We hope you’ve been having fun diving into the physical science courses. Over the last few months the GEMS-Net team has been busy visiting many of your schools during coaching sessions, and working with educators during our initial and advanced workshops. We always appreciate your willingness to engage in professional learning and find ways to grow as science educators. We look forward to continuing to support the amazing science teaching and learning that is going on within the GEMS-Net partnership!

As always, if you have any questions, concerns, or need support, please reach out to us by emailing gemsnet@etal.uri.edu.

This edition of the GEMS-Net newsletter is dedicated to the memory and legacy of Carin Corcoran. Carin was a first grade teacher in Exeter-West Greenwich and longtime GEMS-Net Teacher Leader. Carin was a tireless advocate for her students and for science education. She was always willing to share her experiences and insights with other teachers at the many workshops she facilitated with GEMS-Net. Sound and Light was her favorite! Her big smile and gracious demeanor put new and trepid teachers at ease and inspired confidence that they too could do a great job teaching science. After our most recent summer institute, Carin was so excited to go back to her classroom and have her students begin engineering systems to make their classroom routines, like the bottleneck at the lunchbox cubbies, run more efficiently -- as all good industrial systems engineers would! Carin wanted to engage her students in finding solutions to the problem, not provide the solutions for them. We are grateful for Carin’s dedication to and enthusiasm for teaching science and for her commitment to her students and the GEMS-Net community. Carin touched so many lives, including ours, and we will carry Carin’s legacy in science education forward with love and pride.

Our early childhood programming this year has focused on media literacy by addressing the intentional and appropriate integration of information and communication technologies into teaching and learning with our youngest students. Six GEMS-Net preschool and kindergarten Teacher Leaders have embarked on a book study of a new NAEYC publication, Media Literacy for Young Children; Teaching Beyond the Screen Time Debates, written by Faith Rogow (2022). Thoughtful discussions have identified the importance of teaching with digital tools to ensure all children have access to the skills they need to be literate in our digital world. The teachers have found that grappling with the balance of using digital and non-digital tools, sharing ideas, and creating meaningful lessons that give children voice and agency in their learning has been a worthwhile effort. We are excited to share our work and continue this conversation in the upcoming Early Childhood Workshop being held on May 17th. The workshop is open to GEMS-Net preschool and kindergarten teachers and support staff.

We had a busy workshop schedule in January when our Grades 3, 4, and 5 teachers joined us at the Fascitelli Center for Advanced Engineering on the Kingston Campus for advanced workshops. During these workshop sessions teachers worked on advancing their pedagogical practices and learned about engineering research happening here at URI.

Teachers began the day in the ‘schoolyard,’ making observations connected to the existing science curriculum and continued to “Navigate” through the lessons by collecting questions, planning investigations, and holding sense-making discussions in a science circle. The Navigate, Investigate, Sense-make framework was embraced by our teachers with excitement about incorporating the teacher moves and strategies into classroom instruction.

"A small shift in the way we teach will allow students to do more of the learning and doing. I'm excited to do this more... the little bit I have implemented so far this year has made a big difference.”

— 4th Grade Teacher

One of the objectives of the advanced sessions was to help our GEMS-Net teachers to share real-world research and career pathways with their students in order to develop a diverse engineering workforce in the future. Teachers had the opportunity to visit research labs that align to their science curriculum. URI engineers shared their work, answered questions, and heard from teachers regarding how their work was similar to what our students are learning about in the classroom.

“This workshop really helped me to see all the ways that our science connects to engineering. Very motivating in helping us to encourage engineering as a possible profession for students later in life. We can foster that interest and passion with kids as young as ours.”

— 3rd Grade Teacher

Teachers also had an opportunity to talk with URI graduate students about the experiences that led them to pursue their STEM academic careers.

“I liked hearing what inspired students to pursue engineering. It was also helpful to hear their ideas about what I can do at the 4th grade level to promote this field in my classroom.”

