my studies

my studies

September 6th, 2007 by ckennedy

I think I have wrapped my mind about what I wish to study. As you may, or may not know, middle school science adopted new textbooks in 2002. Paris chose the Prentice Hall Science Explorer series. Prior to that Paris was running with a program from the University of Alabama called Integrated Science. Currently we are told that the next book adoption will be around 2010.

Our regional service center is pushing their curriculum developer (C-Scope) on us. Curiously enough, we have been given choices previously about what vendor we would use for our curriculum requirements.

All of this being said, we have taught basically the same thing over the last ten years. We have followed pretty close to the national science standards that Bill Clinton had a hand in having written. Since then Texas followed suit with their TEKS.

Since the three are simply different packages/products to present the same information I thought I would compare the three to each other as I go through the year. I’ll try to give my professional opinion on the quality, effectiveness, and ease of teaching similar topics from the three different sources. Of course my ratings and thoughts of each of these will be very subjective. But, someone at some point has or is currently saying that their program is superior to others.

I feel that since I am certified by the state of Texas to teach this course and our fair district has deemed me highly qualified to teach the course, who better to evaluate them?

I feel confident that I will be able to compare IS (Integrated Science) to Science Explorer on most any TEK/topic that I choose. I do NOT have that same confidence with having access to C-Scope’s curriculum through the year based on their past performance. That being said, I reserve the right to drop Region 8’s product in my comparison throughout the year if their product is not kept up to date and made available to me.