Welcome back! We hope your school year has been off to a great start. The GEMS-Net team has been busy this fall running Earth science workshops and getting into classrooms to support teachers through coaching. We always appreciate the opportunities to collaborate with teachers in our partner districts. The science teaching and learning that happens in your classrooms is inspiring, and we’re looking forward to working with you this school year! Be sure to check out the photos below for a sneak peek at what we’ve been up to.

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

In partnership!

The GEMS-Net Team

Congratulations Adrienne Buckley - RIEEA's 2023 Teacher of the Year!

On October 5th, Adrienne Buckley was recognized as the Rhode Island Environmental Education Association’s 2023 Teacher of the Year during their annual Environmental Education Awards Ceremony. Her engaging, innovative, and effective teaching methods, which help her students learn about the environment and engage in outdoor activities, were highlighted during the event.

Adrienne is a special education teacher at the Chariho Alternate Learning Academy who teaches a multi-grade classroom. Science has always been a priority in Adrienne’s classroom, and she is a creative teacher who seeks to enable all of her students to explore and make sense of the world through firsthand experience.

Last school year, Adrienne established a partnership with Caleb Grant and Melissa Guillet of Maisy’s Tree Farm. Adrienne and her students visited Maisy’s Tree Farm one day each month for the entire 2022-2023 school year. At the farm, Adrienne, Caleb and Melissa engaged the students in immersive, place-based learning that not only incorporated science but all aspects of the elementary curriculum. Check out the photos below to see some of the experiences Adrienne and her students had while at Maisy’s Tree Farm.

Congratulations to Adrienne and thank you for all you do to support your students and environmental education! We can’t wait to hear all about the new partnership you’ve started with the Audubon Society!

Teacher-in-Residence Updates

Join us in welcoming Jack Koziatek to the GEMS-Net team! Jack is a first-year Teacher in Residence at GEMS-Net with nine years of science teaching experience. He is working with the Navy STEM Coalition. Jack will be working with the GEMS-Net team and engineering researchers at URI and UCONN to develop materials and professional learning for PreK - 12th grade teachers that will connect the learning happening in our science classrooms to the engineering research happening in our own backyard. Jack has taught high school and middle school math and science, most recently at Groton Middle School in Groton, Ct. Jack has a Masters of Science in Primary Education and Secondary Science Education, and a Masters of Science in Educational Leadership. Jack incorporates hands-on lessons that are inquiry-based and student-led to help students build on prior knowledge and to promote engagement in the classroom. This December, Jack will be voyaging to Antarctica with the goal of getting firsthand knowledge about the effects of climate change. We look forward to learning from Jack's varied experiences, and are excited about this new cross-state collaboration between RI and CT school districts and universities.

Navigate, Investigate, Sense-Make (NIS) Implementation Guides

Last school year, the GEMS-Net team introduced a Navigate, Investigate, Sense-Make (NIS) Instructional Framework to help teachers streamline instruction and prepare for the pedagogical shifts that will be coming with the adoption of a new science curriculum. The graphic below showcases the goals for each phase of this instructional routine. We’ve also included some questions that teachers may pose during the different stages as we move our instruction toward engaging students in the process of “doing science”, and not just “doing school”.

This summer the GEMS-Net team revised the grades K-5 Implementation Guides to reflect the NIS Framework. These resources emphasize the most critical components of each lesson by identifying the science work students need to do (Investigate) and explaining what students need to figure out by the end of a lesson (Sense-Make). We’ve also provided support with how to Navigate from one lesson to the next. Making these connections between lessons as explicit as possible provides students with a purpose to keep investigating their ideas and questions. The hope is that the Implementation Guides will function as a roadmap which showcases how the learning flows from one investigation to the next while also helping teachers make instructional decisions about how to best focus instructional time. We will continue to support teachers with using the NIS instructional routine during initial workshops, advanced sessions, and coaching. If you haven’t yet had the chance to explore these new resources, you can access them through the GEMS-Net grade-specific Google Classroom or by clicking the links below. We are currently working on developing similar resources for our middle school courses, and will share them through Google Classroom once they are completed.

