JoinScience and Engineering Practices
Professional Learning Units
Science and Engineering Practices PLUs
2-3 Credit Hours
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
Integrating Engineering Practices and Career Competencies into Science Classrooms
A Framework for K-12 Education calls for the integration of engineering design into K-12 science classrooms. This PLU introduces the challenges and opportunities this shift raises....
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
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
Addressing Laboratory Activity Safety Hazards/Risks: Hierarchy of Controls
Science instructional sites (e.g. laboratory, classroom, field) can be unsafe, given the potential biological, chemical, and physical hazards and resulting health and safety risks. This module will help teachers learn a process for analyzing potentia...
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
Supporting Ambitious Science Teaching
In this Professional Learning Unit, we'll look at how Ambitious Science Teaching helps teachers focus on finding ways for all students to participate in science, making science compelling to a wider group of learners, and providing the means for stud...
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?...