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Science Curriculum Topic Study


By: Page Keeley
$35.96 - Member Price  
$44.95 - Nonmember Price


Details

Type of Product:NSTA Press Book
Average Rating:
 based on 4 reviews
Publication Date:1/1/2005
Pages:294
Stock Number:PA004X
ISBN:978-1-41290-892-4
Grade Level:Elementary School, Middle School, High School
NSTA Recommends
Our reviewers—top-flight teachers and other outstanding science educators—have determined that this resource is among the best available supplements for science teaching.
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Description

Need help making the connection between science standards, teacher practice, and improved student achievement? Science Curriculum Topic Study is your missing link. The book offers a systematic professional development strategy that brings together science standards and research with curriculum, instruction, and assessment. Writing in the book’s foreword, Harold Pratt, former NSTA President, calls Science Curriculum Topic Study “by far the best thing I have seen on how to effectively use the standards.” The CTS process will help you:

• Improve your understanding of science content
• Clarify a hierarchy of content and skills in a learning goal from state or local standards
• Define formative and summative assessment goals and strategies
• Learn to recognize and address learning difficulties
• Design or use instructional materials effectively
• Increase opportunities for students of all backgrounds to achieve science literacy

Science Curriculum Topic Study is rich with features that make it both easy to use and illuminating. It contains 147 separate curriculum topic study guides arranged in 11 categories representing the major domains of science. You get worksheets to help you apply the CTS process to curriculum, instruction, and assessment, plus a quick-reference guide to the major standards and research documents. In addition, teacher vignettes show how to use the CTS process to enrich your own teaching immediately.


Ideas For Use

If your goal is to become a standards- and research-based educator, you need the right tools and processes to reach your goal. Rich explanations of content and learning goals, background information on instructional implications that impact student learning, specific examples of the content in a learning goal, and vignettes that make standards and research come to life are needed to help teachers implement standards and research. This book is intended to fill that need by providing you with an intellectually rigorous and invigorating process for examining the science topics you teach so that you can make well-informed decisions to improve your students’ learning.

Additional Info

Science Discipline: (mouse over for full classification)
Collecting data
Scientific habits of mind
Intended User Role:Administrator, Curriculum Supervisor, Elementary-Level Educator, High-School Educator, Middle-Level Educator, New Teacher, Professional Development Provider, Teacher
Educational Issues:Achievement, Assessment of students, Curriculum, Instructional materials, Learning theory, Professional development, Teacher content knowledge, Teacher preparation, Teaching strategies

Contents

List of Curriculum Topic Study Guides

Foreword
Harold Pratt

Preface

About the Author

1. Introduction to Curriculum Topic Study
• What Is Curriculum Topic Study (CTS)?
• Why Study a Curriculum Topic?
• Why Focus on Topics?
• The Underlying Knowledge and Research Base
--National, State, and Local Standards
--Cognitive Research
--Changes in Professional Development
--Reading Research
--Science Teachers and Teaching
*Content Knowledge
*Pedagogical Content Knowledge
*Beliefs about Teaching and Learning
*Having a Professional Knowledge Base
• The Teacher Professional Curriculum

2. Examining the Components of a Curriculum Topic Study Guide
• The CTS Study Guide
--Sections and Outcomes
--Selected Readings
--CTS Supplementary Material
• Common Resources for Study and Reflection
--Building a Professional Collection: Experts at Your Fingertips!
--Descriptions of the Common Resources Used in CTS
*IA: Science for All Americans
*IB: Science Matters: Achieving Scientific Literacy
*IIA, IIIA, IVA: Benchmarks for Science Literacy
*IIB and IIIB: The National Science Education Standards
*IVB: Making Sense of Secondary Science: Research into Children’s *Ideas
*V: Atlas of Science Literacy
*VI: State Standards or District Curriculum Guides

3. Engaging in Curriculum Topic Study
• Getting Started
--Gathering Your Resources
--Becoming Familiar with the CTS Guides and Resources
--Defining Your Purpose and Choosing Your Outcomes
• Processing Information from CTS Sections
--Activation and Processing Strategies
--Reading the CTS Sections
--Guiding Questions for Individual Sections of a CTS Guide
• The CTS Learning Cycle of Inquiry, Study, and Reflection
--Engagement
--Elicitation
--Exploration
--Development
--Synthesis
--Application
--Study Reflection and Self--Assessment
• CTS Evaluation
• Individual and Group Use of CTS
--Individual Use of CTS
--Group Use of CTS

4. Utilizing Curriculum Topic Study for Different Contexts
• CTS and Science Content Knowledge
--Using a CTS Guide to Identify the Content Knowledge Needed to Teach a Topic
--Using CTS to Examine the Hierarchal Structure of Content Knowledge in a Topic
• CTS and Curriculum
--Curriculum Coherence and Articulation
--Curriculum Selection
--Supporting Curriculum Implementation
• CTS and Instruction
--Reviewing and Modifying Lessons
--Developing a Standards-- and Research--Based Lesson
--CTS and Inquiry--Based Instruction
• CTS and Assessment
--Designing Assessment Probes
--Developing Culminating Performances
• CTS and Preservice and Novice Teacher Support
• CTS and Leadership Development
• CTS and Professional Development
--Embedding CTS in a Variety of Professional Development Strategies
*Study Groups
*Case Discussions
*Curriculum Selection and Implementation
*Workshops
*Examining Student Work and Thinking
*Lesson Study
*Mentoring, Coaching, and Demonstration Lessons

