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The Process of a School Aligning Their Curriculum with the Standards, or, Adapting Materials to Support the Standards
by Bill McDonald , presented at the conference: 'Using the NSES to Guide the Evaluation, Selection, and Adaptation of Instructional Materials' - November 1996
Bill McDonald discusses how the Montgomery County Public Schools align and adapt materials to support the Standards.
[In such a large school district], what we're working with in 1991 was basically a very large ship. We have 3,000 [elementary] teachers; some of whom were on board that ship and some of whom weren't.
The first thing we had to do was to get everybody on board. The second thing was to be sure that we could change the direction of that ship. That ship had been going in the same direction for a long time, and our teachers had become very good at figuring out how to teach kids what they should know in science, but not very good at what they should do in science. So we had to push [our training] in that direction.
We looked to a statement that came out of the Standards. That statement has been our guiding force both in our training and in our curriculum selection.
"Full inquiry involves asking a simple question, completing an Investigation, answering the question, and presenting the results to Others." (NSES, P. 123)We looked at this as our message [about] how we should teach [and] how inquiry-based instruction would become the model that we wanted to promote with our teachers. We're still working on that [training]. For any of you who haven't begun [the training] process yet, let me tell you that it is lengthy. It will take more time than you ever thought it would.
[We took this belief about inquiry] and then it translated [it into] to these process strands.
| MCPS Elementary Science Four Process Strands |
|
| Asking Questions | Gathering Data |
|
guess predict develop:
|
examine measure compare record develop a record plan an investigation use instruments control variable |
| Making Sense of Data | Communicating |
| explore patterns sort classify interpret models construct models identify cause and effect revise hypotheses organize data identify patterns |
discuss illustrate write chart/graph share inferences share conclusions use appropriate media evaluate investigations |
[For the last five years], we have drilled our teachers in these process strands. This is how it translated out to us as we looked at the content standards.
In order to put something in place, we had to begin the process of selecting units. We developed a curriculum framework that included these processes of science, but we [also] had to begin to search for [units and] materials that were going to support [the new expectations].
We [field tested] over 40 units [during] a two year period; really put them to the test. We took them into the classrooms and had large numbers of teachers [try] them out. We weeded [those 40] down to 19 units that we adopted [as a school district].
| Montgomery County Public Schools Elementary Science Core Units (1995-1996) |
|
| Pre-Kindergarten | Play It, Weigh It, Say It (MCPS) * The Underground Connection (MCPS) * |
| Kindergarten | Balls and Ramps (Insights) Myself and Others (Insights) * Living Things (Insights) |
| Grade 1 | Constructions (Creative Pub.) Rocks, Sand, and Soil (Creative Pub.) * Weather and Me (STC) |
| Grade 2 | Balancing and Weighing (STC) Liquids (GEMS) |
| Grade 3 | Crime Lab Chemistry (GEMS) Plant Growth and Development (STC) * Sounds (STC) |
| Grade 4 | Earth Materials (FOSS) * Ecosystems (STC) Electric Circuits (STC) |
| Grade 5 | Magnets and Motors (STC) Solar Energy (FOSS) * Structures (Insights) (Human Body Study Activities, MCPS) |
| * Model units provided to all schools early in project | |
If we were to go back and do it again today, we would select different units, [because many excellent ones have been published since we had to make our decision back in 1993]. But the whole purpose behind selecting these units was to make sure that they focused on the inquiry that was being promoted by the Standards. It was very important to us to push our large ship in that direction.
[The units we considered came from nationally developed projects, most sponsored by the National Science Foundation ]. We started by looking at projects that we knew [promoted] the kinds of things that the benchmarks and the standards were supporting. We [reviewed such programs as] Science and Technology for Children (National Science Resources Center), Full Option Science System (Lawrence Hall Of Science ). [We looked at these units, in terms of adopting them.] But adopting also means adapting. We had to do a lot of adaptation with some, and less with others.
The [field testing and curriculum revision] was coupled with a grant from the National Science Foundation we received in 1991, which was aimed at two purposes. One was teacher training. The second was to establish a science materials center so that we could say to teachers "We're not only [showing you how] to do this, we're going to provide you the resources that you need to do it." [Both were a critical pieces.]
We [reviewed] each of the units individually. They weren't perfect the first time we looked at them. We knew we had to make some changes. I can remember an evening that we were looking at the FOSS unit Earth Materials at fourth grade. The teachers had said "Yes, this is a wonderful unit. But we need to make some adjustments under the "asking questions" process strand. Students being responsible for developing testable questions and testable statements was important to us. We found that as good as the Earth Materials was, it [needed more added in that direction]. So we developed what we referred to later on as the "pink pages". Those pink pages are inserted into each copy of Earth Materials [before] we hand them out to the teachers. They basically say, "[in this lesson], if you'll take Step II and do it this way instead of [how it was written], you will be teaching a more inquiry-based lesson."
That gave us a really nice range [of teaching ability]. We have some teachers for whom just teaching hands-on science was brand new. [For them, the original directions in the guide worked very well]. [There were] other teachers who had been teaching hands-on science [for a long time] and needed to be able to move towards [better inquiry-based] instruction and see the difference [between that and traditional science teaching]. Our training supported [both levels of teachers].
We also looked at what we could do in combining units. There is no unit from GEMS (Great Explorations In Math And Science, Lawrence Hall Of Science) called "liquids". What we did was to take two GEMS units, Liquid Explorations and Involving Dissolving, combined those two, and made a unit that our second grade teachers absolutely love.
You're going to notice that we've taken the "less as more" very seriously. [Our training plan is designed] to train our teachers to go beyond what's in the unit. My favorite statement to them is "When you get to the last activity in a unit you're not done. That's the point where the children's ideas should take over." If you're really promoting inquiry, you're going to be having them generate questions. [And you can use the same science materials from the unit to help them go beyond the unit activities.]
[Originally, in 1993], for the convenience of four marking periods we decided to have four units, a unit per marking period. That meant that at the end of eight or nine weeks we picked up the materials from them and handed them the next set of materials. The first year we did that the teachers said "You trained us to go beyond these units, and now you're taking the materials away from us before we can [go that far]. We don't want that." Our first group of teachers, said "We really need to go to three units. If you want us to do what you ask us to do, we have to go to three." So we did.
What we decided early on was that we could not develop our own curriculum. As you can see, we have adopted curriculum. We chose to do that at the elementary level. [We will continue to adopt nationally developed units as we revise our middle school science curriculum as well. We were recently awarded a second NSF grant to field test middle school science units and train middle school science teachers. National curriculum projects can do the kinds of things that we aren't able to do. We used ideas from the national standards to guide our Curriculum development and selection of our system's science units.]