• Kindergarten

• Grade 1

• Grade 2

• Grade 3

• Grade 4

• Grade 5

Teacher Tips and Tricks

Have you ever used the listen for strategy? During a sense-making discussion, there are key words and phrases teachers can listen for. When students offer ideas related to important scientific concepts, highlight these responses as opportunities to help the class figure out new information. By elevating these ideas, teachers can use student thinking and questioning to guide instruction toward future investigations.

As students begin to grapple with complex concepts, they might not yet have the scientific language to describe what is happening. Instead, students will rely on their own experiences, language, or even physical hand gestures and movements to explain an unknown concept. Using the listen for strategy also allows us to identify when students have a need for new scientific language. At this point, we can introduce the scientific vocabulary and academic language that will help students further explain the conceptual knowledge they are developing.

GEMS-Net and Navy / STEM Coalition Summer Institute

During the summer, URI’s GEMS-Net project hosted an institute for PreK-12 teachers along with the Navy STEM Coalition, a joint program between URI and UCONN that supports university students to explore a variety of careers related to Naval science and technology. URI and UCONN lead some of the nation’s cutting edge engineering research in submarine technology, acoustics, advanced manufacturing and materials science, propulsion technologies, cybersecurity, underwater energy systems, and more.

On the first two days of the Summer Institute, teachers attended breakout sessions and visited labs at URI to learn about the exciting engineering projects that are part of the Navy STEM Coalition. Teachers then had the opportunity to meet with colleagues from similar grade levels to consider connections between the research projects and the STEM teaching and learning that goes on in their classrooms.

The third day was a work session designed for teachers and researchers to more closely examine potential connections between some of the engineering projects learned about over the previous two days and specific NGSS expectations. Teachers, researchers, and engineering graduate students worked together to brainstorm and define the scope of work needed to develop relevant curricular connections.

This year GEMS-Net TIR’s Chris Cochran and Jack Koziatek are working to take the ideas from the brainstorming sessions and turn them into artifacts that teachers can use in their classrooms. For example, a teacher might play a video that introduces their class to a URI engineer who is working on systems similar to those students’ are working on in class . Or students could engage in a case study activity where they use actual data collected by URI researchers. The goal is that these artifacts integrate directly into teachers’ science instruction and are not add-ons to an already full curriculum. We are looking forward to showcasing these resources during our advanced workshops for grades 3-8 later this school year!

How can we promote a broader view of “engineering” for all students in our science classrooms?

Traditionally in K-12 education, we define engineering using a very narrow lens. Students might complete a STEM project following the steps of a Design Thinking Process or read about an engineer who works in the field of science they are studying. However, one of the key takeaways from our three days at the GEMS-Net / Navy STEM Coalition Summer Institute was that engineering includes extremely diverse approaches to problem solving. Introducing a broader view of engineering in our instruction provides students with real-world examples of engineering that are actually happening in their community and the world. These experiences also showcase potential STEM college and career pathways for all students in our classrooms.

STEM Teaching Tools: Learning STEM Through Design: Students Benefit from Expanding What Counts as "Engineering"

Check out the STEM Teaching Tool, Practice Brief # 7, to learn about the importance of promoting a broader view of engineering in our science classroom!

Nine GEMS-Net Districts Awarded Funds from the Learning Inside Out Initiative!

Congratulations to the nine GEMS-Net school district grant awardees who received funds from the RI Department of Education’s Learning Inside Out initiative. The effort and commitment from our administrators, teachers, family members, and community partners is commendable. Building outdoor classroom space and developing conservation efforts within our schoolyards will benefit our students, their families, and the surrounding communities. Developing relationships with the natural environment in our own communities is essential in developing stewards for our planet. We look forward to supporting our districts and schools in this initiative through targeted professional learning opportunities that allow teachers to connect their existing curricula to the outdoor learning areas.

