Annual Report Overviews

1. Two follow-up meetings. 1. December 2, 1999, 26 attended. 2. February 3, 2000, 25 attended. We scheduled 5 meetings during the 1999-2000 academic year. We were dissatisfied with the turnout of these meetings, and held only three. We changed the format to building based meetings. See item 6 below.

2. Three Science Content Courses: Cosmology (10th Grade), Forces and Motion (10th Grade) and Weather (9th Grade). These are 10 contact hour courses meeting in four after school sessions. They deal with subject matter knowledge. These were not part of the original planning for the NSF project, but they have proven necessary and have been supported by Eisenhower funds available to the Spokane School District.

3. Four Planning Meetings. 1. November, 23, 1999. An all day meeting with the Disciplinary Teams and EWU faculty to plan follow-up meetings and identify project progress and needs. 2. January 20, 2000. An after school meeting to discuss Science Content Short Courses. 3. An after school meeting with the Disciplinary Teams to discuss the building based meetings as a replacement for follow-up meetings. 4. May 25, 2000. An all day meeting with Disciplinary Teams and EWU faculty to plan for the summer 2000 workshops.

4. One District Advisory Committee Meeting. January 11, 2000. A three hour morning meeting with the advisory committee. We presented the project goals, discussed progress to date, and asked for feedback. We got a very positive response from the Advisory Committee.

5. Two Sharing Meetings. February 22, 2000, a four hour meeting for high school teachers to share the exemplary activities and demonstrations they have found useful in implementing the curriculum. May 15, 2000, a two hour meeting for middle school teachers to share exemplary activities and demonstrations.

6. A series of 11 full day (6 contact hour), building based meetings. Project Director Scott Stowell and selected EWU faculty and Disciplinary Team members met with teachers from each middle school and high school in the project. Teachers from a specific grade level were released from their classrooms for a day to participate in professional development activities, discuss the progress of the project in their building and to plan for the implementation of units to be taught in the future. As a result, virtually every teacher in the project attended.

7. A one week summer workshop for Disciplinary Team members with consultant Audrey Champagne to revise classroom based assessment instruments for the curricular units in grades 7-10. Eleven of the 13 teacher members and 5 EWU faculty participated. During this week the participants examined student responses to the classroom based assessment instruments collected during the previous year. This provided valuable information on the quality of student understanding and provided clear directions that were used to improve assessment tasks, scoring guides and program delivery.

8. A one week summer workshop for grade 7-12 teachers. Special emphasis was placed on "Teaching for Understanding." To that end, consultant James Minstrell made a one day presentation that opened the workshop. We also presented parallel sessions on science content in which university faculty and Disciplinary Team members led discussions of essential science concepts underlying the units of instruction. Teachers were able to select those sessions they considered most appropriate. Concurrent sessions were also presented to give teachers practice using the equipment and computer resources for the instructional units. Of particular interest was the equipment used in the physics curriculum. At the end of the week, teachers rated this workshop very highly.

9. A one day summer workshop for Building Teams to revise their building plans for the coming year. The school teams shared their experiences, and discussed the implementation of the curriculum for the year. Of particular interest was the district decision to set the order of instruction in grades 7-9. Schools had been given the option of setting their own order for the units, but this was causing difficulty for students who transferred from one school to another. So the district asked that the teachers agree on a set schedule that would be implemented by all the schools. This workshop was not part of the original proposal to NSF, but was clearly needed, so it was added to the schedule.

10. A two day meeting of the External Advisory Committee. The Project Directors invited selected businesses and agencies in Washington State to send representatives to attend this meeting. The representatives were primarily scientists and engineers with strong technological backgrounds, and they came from organizations such as Avista, Boeing, Battelle Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Hewlett-Packard, Agilent Technologies, the US Geological Survey, Northwest Mining Association, and Immunex Corporation. We spent half a day describing and discussing our project to prepare these individuals to go into the schools and observe the project in action. They spent half a day doing this, meeting with students and principals, and observing classrooms and teacher meetings. Then they returned to share their observations and make recommendations for the project. This was an extremely successful and useful process. The representatives were very supportive of the goals of the project, and were keen observers in the schools. They were quick to spot any differences between what was envisioned and what was actually happening. They encouraged the project to continue with its direction, but made useful recommendations as to how improvements could be made in the implementation. One important observation concerns a discontinuity in the transition from the elementary school program to the middle school. It is clear that we need to improve this transition, and that 6th and 7th grade teachers need to be much more aware of each others' programs. The External Advisory Committee meeting will be an annual event for the rest of the project.

