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As educators, it is essential to understand the concept of curriculum comprehensively to design and deliver effective learning experiences for our students. Complete the following:
1. Read Blog Post: Five reasons to give curriculum theory a place in the classroom … | Knowledge in Education
2. Research the basics of curriculum theory and curriculum models
3. Create a post providing an overview of curriculum theory/models. Your post can be written, audio, a graphic, or even video.
4. Select a science curriculum being used in Louisiana districts and Create a post that includes the title, subject, and grade.
5. Research the foundation of your curriculum such as foundational theory, research, authors, stakeholders, timeline, etc
6. Post an overview of your curriculum's foundation. Your post can be written, audio, or even video.

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Universal Design is an approach to curriculum development that aims to make learning accessible to all students, regardless of their individual strengths, needs, or backgrounds. It emphasizes the importance of creating learning experiences that are inclusive, flexible, and responsive to the diversity of learners in today's classrooms.
1. Watch this overview of UDL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDvKnY0g6e4
2. Research the basics of UDL
3. Create a post providing an overview of UDL. Your post can be written, audio, a graphic, or even video.
4. Select a science curriculum being used in Louisiana districts and Create a post that includes the title, subject, and grade.
5. Select a particular lesson/unit from your curriculum and investigate it through the lens of UDL.
6. How could this lesson/unit be improved to better align with UDL? Create a post. Your post can be written, audio, a graphic, or even video.

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Technology-enhanced teaching and learning (TETL) is the integration of technology into teaching and learning practices to improve the quality of learning outcomes. This is an essential strategy for improving educational quality. School leaders and teachers significantly affect the integration of effective TETL in the classroom.
1. Research the ISTE standards: International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) provides student, educator, and leadership standards that serve as a framework for innovation in education.
2. Though these standards exist, it can sometimes be tricky actually knowing how each would appear in the classroom as a model example. The Technology Integration Matrix (TIM) was developed by the Florida Center for Instructional Technology (FCIT) to provide a framework for describing and targeting the use of technology to enhance learning. Each needed characteristic is not only represented in the matrix but also aligned with levels of integration. Explore the TIM Framework.
3. Create a post providing an overview of ISTE and TIM. Your post can be written, audio, a graphic, or even video.
4. Select a science curriculum being used in Louisiana districts and Create a post that includes the title, subject, and grade.
5. Select a particular lesson/unit from your curriculum and investigate it through the lens of EdTech.
6. Reflect on your selected curiculum/unit and your exploration of ISTE and TIM. What "holes" you can identify in your curriculum/unit? How could you address these holes? Create a post. Your post can be written, audio, a graphic, or even video.

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Instead of reading about the focus topics this week, you will research, share, and reflect. This assignment combines the reading and weekly analysis assignments.

1. Read the following blog post on Thinking Classrooms https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/thinking-classroom/

2. Research the basics of thinking classrooms/curriculum and questioning techniques.

3. Create a post providing an overview of thinking classrooms. Your post can be written, audio, a graphic, or even video.

4. Select a science curriculum used in Louisiana districts and Create a post that includes the title, subject, and grade.

5. Select a particular lesson/unit from your curriculum and investigate it through the lens of the Thinking Classroom Method.

6. What elements of Thinking Classrooms exist in this curriculum? How would you improve the curriculum related to Thinking Classroom method. Create a post. Your post can be written, audio, a graphic, or even video.

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Listen to my interview with Peter Liljedahl (transcript):
Sponsored by Listenwise and Wipebook

This page contains Amazon Affiliate and Bookshop.org links. When you make a purchase through these links, Cult of Pedagogy gets a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you. What's the difference between Amazon and Bookshop.org?

This post was supposed to be just for math teachers. I was going to share an instructional approach that, as dramatic as this sounds, has taken the math world by storm. The methodology is called Thinking Classrooms, and now that I have gotten a closer look at it, I can see that it could work in just about any content area. Built on 14 key practices, it's a way of teaching that gets students up on their feet, collaborating and thinking through challenging problems on a daily basis.

When I first saw a video of this strategy in action, I was immediately captivated. Take a look:

The more I learn about the Thinking Classrooms method, the better it gets. Thousands of math teachers are already using this approach, and it's spreading to other subject areas as well.

