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Effective teaching is at the heart of education.
Good teachers strive to expand their fundamental knowledge and understanding of
science concepts. They create environments where students can become active
learners but at the same time meet State and National Standards. With this in
mind, Webwatchers employed the following tools.*
*The WebWatchers guides have been divided into K-4, 5-8, and 9-12 grade bands.
The Atlas of Science Literacy is aligned by grade
level expectations from kindergarten to twelfth grade. The National Science
Education Standards drive State and District Standards. The SciGuides align to
the NSES and the Atlas of Science Literacy to insure a coherent flow of
learning between grades.
Each content area aligns to a specific topic or topics in the NSES. These topics
then align to a descriptive content sentence or phrase from the NSES.
For
example:
an NSES topic under the subject of 5-8 Life Sciences is populations and
ecosystems. One of the sentences under the topic of populations and
ecosystems in the NSES reads "food webs identify the relationships among
producers, consumers, and decomposers in an ecosystem."
The process of aligning the subject to a topic
and the topic to a content sentence/concept from the NSES is called a TRIAD. In
the SciGuides, a keyword accesses the triad via a database that is transparent
to the user. In the example below, the keyword animal species was chosen to
represent the triad by the SciGuide developers for both the K-4 and 5-8 grade
bands. Clicking on a keyword then presents a list of all pre-evaluated
educational web pages that are aligned with this keyword (and in turn the NSES)
and labeled with icons identifying content included in the web page
(ask-a-scientist, in the news, multimedia, inquiry, etc.). See the
navigation and site structure
page in the About the SciGuides section for a more
detailed discussion of how the icons filters work.
In rare instances, users may run across a
concept that is "in the spirit of the standards". An asterisk denotes
these concepts. Written by master educators, these "in the spirit of the
standards" concepts define difficult subject matter that is seen in
textbooks but has no related keyword in the NSES.
In addition to the logistics of alignment,
realistic and serious negotiation took place regarding how extensive each standards
alignment section should be. As you read a particular SciGuide, you may wonder
why some content standards are not included. Time and space limitations
prevented including all the related standards in a SciGuide. The focus was
narrowed to include just the standards that best represented each theme without
compromising the subject.
Webwatchers SciGuide Development teams were
comprised of experienced educators from across the country. In each of the
three years of this NSF funded portion of the project, participants contributed
ideas and perspectives that helped make difficult, but necessary decisions
about what to include. In addition to choosing the standards that formed the
basis for each SciGuide, each grade level - K-12 - needed to be represented.
Using the AAAS Atlas and the NSES as the guide, appropriate topics were
included for grade spans K-4, 5-8, and 9-12. It took teamwork and flexibility
to come to a consensus in these areas. Another consideration was the difference
in state interpretations of the National Standards. Some state standards
closely resemble the NSES, while others are more rigorous. The SciGuide
Development Teams focused on the National Standards not individual state
standards. As individual teachers, you can modify and adapt these SciGuides and
the related content to meet the needs of your State Standards, your District
Standards, and your students.
The goal of the NSF funded project was to
develop a process that would allow educators to work together as colleagues in
aggregating and evaluating URL resources aligned to the NSES into thematic
topics called "SciGuides." In addition to these evaluated resources
each SciGuide is accompanied with aligned lesson plans and vignettes (case
studies) that provide quick access to web pages, reducing the daunting task of
finding appropriate educational sites that include content, inquiry, and
assessment. In addition these sites are linked by keywords to triads that are
aligned to the National Standards.
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