[Colleagues: Will you please forward this to science teachers and/or
science coordinators in your town? -- Jane Jackson, AMTA volunteer &
Co-Director of ASU Modeling Instruction Program]
ATTENTION SCIENCE TEACHERS!
50 Modeling Workshops in high school and middle school sciences will
be offered this summer, in many states. Most workshops are two or
three weeks. CEUs; optional graduate credit, stipends at
grant-funded sites.
Registration is open for most workshops. Think about taking a
Modeling Workshop. Ask your school administration to help pay.
OVERVIEW:
Modeling Workshops thoroughly address most aspects of science
teaching, including integration of teaching methods with course
content. Workshops incorporate up-to-date results of science
education research, best curriculum materials, use of technology, and
experience in collaborative learning and guidance. Workshops focus on
all 8 science practices and cross-cutting concepts of the NRC
Framework for K-12 Science Education, the basis of the NGSS.
Modeling Workshops are peer-led. Content is reorganized around
basic models to increase its structural coherence. Participants are
supplied with a complete set of course materials and work through
activities alternately in roles of student or teacher, as they
practice techniques of guided inquiry and cooperative learning.
Each MODELING WORKSHOP has these features:
* aligned with National Science Education Standards
* focuses on all 8 scientific practices of NRC Framework for K-12
Science Education.
* addresses multiple learning styles.
* addresses student naive conceptions.
* collaboration, creativity, communication, and critical thinking.
* systems, models, modeling.
* coherent curriculum framework, but not a curriculum; thus flexible.
* compatible with Socratic methods, project-based instruction,
Cambridge curriculum, PBL, etc.
* science & math literacy.
* authentic assessments.
* high-tech and low-tech options for labs.
Models and theories are the purpose and the outcomes of scientific
practices. They are tools for engineering design and problem solving.
Thus, modeling guides all other practices.
TEACHERS SAY:
* I'm a better teacher after modeling, I like my job more, I feel the
kids walk away with real transferable skills.
* It moves students in the direction of being independent learners,
and it puts the responsibility for learning where it belongs - on the
students.
* The Modeling program is the only one I have found that is truly
grounded in how students learn and attacks head-on the misconceptions
students have.