During the summer months, I will contact science publishers so we can built in time during release days to examine resource materials. As a team, we will determine if these materials are aligned with your 2022 vision and the academic standards, benchmarks, and indicators.
In addition to the following resources, please let me know if there are other resources you feel we need to consider.
AIMS
Discovery Works
FOSS
GEMS
Kendall/Hunt
Newbridge
Ohio orc
Science Olympiad
13 comments:
What about Project Wild? They have some good projects and activities similar to AIMS. I have the books (I'm sure outdated)if anyone wants to see them.
I found the presentation interesting and the materials that I saw were well developed. I didn't feel that I had enough time to explore them, and I wish we had something in-hand that we could digest over a period of time. I did like what I saw, and if you think about it, we would probably get 3 uses out of each kit!!
Foss
I liked the fact that the resources were inquiry based but thought the teacher's manual that I reviewed was at too high a level and detail for our content. I think that certain modules may fit into nicely into our curriculum
but not sure about exclusive use of their modules. I would like to look at certain modules more closely.
FOSS
*Very inquiry based which is nice. We already do a lot of the activities he showed us. I would like to see some other units in further detail to see if they align. Most of our topics did not seem to be in our grade band of 5-6. The kits are nice and provide all of the necessary components. I also liked how most of the kits contents are non-consumable. It will make the kits last longer. Basically, the idea is great, just not sure how well it aligns with what we teach.
I liked the idea of FOSS, but from what we saw today, the units that FOSS designated as 3-4 units didn't seem to match our indicators as of right now. I'm afraid we would (once again) be pulling and mixing and matching from MANY different programs. Not that there is anything wrong with pulling from different programs, but there needs to be an overarching idea that connects all of our resources together.
I like what I saw so far. It seems pretty comprehensive and organized, as well as interesting for students. I like how there are hands-on labs, as well as non-fiction lit. to read aloud. I will be interested to see what or if any changes will be made after the new standards revision.
I liked the materials. I do have a concern (the typical concern) about how much space the program takes up. I already have almost an entire cabinet dedicated to science. Although I'd be getting rid of most of that stuff, will it still even fit? It looks large...
The materials themselves seem pretty good. The Summatives/Formatives for 2 don't seem like quite enough so I do think that we would have to fix them up a bit/add more. I also have some concerns with how much of it is usable. Can we get enough out of the 1-2 kits, to fulfill the states requirements? Or is it something that we use a kit from FOSS, and a kit from somewhere else and a kit from somewhere else trying to make it all work....
I guess I like the looks of it and the concepts of it enough that I would like to see an actual kit so that I can see exactly how it would all work.
Loved the presentation. I feel that the content to be covered in 3-4 does not match with our grade level indicators to date. I would like to revisit the program once we have the states new revisions on curriculum. I also am concerned about the cost of the kits when I teach 2 science classes and the cost to replenish the materials.
The activities appeared to be well planned and fit well into inquiry based learning. I did find that many of the bands did not seem to match with our current indicators and it seemed we would need to piece together far too many parts from several units. Also the books I viewed seemed a little high level and detailed for our grade level. I do like how the kits were reusable and contained enough items for an entire class. Often we have to share limited materials.
Kevin seemed to really know the material he was presenting. I think it would be helpful to try one of the foss kits in the classroom. The kits seem to be well organized, but I would like to see how it fit at the kindergarten level. I was a little concerned with the time factor for K. We are not able to spend 30 minutes daily on science.
I thought reviewing the project audit for each grade level was an excellent idea.
I enjoyed seeing the curriculum covered from k-5. It was interesting to see what grades are covering already. I also found the FOSS materials to be very inquiry based and had some great activities. I liked how students explore and discover the answers for themselves. I did find that the units do not currently meet our indicators. I am looking forward to see how the state revises content standards.
Great presentation by Foss. However I wish the presenter would have let us keep the sample manuals so we could take a closer look at the content to see if the materials aligned with our standards. Materials seem to support inquiry based learning!
An additional bonus: The kits would keep us going for a solid 2 years before we would have to replace materials- That's nice!
I used the Science Foss "Skit Kits" in another district (it's been awhile). It was nice that they were compact and enough supplies for about 32 kids for each experiment kit. The only problem we had was we needed to switch kits around with different grade levels in order to meet our grade specific science standards.
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