Middle School Science Professional Learning Opportunity to Include Elements from OpenSciEd OER Science Curriculum

This professional learning will focus on teaching strategies and content knowledge that are universal across science instruction: facilitating instructional routines, building background knowledge, and helping teachers shift their instructional practices toward three-dimensional learning and student sense-making. The teaching and learning experiences will utilize a free curriculum piloted and vetted in Iowa called OpenSciEd, but the adoption of this curriculum is not necessary to attend the PD.

Additional details are listed below and in the attached flyer. Please contact a Heartland AEA Science Consultant if you have any questions.

The lessons and standards in this professional learning opportunity are specific to middle school. However, the content knowledge and pedagogical strategies would be useful for teachers from late elementary to early high school.

We are looking to adopt middle school science materials.
OpenSciEd materials are:

• designed and aligned to the Framework and NGSS
• based on research regarding how students learn, what motivates learning, and the implications for teaching;
• developed with educators and extensively tested by teachers and schools
• designed to be used with low-cost, standard laboratory equipment and materials amenable to large-scale deployment

We’ve already adopted curriculum materials but we want to improve instruction in our classrooms.
Professional development helps teachers to:

• support coherence from the student perspective
• support equitable and just science instruction for ALL students
• develop and use DCIs, SEPs, and CCCs in meaningful ways to build understanding of phenomena
• support student sensemaking
• use instructional routines (anchoring phenomena, navigation/connected investigations, putting the pieces together, problematizing) to support coherent student learning