collaborative days 1-3

science academies grades 5-8 July 19-21
materials; TEA
This is a part of the science collaborative training for school year 2010-2011. This training will consist of 120 hours over the school year for the STMs (science teacher mentors) and then 12 hours of training for cadre members (back at the district minimum of 3 different teachers) logging of these hours will be required. The fall dates will focus on Biology and spring dates will focus on Earth science. There are at least 40 collaborative groups through the state, our group has 50 members and is one of the largest groups in the state.

The first three days are in a script from TEA (complete with videos not ENTIRELY copied from the internet) ex; the world is changing here are a couple of pretty close ones from youtube.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YovkrHlpGyk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fnh9q_cQcUE&feature=related


I’ll post some documents from the training soon. Below is a brief overview!

The stated purposes of the science academies;
Improve overall science instruction and achievement.
Facilitate modes of learning that meet or exceed grade-level standards.
Provide connections to and strengthen the knowledge of the CCRS, ELPS, and RtI.

The new structure of the 5-8 TEKS;
five strands
scientific investigation and reasoning
earth and space
force, motion, and energy
matter and energy
organisms and environment

We looked a bit at some of the changes in TEKS. There is a bit of a move towards the “old style” 7th grade life science and 8th grade earth science, but not completely. Those of you that have been around long enough will see it. Still present is the spiraling curriculum. Consider the new a blend of the two if you will. TAKS will be replaced with STAAR in ‘11-’12 and with EOC (end of course) testing in high school.

If you aren’t already documenting use of 5e, you might want to get ready to start. You are probably already 5eing, but aren’t documenting anyway. 5 es; engage, explore, explain, elaborate, evaluate

You’ll also be hearing ELPS (english language proficiency standards) a lot. This involves evaluating a student’s english language abilities and how to help them be successful. RtI is another term you’ll be hearing. RtI involves helping each kid be successful no matter their ability from special ed. to gifted.

There was a bit of a spontaneous discussion about the joys of CSCOPE today. It was interesting to hear that there are many teachers from other districts received training similar to ours in CSCOPE and that there is lots of unhappiness about this with a fair amount of disconnect between labor and management. Cynthia Bayuk just happened to be in the room at this time. She assured us that all misconceptions about CSCOPE were being addressed with new training. One can only hope this new training is superior to previous training. Scott did a pretty decent job of keeping things from really going downhill fast, I think a perfect storm was brewing. On a personal CSCOPE note, I appreciate the vad and find the ifd to be quite useful. We were reassured that CSCOPE has already updated to the new TEKS for science. A quick perusal shows that to not be the case.

Scott Hanes will be presenting for the next two weeks then will be leaving the ESC to work at Liberty Eylau schools. Karen Phillips and Lacy ??? will carry on from there. I’ll be keeping tally of mention of all of the trendy educational buzz words.
I’ve already gleaned a few nuggets;
professional learning communities
armed for the year
we are a living working body
dual coded questions
content rigor
cognitive rigor
jigsawing
5 E model

bonus;
we discussed places that needed to be checked out when possible;
http://www.esthersfollies.com/ in Austin
http://www.pocketsandwich.com/ in Dallas
and a bonus site; google squared http://www.google.com/squared