Dream It Project - First Round Implementation
Angelica Tobias
MSU Urban STEM Fellowship
December 2014
Dream It Project - Overview
My Dream It Project had originally started with showing teachers how engineering is cross curricular so that they can incorporate engineering across all contents. I have been stubborn or blind, and was forcing my Dream It project to happen. However, I have had to step back and be realistic in where we are as a school right now and be accepting that this year is not the year to be incorporating engineering across all contents. As a school, we have changed our curriculum for literacy and math and our teachers are knee deep in the trenches learning about this new curriculum. They have been going to professional development for both literacy and math. They have had to spend many hours on their own time learning, reading, and lesson planning for both literacy and math. They have had observations, feedback conferences, and coaching for both literacy and math. In short, there are only so many hours in a day; we only get 24 hours. Trying to force engineering across all content by having them write lesson plans to incorporate engineering did not work. If I want this teaching to “stick”, my Dream It project has to have a series of steps and I have to change my vision. Therefore, I decided to adapt my Dream It project for this year. My Dream It Project is in phases: Phase 1: Build the science capacity of our teachers, Phase 2: Build the engineering capacity of our teachers, Phase 3: Incorporate STEM, specifically Engineering across all disciplines. Phase 4: Become a leading STEM PreK through 8th grade elementary school.
My first phase is to build the science capacity of our teachers. Below is the first round implementation of this phase.
Dream It Project - First Round Implementation
Phase 1: Build the science capacity of our teachers. I started doing this by working with our science priority team to give professional development on the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), the Science and Engineering Practices, and the use of science notebooks. All K through eighth grade teachers attended the all day PD. My science priority team and I leveraged our partnership with the NGSS Loyola Collaborative, and asked our coach to come and assist with our PD. Our goal was to have teachers realize the importance of teaching science in the lower grades and how science learning is a layered process that starts at Pre-K/K and builds on each other across grades. Our disciplinary core idea was on force and motion. We broked down activities into grade bands: K-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12. After every activity, we looked at the NGSS science progression chart and discussed what each student had to know at that grade band. This method really worked in getting the teachers to see the connection and importance between grade band science instruction. It was a great vertical alignment “aha” moment for them!
We also presented the Science and Engineering Practices (SEP’s) and teachers discussed the SEP’s and what that looked like within each grade band. This was another “aha” moment for them to see the vertical alignment and progression of each practice.
Our final activity was the use of science notebooks. Our science priority team had our teachers read a professional article on “5 Great Reasons to Use Science Notebooks” and we had a discussion. Our goal is to have every class use science notebooks for their science learning journey.
Our district and the science curriculum we have sponsored science curriculum workshops and we also gave teachers information on PD dates of these workshops. This was a great way to build our teacher’s capacity in science.
We had our teachers fill out a post PD survey to garner feedback and what type of support they wanted. We had excellent feedback. I have been using this feedback to help me in my coaching direction.
I have been coaching our teachers in science to build the science capacity of our teachers. I realize just as I am on a learning journey as a coach, my teachers are also on a learning journey as a science teacher. We are all at different points in our science capacity timeline and that is ok. Isn’t that what differentiation is all about? One on one coaching is excellent for this type of differentiation! I have been working with three teachers at a time. We have a pre-conference to discuss goals. We then meet for either planning, discussion of questions, or teaching (observation, co-teaching, modeling). We then touch base again for reflection. Actually, that is the model coaching method - I have been working towards this. Sometimes we have the pre-conference by e-mail or a quick hallway chat. The other thing that I need to work on is the coaching log documentation. Documenting my coaching has been my weakness.
Since our school had always been focusing on literacy, we didn’t know the extent of science instruction in our school. I, along with our science priority team decided to do a science learning walk of our classrooms to gather baseline data. We first had a meeting to discuss what our focus was and what data we were going to look for. Since we had just presented a Science PD to our colleagues, we decided to focus on what was presented at our science PD. So our focus was on evidence of science instruction, Science & Engineering Practices, and science notebooks. Our learning walk was just this past week. We created a schedule, a learning walk observation form, and went into classrooms during their science instruction for 8 minutes per classroom and jotted down evidence and our wonderings. It was very informative! We then met as a team to look at our team’s notices and wonderings and to glean general trends and wonderings. Our next step is to take these general trends and wonderings and create a Learning Walk Summary Feedback letter for our teachers. We also will use this data for our next steps as a science priority team. This was an excellent experience for me as a STEM leader.
Dream It Project - Next Steps
My next steps for my Dream It Project is to continue with my coaching and support. After creating our Learning Walk Summary feedback letter, I will send it out to our teachers. Our science priority team will meet to decide the priorities for our team to build the science capacity of our teachers. Some possible goals will be science PD on science notebooks, building up our science resources (books, materials, programs, etc.), and building a model science classroom. The model science classroom would be comprised of a classroom of one of our Science Priority team member who is teaching quality science instruction infused with best practices. This classroom will be used for science observations for our teachers to see best practice science instruction. Since I have never done this, I would leverage our NGSS Loyola partnership for help on this.
I am truly excited on my revised Dream It project. Punya had said that he wanted our Dream It project to be authentic and applicable to ourselves instead of just a project to check off for our coursework. My revised Dream It project is truly authentic and applicable to myself as a STEM leader. I am working with my Science Priority Team to build the vision of our school as a quality STEM and Engineering children’s elementary school. This a multi-year project with many phases. The first phase that we are currently in, is to build the science capacity of our teachers. These are truly exciting times! As Walt Disney stated, “If you can dream it, you can do it.”