Joining me to talk about this on the podcast is Peter Liljedahl, professor of mathematics education at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia, the creator of the Thinking Classrooms method, and the author of the book, Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics, Grades K-12: 14 Teaching Practices for Enhancing Learning ( Amazon | Bookshop.org). In our interview, which you can listen to above, Liljedahl talked with me in depth about the Thinking Classroom. Some key points are summarized below.

How Thinking Classrooms Got Started

Liljedahl began to formulate his approach after spending hours observing in dozens of different math classrooms. What he saw was not surprising: classroom after classroom of students who were not engaged and not actively learning.

"By and large students spend most of their class time not thinking, at least not in ways we know they need to think in order to be successful in mathematics." Liljedahl explains. "If they're not thinking, they're not learning. And everywhere I go classrooms look more alike than they look different: Teaching and learning in math classrooms adheres to a set of normative structures that date back to the dawn of public education over 170 years ago. We're going to have to break through some of these normative structures because they are actually creating environments that are not conducive to thinking."

What followed was a 15-year process figuring out how to break down these institutionally normative structures that were, as Liljedahl puts it, "holding non-thinking in place." Breaking those norms down means putting in place other practices that have now become foundational to the Thinking Classrooms approach.

The Practices

A Thinking Classroom is built on 14 practices, many of which were developed by looking at what was already happening in typical classroom, doing the exact opposite, and seeing what happened. Some of the key practices are summarized below.

Thinking Tasks

Unlike in a more traditional classroom, where the lesson might start with direct instruction from the teacher, a typical day in a Thinking Classroom starts with the teacher assigning thinking tasks for students to work on in groups, and direct instruction is only given on an as-needed basis.

"In a traditional classroom," he explains, "we show the students how to do it, then we do one together, then they practice it on their own, the classic I do, we do, you do, which promotes - whether you want it or not - a form of behavior called mimicking. So these students are just going to mimic their way through. In a Thinking Classroom, in order to get students to think rather than mimic, we have to remove the I do."

When they are first introducing this approach, teachers are advised to make the thinking tasks non-curricular, fun challenges that will help develop a culture of thinking. Once students are used to the format, the tasks become curriculum-based, often the same kinds of problems you'd find in the resources you'd normally use, but Liljedahl points out that they are carefully sequenced, "very carefully constructed," he says, "whereby the tasks are getting incrementally more challenging and are being given to students as their abilities are incrementally developing."

Vertical, Non-permanent Surfaces

Probably the most distinctive feature of a Thinking Classroom is the use of vertical, non-permanent surfaces, where students do the tasks, standing up, in groups of three.

Why vertical? "When it goes vertical, everyone has the same orientation to the work," Liljedahl explains. "When it's vertical, they can see each other's work, which promotes knowledge mobility and gives greater access to more ideas. When it's vertical, I can see everything. I don't have to wait for that quiz next Friday to see if the students understood it. I can see right now, and then I can intervene right now. I can't do that if they're horizontal."

But there's one more benefit of vertical surfaces that Liljedahl learned from interviewing students, one reason he felt eclipsed all the others. "It turns out that when students are sitting, they feel anonymous. And the further they sit from the teacher, the more anonymous they feel. And when students feel anonymous, they disengage. What standing up did was took away their anonymity. It made students not feel invisible, and then they didn't disengage."

The other important feature of these surfaces is that they are non-permanent. Unlike paper, which can't be reused, an erasable surface like a whiteboard or chalkboard turns out to be more conducive to thinking tasks. Liljedahl and his colleagues found this out through experimentation.

"If we compared a group working on a whiteboard versus a group working on flip chart paper," he says, "the group working on the whiteboards, they'll start within 20 seconds. They'll start making notations on the board. They'll try anything and everything because they feel like they can just erase it if it's wrong. The students who are tasked with working on flip chart paper, they will not make a single notation for upwards of three minutes, because 'This is not erasable. What I put here has to be perfect.' So there's a lot of agonizing, and that hesitation leads to a lower form of thinking."

Visibly Random Groups

Students collaborate on tasks in randomly assigned groups of three, and that randomization has to be visible. Liljedahl explains why on the Building Thinking Classrooms website:

"Whether we grouped students strategically or we let students form their own groups, we found that 80% of students entered these groups with the mindset that, within this group, their job is not to think. However, when we frequently formed visibly random groups, within six weeks, 100% of students entered their groups with the mindset that they were not only going to think, but that they were going to contribute. In addition, the use of frequent and visibly random groupings was shown to break down social barriers within the room, increase knowledge mobility, reduce stress, and increase enthusiasm for mathematics."