5. Images from Practice
Vignette #1: A High School Integrated Science Teacher Uses CTS to Understand Gravity--Related Content
Vignette #2: An Experienced Middle School Teacher Uses CTS to Revise a Unit on Biological Classification
Vignette #3: A Team of Primary Teachers Uses CTS to Identify Goals for Learning about Life Cycles
Vignette #4: A Middle School Teacher Uses CTS to Understand a Difficult Concept to Teach: Density
Vignette #5: A Teacher Leader Uses CTS to Help Guide Fifth--Grade Teachers’ Implementation of the Ecology Content Standards
Vignette #6: A Fourth--Grade District Team Uses CTS to Examine Alignment of Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment
Vignette #7: A High School Physics Teacher Uses CTS to Design Energy Lessons Based on Research on Learning
Vignette #8: An Elementary Teacher Uses CTS to Improve Opportunities to Learn Her Disadvantaged Students
Vignette #9: Professional Developers Use CTS to Redesign Their Inquiry--Based Workshops
Vignette #10: A GLOBE Curriculum Developer Uses CTS to Develop Instructional Materials

6. The Curriculum Topic Study Guides
• Organization of the CTS Guides
• Descriptions of the CTS Categories
--Diversity of Life
--Ecology
--Biological Structure and Function
--Life’s Continuity and Change
--Matter
--Earth
--Astronomy
--Energy, Force, and Motion
--Inquiry and the Nature of Science and Technology
--Implications of Science and Technology
--Unifying Themes

Resources A: Additional Resources to Support Curriculum Topic Study

Resource B: Worksheets for Curriculum Topic Study

References

Index


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National Standards Correlation

This resource has 14 correlations with the National Standards.  
[VIEW CORRELATIONS]

This resource has 14 correlations with the National Standards.  
[HIDE CORRELATIONS]

  • Process Standards for Professional Development
    • Evaluation
      • Uses multiple sources of information to guide improvement and demonstrate its impact. (NSDC)
      • Continuous program assessment that captures the perspectives of all those involved, uses a variety of strategies, focuses on the process and effects of the program, and feeds directly into program improvement and evaluation. (NSES)
      • Integration and coordination of the program components so that understanding and ability can be built over time, reinforced continuously, and practiced in a variety of situations. (NSES)
      • Clear, shared goals based on a vision of science learning, teaching, and teacher development congruent with the National Science Education Standards . (NSES)
    • Research-Based
      • Prepares educators to apply research to decision making. (NSDC)
      • Occur in a variety of places where effective science teaching can be illustrated and modeled, permitting teachers to struggle with real situations and expand their knowledge and skills in appropriate contexts. (NSES)
      • Use inquiry, reflection, interpretation of research, modeling, and guided practice to build understanding and skill in science teaching. (NSES)
      • Connect and integrate all pertinent aspects of science and science education. (NSES)
      • Address teachers' needs as learners and build on their current knowledge of science content, teaching, and learning. (NSES)
      • Provide opportunities to know and have access to existing research and experiential knowledge. (NSES)
    • Design
      • Introduce teachers to scientific literature, media, and technological resources that expand their science knowledge and their ability to access further knowledge. (NSES)
      • Uses learning strategies appropriate to the intended goal. (NSDC)
    • Learning
      • Build on the teacher's current science understanding, ability, and attitudes. (NSES)
  • Content Standards
    • Quality Teaching
      • Deepens educators’ content knowledge, provides them with research-based instructional strategies to assist students in meeting rigorous academic standards, and prepares them to use various types of classroom assessments appropriately. (NSDC)


Customer Reviews
Curriculum Topic Study
  Reviewed by: Gail Bushey (Minden, NV) on July 20, 2008
  What a superb book. I wish I'd had this years ago! It took all the work out of looking up standards and how to apply them to students. I can't wait to show my fellow science teachers this book.

Ideal for district work
  Reviewed by: Andrew Njaa (Falmouth, ME) on June 4, 2008
  We've used and become very familiar with Science Curriculum Topic Studies over the past 5 years in our district. They provide a framework and protocol that makes aligning K-12 science scope and sequence a much faster and deeper process. They have also facilitated discussions between teachers of different grades and made it possible to really understand what the AAAS Benchmarks, and the NRC Standards are getting at. It can be hard work to unpack all of the different recommendations and figure out what will work best for your district, and using these topic studies makes the job easier. I've led district teams using these protocols and highly recommend them.

Science Curriculum Topic Study
  Reviewed by: David Stronck (Union City, CA) on November 1, 2007
  I will be using this book as the textbook for my graduate seminar TED 6440 "Curriculum in Science Education." This textbook will require my graduate students to use the most important current sources for curriculum development and guides them in their development of their curriculum.

Testing
  Reviewed by: Lauren Jonas (Arlington, VA) on August 21, 2007
  I'm just trying to see what happens when I click this button. Please don't really post this review.

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