Summer Workshop Plans

DESERT Summer Workshop Agenda

TITLE: Summer Institute

How long did your workshop last?

Four days (30 hours) July 26-29

How many teachers did you involve?

165

What are your major goals for your workshop in terms of content and pedagogy? (Just one or two paragraphs)

This was an orientation for teams of 5-14 teachers from our 20 Cohort 1 Schools. Since we have 94 schools in our project, we have decided to divide them into 5 cohorts who will each receive focused attention to develop school wide effective inquiry based science for 1-2 years.

Goals : The purpose of the Institute is to provide Cohort I Site Leadership Teams with:

• The opportunity to develop a collective vision of effective science education through first hand experience, observation of best practices, and dialogue.
• A template to begin a 3 year implementation plan to involve all teachers of science at the site based upon five focus areas identified in the site profiles.
• Leadership
• Professional Development
• Curriculum and Materials
• Assessment
• Support and Enabling Structures

Are you offering professional development on specific curricula that you are hoping will be used in the classroom? If so, which curricula are you using?

FOSS/ STC K-5* and Science Plus 6-8 (the institute here did not focus on specific pieces, but rather had sessions to show the spiraled connections K-8 so that teams would get a sense of how big ideas/major concepts are built through the grade levels.

*We did offer basic intro module workshops on Electric Circuits (STC) and Models and Designs.( FOSS) which are the new kits introduced for grades 4,and 5 respectively.

 
TITLE: Principals Understanding Leadership in Science Education (PULSE) Workshop

How long do your workshops last?

DATES: May 27-28 1999
LENGTH: 15 hrs

How many teachers do you involve in your workshops?

ATTENDED: 60 principals K-8

What are your major goals for your workshops in terms of content and pedagogy? (Just one or two paragraphs)

Our annual workshop for Principals was targeted, at their request, this year on making connections between science and literacy.

Goals:

• provide principals with a personal experience with inquiry based science

• develop the links between inquiry bsed science and literacy in the areas of speaking, writing and reading

• explore ways in whcih inquiry based science supports student acheivement on tests such as Stanford 9 and state wide AIMS tests

• develop tools to use at sites to strengthen connections bewteen inquiry based science and language development.

OTHER WORKSHOPS Scheduled for summer:

• We are offering foundation level workshops in FOSS Models and Designs(5th) and STC Electrict Circuits (4th) (2 each, 15 hrs) This is to introduce our thrid kits to grades 4 and 5

• Summer Insitutue for Cohort 1 sites (20 schools)- July 26-29 30 hrs. Site Facilitators Workshop Aug 2-6 ( 30 Hrs each) Features Exploratorium inquiry, ice ballons with Fred Stein and tips for facilitators for 99-00.