UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON BIOLOGY DEPARTMENT & HOWARD HUGHES MEDICAL INSTITUTE
SUMMER INSTITUTE IN LIFE SCIENCES for K-8 teachers
JUNE 28 – JULY 20, 2007
The Summer Institute in Life Science (SILS) is a 3-4 week hands-on program for teaching K-8 teachers how to bring investigative science into their classrooms. Teachers from schools serving predominantly low income, and disadvantaged student populations are given preference. All instructional costs are covered by the program. Teachers will receive 7 credits BIOL 491.
SILS participants are introduced to open-ended inquiries, learn to ask testable questions, design experiments, explore content-rich topics (such as environmental connections, biodiversity, human body systems etc.), prepare a research poster as a teaching tool, and develop an inquiry curriculum unit to teach during the following school year.
The SILS program provides a site visit to each school during the school year and a one-day follow-up workshop during Winter Quarter. It also supports an e-mail chat group for alumni to troubleshoot teaching queries.
Apply on-line at:
http://protist.biology.washington.edu/teachers/Sils/SILSapp.tpl
or contact:
Helen Buttemer, Program Director, helenb@u.washington.edu
Applications due March 27, 2007
Here are the upcoming Initial Use workshops - see the complete flyer (Word format) for times, locations, and registration details.
Module: STC/MS Organisms Micro to Macro
Date: October 26 and 27, 2005
Module: FOSS/MS Diversity of Life
Date: October 31 and November 1, 2005
Module: STC/MS Catastrophic Events
Date: November 2 and 3, 2005
Module: SEPUP/MS Science and Life Issues
Date: November TBD, 2005
Module: STC/MS Earth in Space
Date: November 9 and 10, 2005
Module: Level 2 - Enduring Understanding:
6th– Earth History
7th– Catastrophic Events
8th– Properties of Matter
Date: November 9, 2005
Module: STC/MS Properties of Matter
Date: January 12 and 13, 2006
Module: STC/MS Energy, Machines and Motion
Date: January 12 and 13, 2006
Module: STC/MS Catastrophic Events
Date: January 19 and 20, 2006
Module: BSCS/HS A Human Approach
Date: January 4, 2005
Flyer with full details: fall-2005-workshops.doc
Contact Kathryn Kelsey if you are interested.
Our school motto at Aki Kurose is “Reaching Excellence Together.” A major factor in our success as a school is how much we believe and buy into this vision. All students can learn and achieve at high levels - but not if we do everything as we always have. We need to take a hard look at our data - often - and do the work of figuring out what will help our students who are currently failing.
Working in our classrooms, we often feel that every contribution to our students’ success must come from us. To an extent, this is true - we are responsible for what they achieve during their time with us. But we are not left to figure out everything on our own. As I gain experience, I am finding more things that work. Sometimes I invent these strategies, but usually I am stumbling upon an idea I found elsewhere and had neglected to implement previously.
Finding ways forward for our students will require research. We are all experimenters in our classrooms, but we need to go a step farther and become researchers. The difference is that researchers begin with what others have found through their own research and experience, and conduct experiments to extend what they have learned. In other words, the good ideas are out there, and we don’t need to reinvent the wheel.
But how often do we use research in our teaching? Usually only when someone we trust convinces us to try a specific approach, or when our school, district, or state adopts something system-wide. The result of this reality is that we keep doing what we’ve always done until we’re forced to make a change.
But there is another way. If we make the choice as faculty members to become a community of researchers, we can learn from the research that has already been done, learn from our own experience, and share with and learn from each other.
Life is too short, and we are all too busy, to figure everything out for ourselves. There are strategies that lead to tremendous success with students similar to ours, and we don’t know, much less use, all of them. The best way to find them is for all of us to be professional learners, try what we learn about, and share our experiences with each other.
One book to begin with, if you’re interested, is Classroom Instruction that Works, by Robert J. Marzano et al. This book was handed out to all NUA participants (at least in my cohort), so there are several copies among us. Marzano reviews nine instructional strategies that have been proven effective, with percentile gains from 20 to 45 percent. These are huge effect sizes - differences so big we’d be crazy to ignore these strategies in our teaching. But it begins with knowing what the strategies are, what the research base is, and how others have used the strategies in their classrooms. Imagine if all of us implemented all nine strategies - what performance gains would our students realize?
Now for the practical part. If we want to reach excellence together, we need to research excellence together. When you find something good, email it to all staff. If you implement an idea that goes well, turn one of our staff meetings into a mini-workshop and train your colleagues in it. See yourself and your co-workers as learners and professional development leaders, not just teachers. And we will move closer to the reality of our motto: “Reaching Excellence Together.”
The 2004 NSTA Northwestern Area Convention will be held in Seattle November 18-20, 2004. It should be a great opportunity to learn and collaborate.