Rhode Island Museum of Science and Art
Professional Development Offerings
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Deciphering the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
- This 3 hour course:
- Gives brief overview of history and purpose of the NGSS, including terminology, principles, and encompassing ideas.
- Serves to bring educators who are not fully comfortable in their understanding of NGSS up to a level where they can begin to align their lessons and make knowledgeable judgements about what comprises “NGSS aligned products and resources”.
- Emphasis will be placed on identifying what 3D learning is and how you can recognize it in products and incorporate it in lessons
Aligning the NGSS
- This 3 hour course will be led by a former research scientist turned educator
- Is intended for educators who are fairly, if not completely, comfortable with NGSS
- Is in the form of a workshop where educators work with facilitators within small grade-span groups to align one or two of their current lessons to NGSS standards.
- Emphasis will be placed on identifying relevance and authenticity (why should student care about activity? How does it connect to their background? Does lab/activity look like what scientists do? (an exploration of something unknown?)) as well as designing student centered solutions/explorations
- The purpose of this 2 hour course is to clearly define STEM and STEAM, and elucidate how they can be used in the classroom.
- These acronyms means different things to different people. According to the U.S. Department of education, STEM is truly just an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. It doesn’t imply any particular connection between these 4 disciplines. And its importance is for problem solving and continued US dominance in the careers of the future.
- In many other areas, including the Rhode Island department of education, STEM is NO LONGER just an acronym. It implies 1. A reduction or elimination of silos between disciplines and 2. A focus on inquiry and critical thinking OVER an accumulation of information.
- In RI in particular, the emphasis on Art/Design thinking has transformed STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) to STEAM ((Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math)
- Participants will take part in hands-on STEM and STEAM activities to further illustrate the differences between STEM and STEAM, as well as how they can be incorporated into the classroom
STEAMY Lesson Plans
- This 3 hour course
- Is in the form of a workshop where educators work with facilitators within small grade-span groups to align one or two of their current lessons to incorporate aspects of STEAM
- This course is designed to run from 1 to 4 hours.
- Experienced art/science facilitators will help businesses and corporations to increase their team cohesiveness, creative thinking and problem solving expertise
- Participants will take part in hands-on activities designed to heighten soft skills such as effective communication, creative problem solving and diversity of thinking.