We hope everyone’s new year has been off to a great start! The GEMS-Net team has been busy facilitating our physical science professional learning sessions over the last few months. Take a look at the photos below to see what some of your colleagues have been up to at the latest GEMS-Net workshops.

We’ve also really appreciated visiting some of your schools and working directly with science educators through coaching. If central office or building administrators are looking for additional support in science, please reach out to the GEMS-Net team, as we can still plan for some coaching sessions.

Looking forward to the second half of the 2022-2023 school year, we’re excited to see how your students investigate their world while engaging in the physical science courses. Please share these experiences with us on social media (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook). We can’t wait to see all the engaging work going on in your science classrooms.

As always, please reach out with any questions, concerns, or feedback (gemsnet@etal.uri.edu).

Pre-School

We are excited to offer our preschool workshop on March 14th. The workshop will advance our previous work in digital literacy and outdoor teaching and learning as an integrated approach to early childhood STEM instruction. Together we will explore the Elinor Wonders Why (EWW) teacher resources available from PBS Kids and ways in which the EWW curriculum can support and/or enhance STEM in the existing preschool curriculums. We will begin to crosswalk the resources from EWW with BPS Focus on K and Creative Curriculum, and any other appropriate curriculum based on participants’ needs. We will introduce the Preschool GEMS-Net Google Classroom resources as a space to easily access resources and to collaborate as a network of preschool educators. Teachers will spend time sharing creative ideas, material modifications, and other identified needs.

Interested educators should talk with their administrators to get district permission to participate, and then they or their administrators should send participant names, emails, and roles to gemsnet@etal.uri.edu in order to register for the workshop. Registered educators (teachers, teaching assistants, coordinators, etc.) will receive specific location information and workshop details via email ahead of the workshop.

Grades K-8

One of the major shifts in science education is that curricula need to place more emphasis on student coherence, or the idea that students’ questions and ideas about a phenomenon guide the purpose of their work throughout a course/unit. This shift allows students to become more active in the learning process and adds relevance to their investigations. One effective instructional approach that puts student coherence front and center is the Storyline Model. As GEMS-Net moves through the High Quality Curriculum Material adoption process, we’ll be evaluating curricula that use this Storyline Model of Instruction.

Even now there are a few instructional shifts we can make within our current curriculum that will help us prepare for this eventual transition. The GEMS-Net team has developed a Navigate, Investigate, Sense-Make routine that you can use to structure your science lessons. These phases of the learning cycle correspond to specific routines that will also appear in the Storyline Model (see image below).

Note: OpenSciEd is one example of curricula that uses the storyline model.

You may have noticed a Launch activity is also part of the Navigate, Investigate, Sense-Make routine. The Launch corresponds to the Anchoring Phenomenon Routine in the Storyline Model, but it functions in a slightly different way. The purpose of the Launch activity is to kick off each investigation by providing students with a context for their learning. This is also a great opportunity for students to make connections to their own world and community! For example, a 5th grade classroom starting Mixtures and Solutions might locate a local water source and discuss what might happen when pollutants interact with the water in their community and how they might clean it up. As students engage in their existing Mixtures and Solutions lessons they can return to the Launch as a touchstone, applying the scientific knowledge they are developing to their ideas about caring for their local waterways.

During the Navigate phase students reflect on what they’ve already learned, determine what they need to know next, and decide how they are going to figure it out. Once they develop a plan, the Investigate phase begins where students actually do the work and collect data by either carrying out an investigation or engaging with a text. After students collect their evidence, they need to make sense of what they’ve done. This is the Sense-Make phase where students look for patterns, explain their ideas, and determine what they need to figure out next. For each step of the Navigate, Investigate, Sense-Make routine there are questions you can ask which will help to support keeping the lesson focused on student coherence (see the image below). Our hope is that this framework will support teachers in identifying the most critical components for each lesson. The routine also helps teachers prepare questions that they need to ask, develop language frames students will use during sense-making, and identify key ideas teachers will be listening for as they use student ideas to navigate toward the next lesson.

The GEMS-Net team will be providing professional learning sessions and coaching opportunities in the future to help support teachers with moving toward this instructional routine. In the meantime, if you are interested in giving it a try, we’ve created several resources to help you prepare:

• N-I-S Lesson Routine (Template) - Lesson Template for the Navigate, Investigate, Sense-Make Routine

• Science Writing + Instruction Framework - Guiding questions for each phase of the learning cycle

• Questioning Crosscutting Concepts - Guiding questions for each Crosscutting Concept

As always, please provide us with your feedback on this new routine as we’ll continue to make improvements and revisions that meet your needs.

How can we make science instruction more relevant for our students?

How does science help my community, like my parents?

How does science help anyone in general?

Why is science important to me?

Why is science relevant to learn?

During a recent school visit, the GEMS-Net team talked with middle school students to learn more about their views of learning science. We asked the students, “What would you want to be asked about STEM education? What is important for us to know?” We’ve included a few of their responses above. A pattern began to emerge showing that students are really interested in learning about science in a way that is relevant and meaningful to their lives.

