The SOCSD Science Leadership Team met to review the New York State Communication Standards and to participate in Instructional Round Class Visits to capture evidence of students conversations, debates, and public speaking.
The Communication Standards focus on students ability to prepare and participate effectively in a range of conversations and collaborations with diverse partners; express ideas clearly and persuasively, and build on those of others. The standards also call for students to integrate and evaluate information presented in a variety of media and formats and to be able to present and evaluate a speaker’s point of view, reasoning, and use of evidence to support their ideas. We are committed to providing students with ample opportunities to make strategic use of digital media and visual displays to express information as well as adapting speech to a variety of contexts and communicative tasks with a command of academic English. In science, it’s important for students to work with lab partners and groups using their listening and speaking skills to acquire, retain, synthesize, and apply content knowledge in a variety of situations through collaborative research and experimentation.
Our core curriculum goal for this year is to:
- Refocus our efforts on fostering opportunities for students to collaborate and communicate through discussions in authentic and meaningful ways.
- Continue to develop students listening and speaking skills through conversations, debates, and public speaking.
- Providing ample opportunities for students to develop their public speaking and presentation skills in all content areas across K-12.
The Essential Questions for the Tri-State Visit are:
- To what extent do students have opportunities to engage in meaningful conversations, debates, and public speaking in our classes?
- To what extent do student conversations connect to units of study and demonstrate academic growth across K-12?
