Subject: SD in classrooms

Posted by Erin Coyle on 12/31/2010

Message:

Is anyone else out there a K-12 teacher??

I am. I am lucky to be teaching in Washington State - seemingly one of the only states with ST in its state science education standards. Yet, despite having ST in its standards, most Washington teachers are still not teaching it . . Why? There is no curriculum.

Why is there no ST/DM curriculum? I don't know. I was actually quite surprised to be at a K-12 conference where no one was selling curriculum . . .

I spent an entire week during winter break purchasing resources and developing demonstrations, assessments, worksheets/practice guides, lesson plans to teach an introductory 2-week unit on SD with my students; essentially, developing curriculum. We cannot expect every teacher to have this kind of investment in SD.

If we want to get ST/DM into the classroom, we need to provide teachers with some sort of curriculum. It needs to be coherent and classroom-tested. It needs to be in a binder, explicitly tied to ST/DM standards, come with a pacing calendar, formative and summative assessments, and, most of all, high-quality student-relevant practice guides that a teacher can photocopy and use with minimal modifications. It should be digital, perhaps even write-able (??) allowing a teacher to make minor adjustments on a practice sheet or assessment page so they can tailor the work to their own students' needs and interests.

Though my own research and background in SD, the information is out there. The Waters site has been helpful, but even then I needed to purchase the Playbook in order to follow many of the lesson plans. Draper has developed a suggested articulation sequence. Shape of Change has excellent games and BOTG practice; in fact, Shape of Change - so far - has been the only thing remotely close to 'classroom ready' that I have seen. There are tons of excellent papers on CLE, but I had to wade through them all - picking and choosing the ones I felt I could pull some tools out of.

There's a "Gap" then, isn't there . . . between the "desired level" of Systems Instruction and the "actual level" of instruction . . .

What's causing the Gap? Is it the lack of curriculum? I don't know. But, from a K-12 teacher's perspective, I do know that having a high-quality SD curriculum would go a long way towards implementing SD in classrooms.

Erin Coyle, NBCT
Orchard Middle School

Follow Ups:

SD in classrooms - Dexter Chapin 12/31/2010 
SD in classrooms - Pedro D. Almaguer Prado 12/31/2010