The Science Leadership team participated in Instructional Rounds (A practice of educators gathering evidence of student engagement and learning) to look at how students express their learning about science. These class visits stemmed from the recommendations of the Tri-state Consortium (A team of NY, NJ, and CT educators ) that evaluated our Science and Engineering Program two years ago. The goal of the class visits was to get get a better sense of our science education continuum K-12 and to understand how our students think about what they are learning in the science classroom.
Teachers and administrators were in mixed groups and visited two schools that they don’t regularly work in. We talked with students about what they were learning and what connections the lessons, activities, and experiments had to the real world. We gathered non-judgmental evidence by focusing on the task the students were working on, what the students were doing to accomplish the task, and how they expressed their learning through conversations and writing.
Some highlights were that our students at WOS were able to use scientific vocabulary seamlessly in their explanations about bridges, animals, and erosion. Students at CLE made deep connections to the real world and their own lives while learning about various types of pollution and their carbon footprint. Our SOMS students were highly engaged and excited to explain the life cycle of stars, and our TZHS students were impressive in their ability to work autonomously on their own tasks in chemistry and physics, while independently monitoring their own experiments, equipment, and data collection.
The team charted and discussed the information collected to identify positive patterns and trends and to better understand how to help our students develop a love for science and engineering as they grow as independent thinkers and learners. We look forward to our continued work together.