1. It is fairly easy to get teachers to buy into the vision of "teaching for understanding" and the attainment of higher performance standards, but it is much more difficult for them to make that vision operational in their teaching practices.

2. It is a time consuming task to match available curricular materials to the State of Washington Essential Academic Learning Requirements (EALRs) in science so that the units are coherent and provide students the opportunity to learn what is in the content standards. Very little commercially available instructional material can be used without modification.

3. Teachers who begin to work cooperatively in their schools quickly discover the value and power in this approach.

4. Choosing to use a coordinated science approach in grades 7-10 introduces some significant challenges for the project. Most important is the need for teachers to learn new subject matter. However, the project directors believe that this choice increases the likelihood of meaningful improvements in students' understanding of science.

5. Teachers have a hard time writing assessment tasks that measure understanding. They tend to fall back on the traditional information retrieval questions unless they are given careful guidance and feedback.

a. Deepening teachers' content knowledge.This is addressed by several mechanisms. First, we discovered that our teachers are not as prepared academically for their jobs as we would like, especially since the grade 7-10 teachers are teaching in new subject matter areas. We have, therefore, offered a series of science content courses in the subject matter disciplines. Presented by EWU faculty specialists assisted by a Discipline Team teacher, these courses are of 10 hours duration, and emphasize the essential concepts to be taught. These courses were funded by Eisenhower funds. We are finding that the need for these courses is decreasing with time as the teacher become more comfortable with the subject matter. However, improving subject matter expertise will be a continuing part of the project.

b. Deepening teacher understanding of effective pedagogy and assessment that promotes student learning. Summer workshops operate as much as possible in the learning style that is the goal of the project. Teachers are introduced to the "pre quiz" for each unit, and shown how to use it to generate student conceptions of natural phenomena. Then teachers go through sample activities that are designed to move students toward more scientifically accurate conceptions. Having teachers take assessments, critique them and create them are effective activities. If we feel that teachers are uncomfortable about their state of knowledge when taking an assessment, we ask them to respond as they think their students might. That takes away the onus of a "wrong answer." The district science web page has hot links to Internet sites that provide information about unit concepts. In summer, 2000, teachers experienced the approach developed by James Minstrell for developing concepts in physics through what Jim calls "elicitation questions." This was a valuable experience for many of our teachers, and successfully focused their attention on important instructional issues.

c. Helping teachers become conversant with the instructional materials designated for classroom use. This is primarily done in the summer workshops. Our experience is that teachers place such a high priority on this issue that they will accomplish very little else until they feel comfortable with this one. Our revised units provide a great deal of help to teachers in how to use the materials effectively. The learning targets are made very clear, and common student misconceptions are described. In addition, post instruction sharing among teachers at project meetings is of enormous benefit. The building based meetings are providing ideal opportunities to focus on these issues.

d. Supporting teachers as they implement the materials in their classroom. The mechanism designed to address this issue is the Building Team, which provides direct support when possible, but also acts as a referral service for teachers to get linked up with those in the project that can help them. A second mechanism is the district's science web page, with links to EWU faculty and Discipline Team teachers and a bulletin board.

See the attached list of professional development hours completed by each teacher. Again, the building based meetings are proving very helpful.

Beginning September, 2000, we have begun to use a new mechanism for assisting teachers in their classrooms. James Slavicek retired from full time teaching, and is now under contract part time to provide professional support in the project. Jim was an exemplary physics teacher, and a member of the physics disciplinary team. He has worked closely with Jim Minstrell for years, and thoroughly understands his methods. Jim is available to go out to schools and help individual teachers and groups of teachers, especially with the physics curriculum, computer-based technology, and equipment issues. Jim is able to teach demonstration lessons, provide coaching, and assist teachers plan their own instruction.

Since the November 15, 1999, Annual Report, Projector Director Scott Stowell has made presentations about the project at the following meetings: 1. In January, 2000, at the Washington State Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction "Annual Reform Conference." 2. In March, 2000, for the Washington Education Research Association. 3. In April, 2000, in Orlando, Florida, for the National Research Council. 4. In October, 2000, at the Washington Science Teachers' Association annual conference in Vancouver, Washington.

Professional Development hours for each teacher through August 20, 2000.