Crosscutting Concepts Woven through Core Science Units

A STEM workshop for secondary Science/STEM/CTE teachers

Presenters:
Jen Eklund, Caroline Kiehle, John Leitzinger

Description:
The purpose is to guide secondary teachers ready to deeply learn what the 3-Dimensions of science learning looks like, and prepare to implement the CCCs in all core science units. This series supports teams of teachers participating together, for increasing district-wide readiness for new materials adoption -or- implementation. ISB facilitators will use an exemplar OER unit with a climate science phenomenon through which to look at all 7 CCCs. HS teacher quote 5/22 – “This workshop worked extremely well with the Open Sci Ed work, I tweaked some material and used Scale, Proportion, and Quantity lens to create new questions in the work.”

The structure is a 12-hour series over 2 months. The classroom implementation activities will earn a $300 honorarium from the state ClimeTime project. One make up session will be scheduled for those who need to miss one of the scheduled sessions.

Workshop sessions will engage teachers to expand their knowledge about the big ideas of science, the CCCs, from STEM professionals and by engaging in lessons as a student would. Emphasis will be on the 3 most challenging CCCs [#4, #3, #7] and the other 4 CCCs will be connected to those three.

• Facilitators will model how the 3-Dimensions of student science learning fit together: DCI–What students learn; SEP–What students do; and CCC–What students think.
• Each session will include collaboration structure, classroom tools, and coaching for each teacher’s classroom implementation. Teachers have time with peers and a coach to practice instructional moves then do lesson planning to embed CCCs into their district’s core science unit that they each bring to work on in this course.
• Teachers will be implementing their current science unit during this series. Between workshop sessions teachers will be able to intentionally embed the CCCs while actively collecting some evidence of their students’ 3-dimensional science learning. Teachers will administer some practical measures of evidence of student learning, and the PLC group will reflect on successes and challenges of 3-D science learning.