Another important feature is that each group only gets one writing instrument; this forces members to collaborate, rather than work in parallel.

Consolidation Practices

Once students have worked through the assigned tasks at the boards, they transition into what Liljedahl calls consolidation, activities that reinforce each individual student's learning.

"It turns out that there's a difference between what we call collective knowing and doing and individual knowing and doing. Working collectively at the whiteboards and working individually are actually very different modalities; there needs to be some sort of a transfer."

The consolidation practices that facilitate that transfer are:

guided gallery walks, where the teacher points out key elements of student work on the vertical surfaces

note making, where students construct their own meaningful notes: "They take their learning from the day and find a way to represent that in such a way that they can in part have a record, but more importantly go through that process of reification, where they are taking these ideas that started very informal and unstructured, became more formal and structured through the consolidation and now become even more formal and structured through their note making activity."

check your understanding questions, a form of self-assessment students do on their own to determine how well they have grasped the material

How to Get Started

The book (linked above) is a great place for math teachers to start, but if you're not a math teacher, that shouldn't stop you. "These practices are being enacted in every curriculum now," Liljedahl says. "Language arts, social studies, science. There are slight variances to it, but fundamentally what changes is what constitutes a thinking task, which is Chapter 1 of the book, and what constitutes a sequence of thinking tasks, which is Chapter 9. Everything else more or less stays the same."

Interested teachers should also join any one of the online communities of teachers who are already running Thinking Classrooms of their own. The largest is the Building Thinking Classrooms Facebook group, but Liljedahl says there are many others.

"Try it," he says. "The book gives you plenty of resources and ways to enact it in a way that's almost guaranteed to have some early success so that you can see for yourself what this looks like. I always say that my book has stories and data in it, but those are my stories and my data. The real data, the real stories that are going to impact your practice, that are going to sustain your practice, are the story and the data that happen in your own classroom, right. Give it a try. See what happens."

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The Thinking Classroom: An Interview with Peter Liljedahl

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In too many classrooms, students aren't really thinking. It's time to try something different.

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The Thinking Classroom method is an educational approach that prioritizes critical thinking and problem-solving skills in students. This method emphasizes independent thinking, collaboration, and exploration, while encouraging students to take ownership of their learning. Additionally, the method stresses the importance of reflection and metacognition in helping students develop their thinking skills. This approach can be applied across various subjects and can help students succeed academically and professionally.

Examples:

1. Reflection and Metacognition:
Encourage students to reflect on their learning by asking questions such as "What did you learn today?" or "What was challenging for you?" This helps students to develop metacognition, or awareness of their own thinking processes.

2. Creative Problem Solving:
Encourage students to solve problems creatively, such as asking them to design and build a bridge that can hold a certain amount of weight using only paper and tape. This activity promotes critical thinking and problem-solving skills, while allowing students to use their creativity.

3. Student Choice:
Give students choices in their learning by providing various activities or assignments for them to choose from. For example, students can choose between reading a book, watching a video, or drawing a picture to learn about a specific topic.

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Pink Apple Cartoon Teacher's Day Thank You Card (4)

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Thinking Classroom in Mathematics at Chestermere Lake Middle School

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#1 Five Reasons to Give Curriculum Theory a Place in the Classroom

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#1 Five Reasons to Give Curriculum Theory a Place in the Classroom

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1. An objectives model is limiting.
2. Curricula should be ambitious.
3. Teachers are key to a successful curriculum.
4. Collaboration between teachers (and researchers) is important in supporting curriculum development.
5. It all comes down to teacher professional learning.

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UDL stands for Universal Design for Learning. UDL is a framework developed by CAST, an Understood founding partner. UDL guides the design of learning experiences to proactively meet the needs of all learners. When you use UDL, you assume that barriers to learning are in the design of the environment, not in the student. UDL is based on brain science and evidence-based educational practices. It also leverages the power of digital technology.

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International Society of Technology in Education

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International Society of Technology in Education

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ISTE is a website that provides a variety of resources for educators and professionals. This website provides students and teacher with standards. It provides educational professionals with professional development and Networking opportunities, publications, Awards and recognition programs, and Research and advocacy initiatives that promote the usage of technology in the classroom.

