Science

The Wildfire Module asks students to consider the question, "How will wildfire risks and impacts change over the next 100 years?" This five-activity module helps students build an understanding of the variables that influence fire spread rate and intensity, the risks that wildfires bring to people and their communities, and the impact of climate change through focused case studies and interactions with the Wildfire Explorer model.

Assessment tasks intended to support teaching and learning in classrooms that are enacting NGSS-aligned instruction, and to gain insights into grades 3-8 students’ progress in building proficiency with NGSS performance expectations (PEs). The tasks are designed to increase access and engagement for students with a range of ethnic and cultural backgrounds, linguistic abilities, and learning differences.  The tasks include web-based tools to integrate computational models, which students can manipulate to explore phenomena, to generate data for a scientific argument, or to carry out an experiment. Teachers can select tasks to use with their students and assign them to be completed individually, in small groups, or during whole class instruction. As students complete the assessment tasks online, teachers can monitor student progress in real-time. The assessment portal links scoring rubrics to tasks to help teachers understand and evaluate which aspects of student work show progress toward mastery of the targeted 3-D integrated knowledge. Using these rubrics, teachers can provide online feedback to individual students.

DiALoG stands for Diagnosing the Argumentation Levels of Groups. It is designed for teachers to formatively assess the quality of evidence-based arguments and to guide the selection of instructional responses designed to Improve the quality of students’ arguments. DiALoG assesses two important aspects of group argumentation – how well students construct their own evidence-based arguments (the INTRApersonal) and how well students are able to reconcile differences with others to co-construct meaning (the INTERpersonal). The DiALoG system includes the DiALoG tool itself, along with the accompanying Responsive Mini Lessons (RMLs) and User Guides (UGs).

The CKT packets contain tasks, suggested lesson plans, readings, and resources to support teacher educators’ efforts to help elementary teachers develop CKT– specialized knowledge at the intersection of specific content ideas and science teaching practices.