Teacher Training By Dr. Diana Wehrell-Grabowski

Back from conducting teacher training in the state of Colorado. Forty K-8 teachers from two Colorado magnet schools attended the training entitled “Integrating Science and Children’s Literature”. Teachers were introduced to over 60 children’s K-8 books that can be used to introduce and reinforce K-8 science concepts. Teachers were actively engaged in conducting hands-on-minds-on inquiry-based explorations to investigate K-8 science concepts. The Colorado Department of Education has revised the science standards from 5 to 3 to include Physical, Life and Earth Systems Science. The largest change to the science standards is acknowledging that scientific inquiry, science process skills, and content can’t be taught separately. These important aspects of science were integrated into the three science content standards. This change makes total sense. Teachers must integrate the nature of science, science process skills within all science explorations students undertake, as opposed to covering the nature of science in isolation in the first nine weeks of the school year. The following sample photos were taken from the Integrating Science and Children’s Literature K-8 teacher training workshop held in Colorado. Once again it was a great group of teachers.

I had the pleasure of sharing my enthusiasm and knowledge of science with another great group of teachers yesterday. The director of a local VPK school arranged for me to come and present a three hour hands-on-minds-on teacher training workshop entitled “Connecting Science Across The Curriculum.” It’s beneficial when administration arranges for teacher training/ professional staff development during teacher pre-planning week. The teachers are refreshed after a long summer break, motivated, and looking for new ideas to implement within their classroom. As always my teacher training workshops are conducted in a format that blends science content with the “how to” implement within the classroom. Thus, teachers are expanding upon their existing science content knowledge as well as gaining new hands-on-minds-on explorations to implement within their classrooms. During the three hour workshop teachers were actively engaged in exploring science, mathematics, language arts, literacy, social studies, health, and the arts via an inquiry-based format. We started the morning off with a nature walk around the school campus. The emphasis was placed on nurturing the young child’s natural curiosity as well as developing observational skills in their students. It’s all about making observations and asking questions! Teachers explored life and environmental science concepts, physical and earth science concepts while being introduced to affective methods of connecting science across the curriculum. What a great workshop, and wonderful group of teachers.