The standards for educators help teachers help students become empowered learners. And it helps teachers practice, promotes collaboration with peers, and challenges them to rethink traditional approaches. Each standard has a specific role that the teachers should be and it helps them through that.

The standards for students help students evolve with new technology tools. It helps empower student voices and ensure that learning is a student-driven process. Each standard has an overall goal that they hope students learn more about.

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Now, more than ever, classrooms are being transformed into interactive and engaging environments. With students at the center, educators are embracing opportunities to build knowledge, empower learners, and create computational thinkers.

In this course, you will explore the ISTE Standards for Students, designed to empower student voice and ensure that learning is a student-driven process. You will dig into the classroom applications as well as the guidance and support that the standards provide. You will also have an opportunity to reflect on your own professional practice to explore opportunities for innovation in lesson design.

Course dates:

Open year-round! This course is self-paced and can be completed anytime within six months of the course open date.

Interested in both the Student and Educator Standards? Save 15% when you bundle the two courses together!

BUY THE BUNDLE
For custom cohorts of 100+ educators, reach out to isteu@iste.org.
Related Materials:

Who it's for:

Teachers (K-12, any subject)

Instructional technology coaches

Instructional designers

Instructional coordinators / Curriculum developers / Curriculum specialists

Course details:

Course length: 5 hours

Cost: $49 Member/$65 Non-member

Course style: Self-paced

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Now, more than ever, classrooms are being transformed into interactive and engaging environments. With students at the center, educators are embracing opportunities to build knowledge, empower learners, and create computational thinkers. In this course, you will explore the ISTE Standards for Students, designed to empower student voice and ensure that learning is a student-driven process.

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The four dimensions of curriculum theory are aims or objectives, content or subject matter, methods or procedures, and evaluation or assessment. The first dimension refers to the reasons for including specific items in the curriculum and excluding others.The second dimension is content or subject matter and this refers to the knowledge, skills, or dispositions which are implicit in the choice of items, and the way in which they are arranged. The third dimension is methods or procedures and this refers to pedagogy and is determined by choices made about the first two dimensions.The fourth dimension is assessment or evaluation and this refers to the means for determining whether the curriculum has been implemented successfully.

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The curriculum is defined as programs of teaching and learning which take place in formal settings. The four dimensions of curriculum theory are aims or objectives, content or subject matter, methods or procedures, and evaluation or assessment. The first dimension refers to the reasons for including specific items in the curriculum and excluding others. Sets of justifications for curricular inclusion may be broadly divided into four types: logical delineations between domains of knowledge, distinctive mental or cognitive operations, cross-cultural social distinctions, and deliberative activity about the ideal society. The second dimension is content or subject matter and this refers to the knowledge, skills, or dispositions which are implicit in the choice of items, and the way in which they are arranged. The two most important types of relations between different items of knowledge are: the degree of integration between them and progression within the domain itself. Curriculum theorists have also focused on the way those aims and objectives are expressed. Three models have been developed: curriculum as product, curriculum as process, and curriculum as content. The third dimension is methods or procedures and this refers to pedagogy and is determined by choices made about the first two dimensions. Pedagogy is defined as the mode of delivery of the curriculum. A number of approaches have been developed. These are imitation, didacticism, intersubjective interchange, and apprenticeship. The two most important learning theories, symbol-processing and situated approaches, allocate distinctive roles to learning styles, assessment, and meta-cognition. The fourth dimension is assessment or evaluation and this refers to the means for determining whether the curriculum has been implemented successfully.

