Focus on Energy: Preparing Elementary Teachers to Meet the NGSS Challenge
Principal Investigator:
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Discipline/Topic:
Target Audience:
Science
Science in the LearningGardens: A study of motivation, achievement, and science identity in low-income middle schools
Science in the Learning Gardens (henceforth, SciLG) program was designed to address two well-documented, inter-related educational problems: under-representation in science of students from racial and ethnic minority groups and inadequacies of curriculum and pedagogy to address their cultural and motivational needs. Funded by the National Science Foundation, SciLG is a partnership between Portland Public Schools and Portland State University.
Lead Organization(s)
Year
2018
Short Description
This study reports results from 113 students and three science teachers from two low-income urban middle schools participating in SciLG. It highlights the role of students’ views of themselves as competent, related, and autonomous in the garden, as well as their engagement and re-engagement in the garden, as potential pathways by which garden-based science activities can shape science motivation, learning, and academic identity in science.
2018 American Chemical Society National Meeting and Exposition; New Orleans, LA
Event Date
-
Sponsoring Organization
To learn more, visit https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/meetings/national-meeting.html.
DRK-12 Presenters:
- Ellen Yezierski, Dillon Frank, Nicholas Spurgus, and Justin Pratt, Miami University (Project: Further Development and Testing of the Target Inquiry Model for Middle and High School Science Teacher Professional Development (Collaborative Research: Yezierski))
Event Type
Writing a Scientific Explanation
American Museum of Natural History. (2018). Writing a Scientific Explanation. Retrieved from https://www.amnh.org/explore/curriculum-collections/integrating-literac….
Lead Organization(s)
Year
2018
Short Description
This resource provides access to a classroom video of a lesson from the project's middle school ecosystems unit, and the related student scaffold and scoring rubric.
Disruptions in Ecosystems
Disruptions in Ecosystems is a middle school curriculum unit with supporting teacher materials. The unit includes five chapters, each focused on a specific phenomenon related to ecosystem disruption, including questions around the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone and the invasion of zebra mussels in the Great Lakes and Hudson River.
Lead Organization(s)
Year
2018
Short Description
Disruptions in Ecosystems is a middle school curriculum unit with supporting teacher materials. The unit includes five chapters, each focused on a specific phenomenon related to ecosystem disruption, including questions around the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone and the invasion of zebra mussels in the Great Lakes and Hudson River.
Classroom Videos from Disruptions in Ecosystems Unit
Kastel, D. (2017, August 25). Classroom videos from disruptions in ecosystems unit [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://www.teachingchannel.org/blog/2017/08/25/ngss-from-theory-to-pra…
Lead Organization(s)
Year
2017
Short Description
This blog post includes the link to 4 videos of teachers using the project's middle school ecosystems unit.
Science as Experience, Exploration, and Experiments: Elementary Teachers’ Notions of ‘Doing Science’
Much of the literature on science teaching suggests that elementary teachers lack relevant prior experiences with science. This study begins to reframe the deficit approach to research in science teaching by privileging the experiences elementary teachers have had with science – both in and out of schools – throughout their lives. Our work uses identity as a lens to examine the complexities of elementary teachers’ narrative accounts of their experiences with science over the course of their lives.
Lead Organization(s)
Year
2017
Short Description
This study begins to reframe the deficit approach to research in science teaching by privileging the experiences elementary teachers have had with science – both in and out of schools – throughout their lives. This work demonstrates that teachers’ storied lives are important for educational researchers and teacher educators, as they reveal elements of teaching knowledge that may be productive and resourceful for refining teachers’ science practice.
Resource(s)
Using a Video Club Design to Promote Teacher Attention to Students' Ideas in Science
Science education stakeholders worldwide are engaged in efforts to support teachers' noticing and making sense of students' thinking in science. Here we introduce the design of a science teaching video club and present a study of its implementation. The current design extends prior research on video clubs as a form of professional development for supporting mathematics teachers. Results indicate that the current design supported science teachers in noticing and discussing students' thinking in sustained and meaningful ways.
Lead Organization(s)
Year
2017
Short Description
In this article, authors introduce the design of a science teaching video club and present a study of its implementation.
Resource(s)
Teachers’ Noticing of Students’ Thinking in Science Through Classroom Artifacts: In What Ways Are Science and Engineering Practices Evident?
Building on the work of teacher noticing, this study investigated teachers’ noticing of students’ thinking evident in artifacts from their science teaching context. Prior work on teachers’ noticing in
Lead Organization(s)
Year
2018
Short Description
Building on the work of teacher noticing, this study investigated teachers’ noticing of students’ thinking evident in artifacts from their science teaching context.
Resource(s)
Methods and Strategies: What’s the Story?
This column provides ideas and techniques to enhance your science teaching. This month’s issue discusses using the 5E learning cycle to create coherent storylines.
Lipsitz, K., Cisterna, D., & Hanuscin, D. (2017). The 5E Learning Cycle: What’s the story? Science and Children, 55(4), 76–80.
Lead Organization(s)
Year
2017
Short Description
This column provides ideas and techniques to enhance your science teaching.