NWESD Science Announcements and Opportunities

FROM THIS PAGE: [ LINK ] Washington Aerospace Scholars (WAS) is an online distance learning course and summer experience specifically designed for high school sophomores and juniors interested in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields. The online curriculum is a University of Washington college course focused on NASA’s space exploration program as well as topics in earth and space science. If they successfully complete the online curriculum, students are invited to participate in multi-day summer experiences that provide them to the opportunity to work with STEM professionals, NASA scientists, university students and STEM educators. Why should a student participate in WAS? Participating in the online distance learning course helps students understand the components and expectations for college level coursework while they are still in high school, particularly the importance of good time management and the ability to prioritize. Being able to state on a resu

The new science assessment does NOT privilege content above practice or crosscutting concepts. We have heard from two different parts of the region that someone who self-identifies as an NGSS-assessment-item-writer has returned to their district and erroneously reported to supervisors and colleagues that the new NGSS-aligned assessment’s (WCAS) items focus solely on one of the three dimension of NGSS (namely, the Disciplinary Core Ideas, most closely related to our previous notions of “content”). This is idea represents a serious misunderstanding that could derail a district’s transition efforts around NGSS. Not being an item-writer myself, I reached out to OSPI. Dawn Cope of OSPI’s Science Assessment Team responded with wonder that anyone could come away from item writing with that idea and, explained that all the training materials and the process used reflect the 3-dimensional nature of the NGSS. She shared all the training items for me to examine so I could try and see wher

Regional Science Coordinators are developing an online orientation class for the new Washington Comprehensive Assessment of Science (WCAS). We have involved OSPI’s Science Assessment lead, Dawn Cope and OSPI’s Director of K-12 Science, Ellen Ebert, in the process as well as Lois Sherwood from WSTA. In our first planning meeting, I wanted to hear the most important message from each person at the [virtual] table. Dawn Cope of the assessment department was the first to speak up and quite pointedly said, “assessment does not drive instruction.” That pretty much spoke for the rest of us. What does that mean for teachers in Washington State where we’ve spend the last 13 years writing “powerful classroom assessments” that mirrored the content and format of the WASL and the MSP? Assessment systems serve specific purposes . They are developed to provide specific kinds of data for those purposes. And an assessment developed at the state level to inform state-wide decisions does not l

Join us as we kick off our Fall webinar series on Wednesday, September 20th! 12pm EDT (9amPDT, 6pm +2GMT) "Science ↔ Society: Equilibrating Our Understanding of Ocean Acidification" Presented by: Carla Edworthy, Nelson Mandela University, South Africa Ocean acidification is a hot topic in the science community which is focusing more and more research into understanding this complex chemical phenonmenon and its impacts on our marine resources. Even though our scientific understanding of ocean acidification is in its early stages, the need to engage the non-science community on this topic is greater than ever to ensure that we can manage and adapt to its consequence on our communities in a proactive way. It is essential that our understanding of ocean acidificaiton develops concurrently and that we recognise the mutual need to inv

Science Practices Continuum - (for supervisors) [ LINK ] from Instructional Leadership for Science Practices (ILSP) [ LINK ]; an NSF-funded grant at Boston College. Model Curriculum Units (MCU's) [ LINK ] from Massachusettes Department of Education