Media Literacy in the Early Years

We continue to dive into the intentional and appropriate integration of digital technologies described in the NAEYC (National Association for the Education of Young Children) and Fred Rogers Center Joint Position Statement on Technology and Interactive Media in the early childhood classroom and beyond. Thank you to all of the GEMS-Net early childhood educators who took part in the dissertation research project Early Childhood Educators’ Values, Behaviors, and Perceived Barriers of STEM Education. Findings from the data are informing our upcoming preschool professional development. We will be thinking about the question set forth by the founder of National Association of Media Literacy Education (NAMLE) and author of Media Literacy for Young Children: Teaching Beyond the Screen Time Debates, Faith Rogow. Faith Rogow asks, “How have digital communication technologies changed what it means to be literate, and what do the changes in literacy mean for our practices as educators?” (Rogow, 2022, p.36). Early childhood educators will learn about the 10 core competencies of media literacy and how we as educators of our youngest learners can build teaching practices that intentionally incorporate technology that gives our children voice and agency in their world.

Engineering Educators and GEMS-Net Community Partnerships

Research from the 2023 Summer Institute data is underway. The research is exploring the mutually beneficial partnership between the GEMS-Net community and the Engineering Educator research team. The two communities, practitioners and researchers, jointly identified the challenges of incorporating quality engineering learning experiences that not only develop process skills but introduce a broad understanding of engineering as a career opportunity for students. Together, the Summer Institute was designed and implemented. Feedback and ideation of practical classroom instructional practices from the teacher participants is informing the continued work by developing relevant and accessible resources for our educators. We are excited by the outcomes of the work this partnership has provided and look forward to continuing our exploration of what works and for whom.

Strategic Planning Updates

The results are in! Last year, GEMS-Net put together a Strategic Planning Team made up of teachers, administrators, central office personnel, environmental educators, URI researchers, and family members from our partner districts. One goal of this group was to develop a survey that provided all GEMS-Net community members with the opportunity to share their priorities and values of science education as our partnership looks to continuously improve and prepare for the upcoming curriculum adoption cycle. Thanks to everyone who participated and contributed their ideas!

The survey results have helped us refine the priority areas for our program. While we will continue to analyze the survey results to further identify trends between grade bands and community groups, the GEMS-Net team is excited to continue to develop programs and resources that support science teaching and learning focused on the priority areas outlined in the graphic below.

The Strategic Planning Team was also charged with creating a GEMS-Net mission statement that represented our partnership's goals, vision, values, and beliefs. We wanted to share this work with all of you as we work together to support science education within our community.

Vision

Our vision is to provide a comprehensive system of support for science education that prepares RI students to enact positive environmental and social change that will create more just and sustainable local and global communities in which we all thrive.

Mission

The mission of the GEMS-Net Partnership is to research and support high-quality science teaching and learning that leverages the assets and strengths of all students.

Values and Beliefs

• Embrace Collaboration

• We cultivate meaningful relationships because partnerships are based on mutual respect and trust.

• We involve families, educators at all levels, non-formal educators, and STEM researchers in our work because a comprehensive system of support takes a variety of expertise.

• Ensure Excellence

• We engage in research about our work because continuous improvement and sharing what we learn with others is important.

• We commit to high-quality and ongoing professional learning for all teachers because effective STEM teaching is hard, and all professionals deserve support to improve their practice.

• Expect Equity

• We ensure all teachers receive support in using equitable teaching practices because we need every student’s knowledge and ideas to move our thinking forward.

• We connect our programming to local spaces and communities because all students deserve to learn things that are relevant to their lives.

• We provide opportunities to explore a wide variety of STEM college and career pathways because all students deserve the chance to contribute to their communities in meaningful ways.

• We prioritize the contributions of every student because all students have unique strengths that can make our communities more sustainable and just.

We look forward to another great school year as we continue to grow as a community of science educators!