Read full chapter

URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B0080430767024207

Introduction

One of the major concerns in the field of curriculum theory (CT) today has to do with the theoretical understanding of curriculum change. Who are the actors and forces driving curriculum change? I would argue that in order to understand these issues in a globalized world, we have to have theories and theoretical concepts that enable us to move beyond limited modernist approaches focused on linear processes of implementation. In this article, I will build an analytical argument for the use of new institutionalism, and especially its latest branch, discursive institutionalism (DI), as developed by Vivien Schmidt (2008, 2011), as a point of departure for such a dynamic analysis of curriculum change, which has hitherto been used very sparingly within the field of CT (cf. Young, 2015). In building my argument, I take my point of departure from Pinar et al.'s (1995) distinction between curriculum as development and curriculum as understanding. However, instead of treating them as historically exclusive, I see them as complementary. Curriculum as development refers to the different ways in which CT contributes to the development of curriculum texts and syllabuses and produces research of relevance to such developmental processes. Curriculum as understanding, in turn, refers to CT-at the same time-being able to make use of a variety of theoretical approaches in critically examining those very developmental processes. Such a critical approach gives the field of CT relative independence with respect to political, economic, or any other interests that are external to education (cf. Uljens and Ylimaki, 2017). Both development and understanding are thus legitimate and necessary approaches to CT. However, when looking at recent developments, there has been a strong move toward curriculum researchers providing useful knowledge to solve problems relating to policy and/or practice in line with curriculum as development. Following Biesta et al. (2019), I would argue that this development has become problematic as it seems to happen at the expense of educational research making use of its critical potential. Against this background, the contribution of new institutionalism to CT, as discussed in this article, should be seen first and foremost as a contribution to strengthen a theoretical understanding of curriculum, although I would argue that critical analysis also contributes to curriculum development.

Read full chapter

URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780128186305030207

Abstract

The entry attempts to analyze the complexity of curriculum and to reflect on what this means for curriculum theory in four steps. First, the history of the development of curriculum studies as an educational sub-discipline is reconstructed in its specific cultural milieu characterized by particular ideological preferences which became heavily contested in the last third of the twentieth century. In a second step, an excursus into the early seventeenth century demonstrates that "curriculum" is associated with a specific denominational religious interpretation of the world and that another religious system contained an idea of education and learning of its own, which was then called " Didaktik " and which differed substantially from "curriculum." Building on this, the third step shows how these different models became nationalized during the long nineteenth century and were thus understood as an effective means of educating loyal, national citizens in the respective contexts and that this nationalization affected not only schools but also science, both of which are shaped by national epistemologies. In a final step, there is a reflection on how research can deal with this institutional and epistemological plurality, and, on this basis, three different theoretical models are formulated, the most comprehensive version of which is tightly connected to a comparative educational history.

Read full chapter

URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780128186305030190

Conclusion

The place of gender within curriculum studies has developed considerably since the early years of the twentieth century. However, it continues to be an aspect of curriculum theory that takes place on the margins and needs to be central to the field as it moves forward. There are a number of areas that need attention in the years ahead; among them are issues relating to gender and curriculum in the developing world. As countries within the United Nations move toward the MDGs, it will be important to monitor how questions relating to gender and curriculum are addressed. In addition, while the progressive reconceptualist curriculum movement has challenged heteronormative constructions of the curriculum in recent years, there is still work to be done in further exploring the intersections of gender, sexuality, race, and class as they are inscribed in and by the curriculum. Further, there are aspects of gendered identities that are still to be examined in any depth in relation to curriculum studies. For example, the exploration of gender within the field of disability studies has not extensively explored the implications of that work for curriculum theory, neither has there been sufficient attention paid to the experiences of other marginalized groups such as women refugees, asylum seekers, and travelers. Finally, as the field of gender studies within social sciences develops, there will be further iterations of theories relating to the construction, embodiment, and performance of gendered identities that will have relevance for schooling. The future of gender and curriculum studies is one that will continue to be significant to the field as a whole, for it is in the reconceptualization of the curriculum in the light of multiple gendered and sexualized identities that questions regarding relevance, equity, and the nature of schooled knowledge itself become most salient.

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URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780080448947000476

Introduction

With the advent of the "knowledge economy", higher education (HE) has increasingly been viewed as the vehicle for transformative socio-economic change. Economists Maneejuk and Yamaka conclude that while "secondary enrollment rates positively affect economic growth" it is HE which is "the key to future growth and sustainability" (2021 : 520). It is no surprise therefore that research into curriculum theory has expanded as a field in the last half-century. South Africa (SA) is no exception, and HE curricula have increasingly been under pressure not only to transform the economic lives of its populace, but also to "reschool" South African society on a wide range of social issues. Examples include diversity and multiculturalism, HIV and AIDS, and internationalization, to name a few. Added to the specifics of South Africa's realities are the pressures of globalization, a weakening economy, and an ever-increasing gap between the haves and the have nots. The result is a heady mix of demands on the higher education system which, coupled with decreasing resources, results in yet more contestation over curricula in the system.