Applying engineering research to classroom instruction can be elusive for many teachers, the advanced workshops have helped our teachers broaden their own understanding of the depth and breadth of engineering, giving them the ability to identify engineering connections to what they are already teaching, and made engineering education more meaningful and accessible.

“I was so impressed and blown away at the level of work that is being done here! I was also surprised at how much of that work connects to what we are doing in 5th grade.”

-5th Grade Teacher

Click on the image below to explore resources that integrate into the grades 3-5 science curriculum and connect to current engineering research happening at URI.

This May our middle school science teachers will also be invited to URI’s Fascitelli Center for Advanced Engineering for a series of advanced sessions. Similar to the elementary workshops, middle school teachers will continue to explore how student ideas and questions can be used to guide science instruction. Also, teachers will have the chance to visit engineering labs at URI, collaborate with researchers, and use resources that showcase the connections between current engineering research and the science curriculum. The GEMS-Net team is in the process of developing these resources and will make them available to all our middle school teachers through the grade-specific GEMS-Net Google Classrooms when they are finished. We’re excited to dive deeper into these conversations and resources with our middle school teachers later this spring!

How can we leverage student interest, ideas, and questions to guide science instruction?

One of the major shifts called for in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) is that we move away from students learning about science to students figuring things out. This means that students need to be included in the decisions about what and how we are going to investigate the world. The progression of lessons needs to make sense from the students’ perspective so they have a purpose for continuing to investigate. The GEMS-Net team has been thinking through what this shift means for science instruction and has continued to integrate strategies and pedagogical approaches into our professional learning sessions that help educators to continue making this shift.

A common misconception is that more student-centered instruction will create a classroom environment that lacks cohesion, with learning becoming a free-for-all as students investigate their own questions, and teachers need to provide support for all these students on different learning paths. We found that this is not the case. Inviting students as partners in the decision making does not mean that we need to abandon the curriculum. Instead, as teachers we must use specific pedagogical moves that leverage authentic student ideas and questions that will guide the class in a productive direction.

If you’re looking for ways to make some small shifts in your science instruction that will promote this type of student-centered learning, check out the resources below.

STEM Teaching Tools - How can science instruction leverage and develop student interests? Short answer: In so many ways!

Teacher Tips and Tricks

Navigate between Lessons

Try using the navigate strategy to help students see how each new investigation builds off previous ones. After each lesson, get into the routine of having your class reflect on what they’ve just learned and discuss what they are still curious about. The following series of questions can help to facilitate this discussion:

• What did we figure out?

• Why does this information matter?

• What are we still wondering about?

• What are our next steps?

This navigation routine allows for the sharing of ideas and questions that are meaningful and relevant to the students. Now comes the challenging part. How do we leverage these authentic student curiosities to guide us to the next lesson in the curriculum?

Listen for those Golden Nuggets

This strategy is one of the most critical pedagogical moves teachers can adopt to shift their instruction toward fostering a classroom culture that honors student knowledge and decisions as necessary for learning. As the teacher, we know what lesson comes next in the curriculum. So our role during the navigate routine is to listen for and elevate the student ideas or questions that connect to what we’ll be investigating next. Now as students begin to make sense of the science concepts they’ve just investigated, their ideas and questions will most likely come out as exploratory language or even gestures. Most times students won’t directly come out and ask the focus question for the next investigation. That means we may need to listen for a golden nugget of an idea that we can leverage to get us to that next lesson.

Go for Quantity & Group Similar Ideas

During the navigate routine, encourage students to write down as many questions as they can on sticky notes. As students share out, look to group similar questions together on a Driving Question Board. Use these groupings to highlight more general ideas of what the class wants to investigate next. The combination of a few questions might be the thing we need to get us to that next lesson. Below is an example of a Driving Question Board that you might want to try out!

Look for ways that your students can make connections to the local environment. Check out the opportunities below offered by the Rhode Island Environmental Education Association (RIEEA).

Click the image above to learn more about the 2024 RIEEA Annual Summit including registration information.