Take a look at the resources below for some ideas on how we can leverage student experiences and interests to make science instruction more relevant to their lives and community.

STEM Teaching Tools: How to launch STEM investigations that build on student and community interests and expertise

Check out the STEM Teaching Tool, Practice Brief # 31, to learn about how using the self-documentation strategy can make learning about science more personally compelling and relevant for your students.

Teacher Tips and Tricks

At a recent Teacher Leader Meeting, a group of GEMS-Net teachers and RIEEA Environmental Educators tried out the self-documentation strategy to see if they could find connections between the physical science curriculum and our local environments. During the meeting, we asked participants to walk around a schoolyard and snap photos, take a video, or record audio of anything curious they noticed. The media files were uploaded to a Padlet and then organized into groups based on physical science concepts related to their observations and wonderings. Check out their Padlet below!

Participants discussed how they might use a similar Launch activity to kick off the physical science courses. Students could use a class Padlet to record curiosities about their own schoolyard or community. As students learn more about the science concepts listed on the Padlet, they could revisit their images, videos, and audio files as touchstones. Using the knowledge gained through science lessons, students might begin to answer their own questions or explain the phenomena captured on the Padlet. This strategy allows students to authentically connect science learning in the classroom to interests they have about their local community and environment. We’d love to see your class Padlet if you end up giving it a try!

Click the image above to view the entire Padlet!

RIDE’s Learning Inside Out Outdoor Classroom Initiative

Another meaningful opportunity that makes science instruction more relevant for our students is to utilize the outdoor learning spaces at our schools. Recently, the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) announced an initiative to support RI schools in developing more outdoor learning environments. A launch event for the new program was held at Community School in Cumberland. Diane Boisvert, a 5th grade teacher at the school and member of our GEMS-Net community, participated in the event. She wrote the following excerpt to share more about the experience and Community School’s own outdoor classroom project:

RIDE Launches 'Learning Inside Out' Outdoor Classroom Initiative

By Diane Boisvert

Governor Dan McKee along with Education Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green and other dignitaries visited Community School in Cumberland to kick off RIDE's $7.5 Million Dollar Learning Inside Out Initiative. Through this grant program, up to 70 projects will be awarded up to $100,000 to create, enhance, and support access to natural resources for all students, while promoting environmental literacy and community connection. Professional development opportunities will also be available to qualified schools. Community School hosted the launch event in December. Teachers and students led guests on a tour of their outdoor classroom and schoolyard habitat which includes a pollinator garden, a discussion circle, open space, and an amphitheater for whole group instruction. Community School started their outdoor classroom project in 2017 with the help of some local fundraising and a grant from the US Fish and Wildlife Service. The goal was to make use of their green space and fresh air, provide opportunities for hands-on activities, and to take teaching and learning outside the four walls of the traditional classroom.

We really hope that you consider applying for this funding opportunity. If you decide to submit an application, please contact the GEMS-Net team. We can provide support as you go through the process and help develop a plan for sustainable professional development to include in your application. For more information about the Learning Inside Out Outdoor Classroom Initiative including the application and helpful resources, see the links below:

• Download the Learning Inside Out application, which is due by April 3, 2023

• Read press release

• View Learning Inside Out flyer

• View photos from launch event at Community School in Cumberland

• Review U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service planning guide for creating schoolyard habitat and outdoor classroom projects

• Browse the Audubon Society of Rhode Island's Schoolyard Habitat Resource Guide for K-6 Educators

• View School as a Tool information

• View the slide deck presented during the Learning Inside Out Webinar (Jan. 2023)

Click the image above to register for this event!

GEMS-Net Strategic Planning Team

Building off the work we started at the 2022 Summer Institute, a GEMS-Net Strategic Planning Team has convened to further discuss the partnership’s vision for STEM Education as we begin the High Quality Curriculum Material (HQCM) adoption process. This team is composed of the following community representatives: teachers, central office administrators, building principals, instructional coaches, environmental educators, URI scientists/researchers, family members, and GEMS-Net staff.

The GEMS-Net Strategic Planning Team recently met to help establish a mission statement for partnership. The team also started to develop surveys which will be sent out to community members across the GEMS-Net partnership. The goal of these surveys is to allow for more input from different representative groups (teachers, central office administrators, building principals, instructional coaches, environment educators, URI scientists/researchers, family members, and students) to be heard as we build a collective vision for what we want STEM education to look like within GEMS-Net.

We’re looking to hear your voice, so be on the lookout for a survey coming this spring!

Connecting Students to Local Research Projects

GEMS-Net is becoming a hub for connecting local STEM Research Projects to your classrooms! We are partnering on a number of projects with local organizations to connect STEM research and industry to our core programming in order to highlight meaningful connections and promote STEM career pathways for our students:

• URI’s Water for the World Lab and Rhode Island Department of Transportation (RIDOT)

• URI College of Engineering and the US Department of Defense

• URI Graduate School of Oceanography and the proposed URI Center of Excellence for Coastal Ocean Access

• RI Food Policy Council

• Roger Williams Park Zoo