Join3D Learning and Sensemaking
Professional Learning Units
3D Learning and Sensemaking PLUs
2-3 Credit Hours
Professional Learning Unit
Becoming a Critical Consumer of STEM Instructional Materials
Being a critical consumer of STEM Instructional materials is an important educator goal that boosts STEM career awareness and STEM career skills. ...
Professional Learning Unit
Co-Constructing Classroom Agreements with Students
Science is social! Norms can support a classroom community in which students and teachers actively try to make sense of the natural and built worlds....
Professional Learning Unit
Scientist Circles: Fostering Student Participation and Collaboration in Class Discussions
Moving students into a circle so they can see and speak directly to each other can transform a quiet classroom into a collaborative discussion space!...
Professional Learning Unit
Creating Class Consensus Models to Support Student Sensemaking
Gain experience and strategies in using the wealth of your students’ ideas to collaboratively build consensus models for complex phenomena....
Professional Learning Unit
Analyzing and Interpreting Data to Support Student Sensemaking in a High School Evolution Unit
This Professional Learning Unit uses a storyline unit with an anchoring phenomenon that is a case study in which the patient has acute mountain sickness at Everest base camp to focus participant learning on how the Science and Engineering Practice An...
Professional Learning Unit
Using the Putting the Pieces Together Instructional Routine
In this module, educators will be introduced to the four elements of the Putting the Pieces Together (PT2) Instructional Routine. In the Putting the Pieces Together Instructional Routine, students synthesize ideas they develop across multiple lessons...
Professional Learning Unit
Engaging Students in Science Learning: A Productive Approach to Classroom Management
In this module, participants consider the relationship between fostering student engagement through tapping into their curiosity and positive behavior choices in the classroom. Participants explore two different ways of implementing the same lesson a...
Professional Learning Unit
Leading the Implementation of High Quality Instructional Materials to Enact Standards
High-quality instructional materials (HQIM) designed for next generation science can make a difference in the quality of equitable science teaching and learning throughout the educational system and for all learners (i.e., for all leaders, teachers, ...
Professional Learning Unit
Have you wanted to implement a Project-Based Learning (PBL) unit in your classroom? Would you like to introduce PBL curriculum in your school? Multiple Literacies in Project-Based Learning (ML-PBL), an open educational resource, provides interdiscipl...
Professional Learning Unit
Have you wanted to implement a Project-Based Learning (PBL) unit in your classroom? Would you like to introduce PBL curriculum in your school? Multiple Literacies in Project-Based Learning (ML-PBL), an open educational resource, provides interdiscipl...
Professional Learning Unit
Science Notebooks in Student-Centered Classrooms: Module 1: Using Science Notebooks for Sensemaking
In this module, you will examine various ways scientists use science notebooks and a science notebook strategy to experience the critical components of sensemaking. ...
Professional Learning Unit
The Three Dimensions of Teaching and Learning: Module 1: Introduction to Disciplinary Core Ideas
In this module you will use A Framework for K-12 Science Education as a resource for developing an understanding of Dimension 3 - Disciplinary Core Ideas. An immersion in a high-quality science lesson pulls disciplinary core ideas to the foreground b...
Professional Learning Unit
Evaluating Lessons for Sensemaking Using the NSTA Sensemaking Tool
The NSTA Sensemaking Tool (adapted from the research-based NGSS Lesson Screener) is designed to help educators be critical consumers of curricular materials as well as create and/or revise science lessons to reflect the instructional shifts (sensemak...
Professional Learning Unit
How Do I Begin to Develop a Storyline for a Unit?
In this introduction to Storylines, educators will be introduced to the Key Features in Curriculum Materials that Support the Framework and NGSS. They will then hear experts describe the key routines in a storyline unit and explore a high-quality NGS...
Professional Learning Unit
Engaging Students in Developing and Using Models
This Professional Learning Unit will provide educators strategies for supporting K-12 students in beginning to develop the knowledge and skills needed to engage with this practice. Educators will also recognize the importance of providing students op...
Professional Learning Unit
Supporting Equitable Sensemaking - A Strategy for Educators
How do students build targeted science ideas and concepts? The Supporting Equitable Sensemaking - A Strategy for Educators PLU explores how the use of modalities and intentional student interactions create opportunity to build ownership of science id...
Professional Learning Unit
Learn to recognize the four critical attributes of sensemaking and how these attributes work together to help ensure all students have access and a strong desire to learn science. ...
Professional Learning Unit
Leveraging Assets to Build on Student Experiences, A Focus on Curiosity
During this Professional Learning Unit, we discuss instructional strategies that take an asset approach to student learning. The discussion will focus on how the knowledge students bring to learning—including student curiosity, questions, experienc...
Professional Learning Unit
Digital Collaborative Spaces for Sensemaking
Whether you are teaching in the classroom, distance-learning environment, or a combination of the two, our goal remains the same – to provide ALL students opportunities and access to science learning. In this Professional Learning Unit, we'...
Professional Learning Unit
We have got a Problem to Solve! Now What?
Science standards based on A Framework for K-12 Science Education require us to provide opportunities for students to learn “how science is utilized, in particular through the engineering design process, and they should come to appreciate the disti...
Professional Learning Unit
Solving the Problem of Finding Authentic Problems Students Can Solve in the K-12 Classroom
Is identifying and choosing relevant, authentic problems to put in front of your students holding you back from providing opportunities to engage your students in engineering design?...