We are thrilled about the progress of our collaboration with the College of Engineering at URI. Interviews with the principal investigator of the Navy STEM Coalition, Dr. Valerie Maier Speredelozzi, and our co-director of GEMS-Net, Dr. Caroline Stabile, highlighted the major benefits of working together to realize the shared goals of the project; increasing engineering education in PreK - 8th grade, broadening perceptions of engineers and engineering, and connecting real-world engineering research to students' lives. Take a look at what they had to say:

How has the collaboration been beneficial?

Dr. Valerie Maier Speredelozzi:

I think that this is helpful because GEMS-Net has an established structure with 13 districts. So a third of the districts in the state; that's substantial for us [Engineering Researchers] to be able to reach out to teachers and get the messaging through. We're here as a resource for teachers. We want to expose teachers and students to these [engineering] concepts and support [engineering education].

Dr. Caroline Stabile:

We've really established relationships with at least eight STEM researchers and engineers from this project and that has really made a nice two-way conversation. We're broadening our understanding of all of the different disciplines of engineering and what that means. And the engineers value the expertise that we bring from education [teaching practices, curricular connections] .

How has the work supported the goal of broadening perceptions of engineers and engineering?

Dr. Valerie Maier Speredelozzi:

I think one of the most important perception changes that we need is that there are a lot of different types of engineers and a lot of different engineering careers that look different. I think a lot of K 12 Teachers are familiar with basic disciplines of engineering; there are a few ‘go to’ disciplines that everyone's heard of [such as Chemical, Electrical and Mechanical Engineering]. We struggle in my field, Industrial and Systems Engineering, because oftentimes people have never heard of it, or they think that it's just working in factories. And then they think that that's not important to the American economy, which is actually completely wrong.

I also think that [students], and therefore their teachers, need to know that some engineers do math everyday, but most don't. You have to do the math. You have to get through the math.

But we have a lot of supports in place for students who are willing to persist. The biggest problem we have is that if a child in elementary school or middle school somehow gets the perception that they're not good at math, they just don't even think that STEM is in the future at all.

Dr. Caroline Stabile:

It's broadening our understanding of what counts as engineering and all the different varieties and disciplines. I'm continuing to learn from the engineers about what their work really entails. Engineers and researchers are working on problems that they don't understand. In school science, we're so conditioned and accustomed to finding the right answer, or the final answer. We are really trying to reframe the work students are engaging in, specifically, helping them identify what they do not understand. “What are the things about this system we don't yet get? Let's pursue that and try and figure that out.” All of the examples that we collect from the engineers about how they really work helps teachers…”It's okay that we are trying to do this in our classrooms because that's the real work of science.”

How does this work transfer to the real world for students?

Dr. Valerie Maier Speredelozzi:

It's a matter of thinking: “Hey, do I want that career? Do I want that title? Do I want that salary? Which is sizable. Do I want that opportunity to work in this field? I can do it then.”

Dr. Caroline Stabile:

At the Summer Institute there was a lot of buzz and excitement around Industrial Systems Engineering because nobody [participating teachers] really knew what that was. Gretchen Macht was a researcher doing voting systems research and [figuring out] all about efficiency [at polling venues] even down to how people line up. In one of the conversations at the Summer Institute we talked about, ‘How do you make the line out of the cafeteria more efficient so that kids get to recess faster?’ It was just so practical in the real world and not what you might think of initially.

What are the next steps for the project?

Dr. Valerie Maier Speredelozzi:

I mean, I think we need to do more with outreach visits and kind of the large scale events that we've done. And also visits to campus, it seems like the educators were really keen on being able to set up more of that.

Dr. Caroline Stabile:

We're working on video conversations between the [preK - 8] students and the engineers, an asynchronous conversation through the video. Also, transfer tasks where students get to work with some real data. I think that will be an exciting and productive first step. As we share these ideas with teachers, they're anticipating it, and they're excited for it, which will open up that pathway possibility. So I'm excited for that because it will be a tangible connection between the engineering project and education.