Overview

In our information-rich world, it is not only students who must wade through and filter massive amounts of content but teachers, too. A Google search with the keywords “circulatory system lesson plan” will yield more than 150,000 hits. Teachers have more information and great ideas at their fingertips than ever before, but there are a lot of poor materials out there as well. As a teacher, how can you process all of this information and create lessons that are both engaging and challenging for students?

This course—centered around the topic of the circulatory system—features some quality teaching materials developed by a group at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. Participants of this course will be introduced to a variety of strategies to incorporate these materials and other resources into lessons that are interesting, push students to higher-level thinking and promote the tenets of good science instruction. They will apply strategies for analyzing student misconceptions, and tapping prior knowledge using analogies. They will examine designed-based instruction, project-based learning, and inquiry-based learning, with the focus of taking a student-centered approach to their lesson development.

Participants should leave the course with an original project-based unit well under way. Course materials will be permanently available for participant use in their own classrooms. Middle school science and high school biology, as well as PE and health teachers, will really enjoy this course; however, any science teacher from upper elementary to high school can apply the strategies to their instruction by substituting a science topic of their choice for the circulatory system as they progress through the course.

Goals and Products

This course will enable participants to

• Identify student misconceptions for a science topic and discuss how these might be assessed.
• Explore uses of analogies in science instruction.
• Create a design task for classroom use.
• Design components of an effective project-based science lesson including the scenario, curriculum-framing questions, assessment map, and plan for student-centered instruction.
• Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of student-centered learning and lecture for learning science content.

As a final project participants will develop a project-based unit plan of science instruction.

Format and Requirements

This course is divided into an orientation and eight one-week sessions that include readings, an activity, and an online discussion among course participants. Each session is designed to take approximately two to four hours to complete. The outline for the course is as follows:

• Session One: Life is Full of Misconceptions
• Session Two: Analogies: Building Mental Bridges
• Session Three: Design-based Science
• Session Four: Where's the Inquiry?
• Session Five: Project-based Learning
• Session Six: Student-centered Learning: How to be the "Guide on the Side"
• Session Seven: Assessing Project-based Learning
• Session Eight: Concept to Practice

Prerequisites

This is an introductory course for middle school and high school science, physical education and health teachers. Participants are expected to have regular access to computers. In addition, participants should be proficient with using email, browsing the Internet, and navigating to computer files.