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Letting Students Guide Their Learning in Middle School Science—How and Why Should We Do It?
Monday, July 15, 2019 @ 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm EDT
Presented by Anthony Baker, Project Director, Next Generation Science, Digital Promise; Emi Iwatani, Learning Sciences Researcher, Digital Promise; and Katie Leist, Science Teacher, Middletown Middle School, OH
Hosted by Sierra Noakes, Senior Research Project Manager, Digital Promise
Sponsored by Digital Promise
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Reimagining science instruction to be driven by student questions and investigation is central to the vision of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). This idea is also at the heart of the deeper learning competencies developed by the Hewlett Foundation, which contend that students should “be active participants in their education…immersed in a challenging curriculum that requires them to seek out and acquire new knowledge, apply what they have learned, and build upon that to create new knowledge.”
Driven by this goal, 18 teachers from three districts in the League of Innovative Schools, along with curriculum writers and researchers from Digital Promise, formed a Challenge Collaborative—a cross-sector effort to co-design solutions for real challenges facing public education—to create NGSS-aligned materials and gain a better understanding of how deeper learning can occur in student-centered science classrooms.
In this edWebinar, hear the processes around the Challenge Collaborative that led to pedagogical shifts and impacted student outcomes, hear from teachers involved in the study, and learn more about how challenge-based learning can meet the goals of the NGSS while giving students agency to lead their learning. This recorded edWebinar will be of interest to K-12 teachers, school and district leaders, and researchers.
About the Presenters
Anthony Baker works on learning experience initiatives involving the Next Generation Science Standards at Digital Promise, always looking for opportunities to increase equity and student choice in science instruction. Prior to joining Digital Promise, he worked as a high school science teacher, curriculum consultant and science coordinator for the State of Illinois.
Emi Iwatani is a learning sciences researcher at Digital Promise. As an education researcher, she studies K-12 learning initiatives related to deeper learning, student-centered learning, science and computational thinking, and learning technologies, paying particular attention to cultural responsiveness. Her eclectic background includes teaching project-based science, educational programming for at-risk youth, and doctoral work in philosophy of science and educational research methodology.
Katie Leist is going into her 4th year teaching 8th grade Science. Immediately following undergrad at Ohio State University, Katie received her Master’s Degree in Middle Childhood Education from Ohio State University in 2016. The past 3 years, Katie has worked at Middletown Middle School in Middletown, OH. She enjoys the wide array of science material 8th grade Science covers in Ohio and her favorite topic to teach is heredity and genetics. Katie recently accepted a new position at another school in the Cincinnati area called Loveland Middle School and will begin this position in the 2019-2020 school year.
About the Host
At Digital Promise, Sierra Noakes leads collaborative, research-based projects driven by authentic needs. By co-designing systemic improvements to the edtech marketplace with key stakeholders, such as education leaders and educators, Sierra hopes to infuse research into edtech product design and help educators make edtech decisions based on classroom needs. Prior to joining Digital Promise, Sierra was an educator and the curriculum coordinator for the Brooklyn Autism Center and received her M.Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
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