The InterActions curriculum is different in several core ways from the traditional approaches to teaching science. As just one example, the InterActions pedagogy is highly dependent on social interactions. For InterActions to be successful in this respect, teachers must create a classroom environment where a cooperative learning culture is supported.
To prepare teachers to implement InterActions as intended, from the viewpoint of social interactions and the other substantial differences from traditional curricula, we have carefully developed a professional development package that spans across two years.
For teachers who are about to teach the curriculum for the first time, we developed five face-to-face workshops to be delivered at different points of the year.
The Getting Started Workshop – done before teachers start implementing InterActions for the first time - has two objectives: to familiarize the teachers with the InterActions curriculum (and more specifically with the first unit) and to prepare them to implement it. For this purpose, we have designed additional activities that help teachers to understand the student learning principles that underpin the curriculum and provide them with a variety of techniques and strategies for implementing the different parts of InterActions activities.
The four additional workshops, each aimed at a specific unit or units, help teachers prepare for teaching the remainder of the curriculum. Sometimes, however, teachers are unable to attend the workshops. In order to help such teachers we have put together an online version of these materials available on the Teacher Resource Site.
After their first year of teaching InterActions, teachers are already familiar with the curriculum, but may like to improve the quality of their implementation. With this goal in mind, we designed some additional tutorials that will help teachers better support their students’ learning, helping them get the most from the opportunities provided by the curriculum.