Conclusions for each area:
Here is the description from the NAP site:
Science is a way of knowing about the world. At once a process, a product, and an institution, science enables people to both engage in the construction of new knowledge as well as use information to achieve desired ends. Access to science—whether using knowledge or creating it—necessitates some level of familiarity with the enterprise and practice of science: we refer to this as science literacy.
Science literacy is desirable not only for individuals, but also for the health and well- being of communities and society. More than just basic knowledge of science facts, contemporary definitions of science literacy have expanded to include understandings of scientific processes and practices, familiarity with how science and scientists work, a capacity to weigh and evaluate the products of science, and an ability to engage in civic decisions about the value of science. Although science literacy has traditionally been seen as the responsibility of individuals, individuals are nested within communities that are nested within societies—and, as a result, individual science literacy is limited or enhanced by the circumstances of that nesting.
Science Literacy studies the role of science literacy in public support of science. This report synthesizes the available research literature on science literacy, makes recommendations on the need to improve the understanding of science and scientific research in the United States, and considers the relationship between scientific literacy and support for and use of science and research.
LINK: http://www.nap.edu/catalog/23595/science-literacy-concepts-contexts-and-consequences
OVERVIEW: Successful STEM Education is a site that provides resources, information, and events about effective tools and practices for K-12 STEM education. The site also contains links to 2 important STEM education reports:
Successful K-12 STEM Education
Monitoring Progress Toward Successful K-12 STEM Education
My favorite part of the site is the STEM Smart Briefs– these 10 briefs provide an overview on research that relates to common challenges and recommendations in K-12. Topics of the briefs include:
TARGET AUDIENCE: Administrators, STEM teachers and teacher leaders, PD providers, informal science providers, curriculum directors, and others in education
PURPOSE: Provides key STEM Education resources in one location.
The Nextgenscience.org site posts a monthly newsletter. You can access the March 2016 NGSS Newsletter HERE. You will find information about the new NGSS website, bundling Performance Expectations, thinking about bee colony collapse as a phenomena, and more.
Posted in NGSS, STEM, Uncategorized
Washington State LASER is offering a week-long STEM Education Leadership Institute to be held June 22-26, 2015 in Lynnwood, WA. For registration information and more details about the institute click HERE.
Applications for teams are due April 3, 2015.
There are lots of great resources for supporting productive classroom talk during science instruction…
But when it comes to engineering design I think we need some different questions and talk moves to guide students as they are collaborating to solve problems. I haven’t found a resource on “engineering talk”… so I created this engineering talk moves document.
This is very drafty and I would love some feedback. What is missing? What is redundant? Does this document even make sense? What needs to be improved to make this document useful for K-12 teachers?
The idea is that this 1 pager would be used by a teacher to guide students’ thinking as they are in the middle of collaborative work to solve an engineering problem.
I look forward to your feedback. Click HERE to download the document.
Posted in design/engineering, NGSS, Science teacher Professional Development, STEM
Tagged design, education, engineering, NGSS, talk
The National Academies Press recently released a new report titled- STEM Integration in K-12 Education:Status, Prospectus, and an Agenda for Research. Like all of the publications from the National Academies, this is FREE to download as a pdf. Click HERE to access the download or read FREE in your browser.
Below is the description of the report from the Academies site:
STEM Integration in K-12 Education examines current efforts to connect the STEM disciplines in K-12 education. This report identifies and characterizes existing approaches to integrated STEM education, both in formal and after- and out-of-school settings. The report reviews the evidence for the impact of integrated approaches on various student outcomes, and it proposes a set of priority research questions to advance the understanding of integrated STEM education. STEM Integration in K-12 Education proposes a framework to provide a common perspective and vocabulary for researchers, practitioners, and others to identify, discuss, and investigate specific integrated STEM initiatives within the K-12 education system of the United States.
Looks like another good report to add to our toolbox of understanding integrated STEM education and to provide some specific frameworks and tools for implementing.
Science for All 