While business is anything
BUT
usual, CreositySpace remains committed
to the world of K-5 science and helping students use their unique skills, interests, and curiosity to connect to science at a time when they ask, "What do I want to do when I grow up?"
In March, CreositySpace created an
open access portal
and a
weekly innovation challenge
to support the needs of teachers, students, and parents affected by school closures. These free resources will remain available through the end of 2020.
Launching this summer is our Remote Learning Tip Series (a preview is
here)
. Based on the feedback from educators and parents, this series will provide advice and materials that help address engagement and equity issues associated with remote learning. As well we'll provide some fun options for parents who might be concerned that their child(ren) suffered a bit of a learning slide during the school closures.
Thanks again for joining us on this journey. As always we would appreciate it if you help us spread the word by following us and sharing our social media posts on
Facebook
and
Twitter
(@CreositySpace)
.
Kind regards,
Peg Zokowski, CEO
|
|
Decoding the NGSS - Wrap Up
|
|
The adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards, and similar science standards based on the NRC Framework for K-12 Science Education (e.g., NYSSLS in New York), resulted in many changes to K-5 science curriculum requirements and assessments
.
"What does it all mean?" "How am I supposed to fit everything in?" "Realistically, how am I supposed to incorporate these new learning objectives into my daily lessons?"
These are just a few of the reactions we hear from K-5 teachers across the country.
This spring we presented a weekly tip series,
Decoding the NGSS
to help interpret the spirit of NGSS and provide simple ways to incorporate 3-dimensional learning and the nature of science into your busy K-5 classroom. We concluded this tip series last week, with our 15th Tip on
Storylines, Phenomena, Essential Questions & Enduring Understandings.
We hope the Decoding NGSS series provided helpful suggestions in using NGSS and creating a more engaging and integrated K-5 classroom around science. We’ll be back with other ideas and tips in July and August.
|
|
Storylines, Phenomena, Essential Questions & Enduring Understandings
Achieving the overarching goals of the NGSS can feel daunting to educators. While the first place to look for help is the collective NGSS themselves, in the NRC’s own words,
the NGSS are standards, not curriculum. [They] reflect what a student should know and be able to do—they do not dictate the manner or methods by which the standards are taught.
To support teachers as they implement the NGSS a variety of best practices emerged. At first glance these elements might seem self-explanatory, but as one digs into and starts to work with them, the nuances of their specific roles, and how the different concepts work together, can get a bit muddled up. Let’s to simplify the process using two analogies—building a house and Venn diagrams—in Tip #15.
|
|
Connecting the Dots with the DCIs
CreositySpace was founded 9 years ago on the idea that kids' natural creativity and curiosity, fueled by what they were learning inside and outside of school, could be used to connect more young students to science through entrepreneurship and give them real, relatable role models using science.
Their ideas, like entrepreneurs, are generated so often by the overlap between the science and non-science disciplines, and the world they live in. For too long, the individual science disciplines—physical, Earth & space, and engineering—were relegated to their own silos making it difficult to connect them to authentic examples or phenomena. Even with the advent of NGSS, however, the inter-disciplinary component of NGSS still seems daunting to some educators.
This is exactly where the DCIs can become a great asset.
Learn how in Tip #14.
|
|
You Can’t Be What You Can’t See:
Looking at STEM Through the
Lens of Student Interest
“You can't be what you can't see” is a common mantra in the promotion of diversity and inclusion—especially in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). Typical lenses by which we view diversity include race, gender, socio-economic background, physical or cognitive ability, etc.
Less typical, but equally important, is the lens of student interest.
Student interest encompasses more than just interest in
doing
science. Leveraging a student’s individual academic interests, could go a long way in creating a vibrant innovation economy and science-literate workforce down the road. Check out Tip #13 to learn more.
|
|
Sizing Up Scale and Proportion:
Understanding the Very Big
and the Very Small
Trillion-dollar budgets, microscopic viruses, geological timeframes. Understanding the very big and the very small can be challenging even for adults.
So how do you make the too big, or too small, visible—and understandable
—
to students who might have trouble understanding the difference between driving to the next state versus driving across the country?
Find out the key in Tip #12.
|
|
Innovation-driven Phenomena for
K-5 Classrooms
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