Higher education systems across the world have had to adjust to many of the same pressures, leading to a field of scholarship on curriculum which reflects on the conceptual, ideological and pedagogical issues that arise. As Lindén, Annala and Coate argue, "[a]lthough curricula are commonly investigated in HE research the field lacks a coherent theoretical approach to explaining the meaning and the importance of curriculum, particularly as part of the special role played by HE in society" (2017: 137). The incoherence results from the continuously increasing influence exerted by external stakeholders, the proliferation of the "knowledge economy", and the pressure for institutions to compete to prove "excellence". These are but some of the factors influencing how curricula are conceptualized, designed and articulated.

This chapter argues for the reschooling of higher education and focuses on a reconceptualization of the role of curriculum as central to this process. It raises, critically, the need for a society-wide reorientation of universities to respond to societal needs and challenges while addressing the competing ideologies that work to shape the decisions made in the sector. Curriculum theory is used to make sense of the dynamics at stake in pivotal shifts of the contemporary movements, such as decolonization, the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) and the pressure to "produce" future-fit graduates. The focus in this chapter is on the taught curricula in universities and not on the structural educational reforms that occurred, such as the introduction of qualification frameworks, quality councils, and so on. The South African context is not necessarily unique however, and there may be lessons to be learned by and from other countries, whether rich, middle-income or poor.

Read full chapter

URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780128186305021497

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The curriculum is defined as programs of teaching and learning which take place in formal settings. The four dimensions of curriculum theory are aims or objectives, content or subject matter, methods or procedures, and evaluation or assessment. The first dimension refers to the reasons for including specific items in the curriculum and excluding others.

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When first starting to build a thinking classroom, it is important that these tasks are highly engaging non-curricular tasks. As the culture of thinking begins to develop, we transition to using curriculum tasks. The goal of thinking classrooms is not to get students to think about engaging with non-curricular tasks day in and day out—that turns out to be rather easy. Rather, the goal is to get more of your students thinking, and thinking for longer periods of time, within the context of curriculum, which leads to longer and deeper learning.

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If we want our students to think, we need to give them something to think about-something that will not only require thinking but also encourage thinking. In mathematics, this comes in the form of a task, and having the right task is important. The research revealed that we have to give thinking tasks .

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Grade 1
Lesson 7
Objective; Use observations of the Sun's path across the sky to explain how the Polynesians navigated from island to island.

Materials:

A compass

A watch or clock

A clear day

A pencil

Some paper

Instructions:

1. Introduction:
Begin by introducing the concept of navigation using the sun. Explain that in the absence of a compass or GPS, the sun can be used to navigate in a particular direction.

2. Exploration:
Ask students to form groups of three or four and provide each group with a compass. Ask them to go outside to a clear open space and find the direction of the sun at that time. Encourage them to discuss and compare their findings within their group.

3. Explanation:
Bring the students back to the classroom and ask them to share their findings with the class. Encourage students to explain how they used the compass to find the direction of the sun.

4. Elaboration:
Provide students with the instructions to go outside and face towards the north, south, east, and west without using a GPS or compass. Ask them to use the information they have learned to explain and record how they knew the direction based off of their surroundings. Encourage them to work collaboratively and to use critical thinking skills to solve any problems that arise.

5. Evaluation:
After the groups have successfully faced all of the directions and recorded them ask them to reflect on the experience. Encourage them to discuss what they learned, what challenges they faced, and how they worked together to overcome them.

6. Conclusion:
Wrap up the activity by emphasizing the importance of critical thinking and problem-solving skills in real-world situations. Encourage students to continue developing these skills both in and out of the classroom.

Overall, this activity encourages students to engage in critical thinking, problem-solving, collaboration, and metacognition as they navigate using the sun. It helps them to develop a deeper understanding of the natural world and the skills they need to navigate it.

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go outside
reflect on what they find
share their finding with the class
use critical thinking skills to solve problems
encourage students to use their findings in and out of the classroom

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The Technology Integration Matrix is a framework for teachers to evaluate how effectively they are integrating technology into their lessons. It consists of five levels of technology integration (Entry, Adoption, Adaptation, Infusion, and Transformation) and five characteristics of learning environments (Active, Collaborative, Constructive, Authentic, and Goal-Directed). Teachers can use this matrix to self-assess their own technology integration practices and identify areas for improvement.

