Build Sustainability

Years one and two can be strategically customized with a district to best meet teachers where they are now and help guide them to where they want to be. Common areas of focus are listed in the table. 

By year three we would transition to support for district leadership around the instructional materials, including participation in our annual Summer Academy and Train the Trainer events. 

Common Next Level Topics

Introduction to the Next Generation Science Standards

This workshop will provide an overview of the NGSS, including background and context of the Standards and how they relate to previous national science standards, such as the National Science Education...

Assessing Student Learning in Science

Careful assessment of what students know and are able to do is increasingly important at the local, state and national levels. Information from "high stakes" tests are now used for a variety of purposes including student advancement...

Supporting Literacy and Writing to Learn in Science

This session will provide a deeper understanding of the importance of supporting literacy in the science classroom and tools and procedures for accomplishing this goal.  Why is this important? Every science lesson is also...

Supporting the Practices of Science and Engineering through Inquiry Learning and Sensemaking

Most science programs support an inquiry component of some kind, and the new...

Explore Implementation Topics

This is an opportunity to revisit many of the initial Implementation Topics at a much deeper level. 

Remember when you first learned to drive and you couldn't play music or have noisy passengers because it was all too much? It's like that, but different. 

Summer Academy 2024

Designed for teachers and administrators who want to increase classroom effectiveness and for administrators seeking to take leadership and develop their local capacity for their Lab-Aids and SEPUP programs. This year Lab-Aids will host two distinct sessions:

Implementation Continuum

Instructional Practice Emerging Full

Laboratories, investigations, and other hands-on activities

Most labs and investigations are central features of a coordinated sequence of activities of a unit. Students engage in the acti­vities, but may need significant assistance to conduct them and may not be completely able to describe the purpose or value of the lab.

Students complete most or all of the lab and other activities. They can usually describe the value and purpose of the lab and handle setup and cleanup of materials. Students may attempt and com­plete extensions and enrichment activities.

Cooperative groups

Students work collaboratively in groups but do not share the work equally. They might complete the tasks on time, but likely with some disruptive behavior. Class discus­ sions of results and analysis  may be superficial.

Students work in well functioning 4–2–1 groups. Peer-­to­-peer discus­sion is robust and developed. Groups work independently to complete tasks and discuss analysis appropriately.

Literacy support

Support for literacy develop­ment, where needed, incorporates literacy strategies provided as part of instruction and some of the student­-skills sheets and visual aids from the Teacher Edition and Resources. Students’ oral and written work reflects an emerging understanding of the scientific language used in the unit.

Literacy support, where needed, includes comprehensive use of many of the literacy tools in the Teacher Edition and Resources. Teachers expand or modify the tools to meet their specific students’ needs. Students’ oral and written work reflect an understanding of the language of science used in the unit.

Assessment

Teachers use test bank items and occasionally use assess­ment tasks and scoring guides.

Students use the scoring guides occasionally to self­-assess
their work or the work of their classmates.

Teachers use the full assessment program routinely and completely for both formative and summative assessments.

Students are familiar with the scoring guides. Students use the scoring guides consistently to self­ assess their work or the work of their classmates.

Teachers may meet regularly to moderate (score and discuss) their students’ work.

 

 

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Supporting Agriscience Education

Lab-Aids has been a professional development partner of the National Association of Agricultural Educators (NAAE) since 2005.  Our kits, curriculum, and approaches to professional development have been important elements of the National Agricultural Teacher Ambassador Academy (NATAA), a premier program of NAAE, since its inception. 

We received the 2010 DuPont Educational Partner of the Year in part due to our work on the NATAA program.  We can design short- and long-term professional development workshops to support the use of inquiry teaching and learning techniques and put together programs in support of the AFNR Pathways. 

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If you are already in regular communication with your Curriculum Specialist, feel free to reach out to them directly. If not, let's find out what you need and get started!

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