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The Technology Integration Matrix (TIM) provides a framework for describing and targeting the use of technology to enhance learning. The TIM incorporates five interdependent characteristics of meaningful learning environments: active, collaborative, constructive, authentic, and goal-directed. These characteristics are associated with five levels of technology integration: entry, adoption, adaptation, infusion, and transformation.

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Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics, Grades K-12: 14 Teaching Practices for Enhancing Learning (Corwin Mathematics Series)

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Amazon.com: Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics, Grades K-12: 14 Teaching Practices for Enhancing Learning (Corwin Mathematics Series): 9781544374833: Liljedahl, Peter: Books

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Title: Amplify
Subject: Science
Grade: 3rd

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Lesson 3.2 Discovering Climate through Data

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Subject: waves light/sound,  space, and traits.
Title: Expected Elementary School Unit Release Schedule
Grade: 1st

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Elementary Unit Release Schedule

Each OpenSciEd unit undergoes an 18-month development process that includes external reviews, a robust field test, and revision. OpenSciEd will be releasing units at the end of this process and after they are evaluated using the EQuIP Rubric and have received a quality rating. If your school system is considering using the OpenSciEd instructional materials, we would be happy to provide a presentation and answer any questions you may have.

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Unit Release Schedule - OpenSciEd High School Science Curriculum

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Each OpenSciEd unit undergoes an 18-month development process that includes external reviews, a robust field test, and revision. OpenSciEd will be releasing units at the end of this process and after they are evaluated using the EQuIP Rubric and have received a quality rating.

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OpenSciEd creates free, high quality, NGSS-aligned science materials and outstanding professional learning support that empowers educators to inspire all students with the beauty and wonder of science.

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Our Mission

To give teachers the materials, support, and power to get kids excited and curious about the world around them and confident in their ability to figure it out through questioning, investigating, and solving problems.

Our Core Values

We believe that:

All students can excel in science

Historical practices and entrenched cultural perceptions of science education need to be challenged

The science education community, together, can solve problems in science classrooms

High-quality science materials should be freely available and customizable

Science teachers feel empowered when allowed to use their expertise and creativity in the implementation of the materials

Professional learning is key in unlocking the power of great materials

Teachers and students need equitable and exciting learning experiences

We provide teachers the materials and support to get ALL students excited and curious about the world around them and confident in their ability to shape it through questioning, investigating, and solving problems.

Too many teachers know the reality of the opportunity gap, and too many students live that reality. In addition to existing and systemic educational inequities, COVID-19 has exacerbated the crisis disproportionately affecting Black and Brown students as well as traditionally marginalized populations. OpenSciEd exists to change the status quo and remove the predictability about who succeeds and shows affection for the STEM fields.

The high cost of quality science materials often prevents districts from adopting the best curricula, and those who invest in good programs do it at the expense of adequate professional learning that helps teachers make necessary instructional shifts. Being freely available, OpenSciEd creates an environment where districts don't need to make this compromise.

We believe that the best materials are rooted in the standards; created, reviewed, and approved by the science educator community; and field-tested to ensure their equity, efficacy, and usability. Our materials carry a creative commons license, which helps foster equal access to excellent, flexible materials that teachers can customize and adapt to meet the needs of their students. Our work is guided by the vision for science literacy described in the Next Generation Science Standards and supported by 10 partner states in the development of the materials.

Team Bios

Jim oversees the leadership of the project, hires and manages a small staff, and supervises the work of the curriculum developers consortium. The Executive Director is responsible for facilitating the Advisory Board meetings. He will be responsible for building partnerships with outside organizations to build revenue streams and/or networks that can support the spread of the materials. Jim has worked in a variety of capacities to improve STEM education for all students. He was a high school mathematics teacher and site administrator for ten years. He worked as an analyst, programmer, and team lead for Apple Computers, and then served in several leadership roles at Key Curriculum Press, a leading publisher of mathematics and science tools and curricula. In his work at Key he was Vice President of Professional Development and Marketing teams and led the creation of a new division focused on supporting the implementation of the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics. Prior to his current role, STEM Executive Director for San Francisco Unified School District where he oversaw the development and implementation of core curricula in math and science as well as the computer science for all initiative in SFUSD.

Sarah Delaney

Sarah coordinates communications with core partner states and facilitates communication between states and consortia. The Director will manage the interactions between the Developers Consortium and Learning Tapestry as well as oversee the public deployment of the completed units. Sarah comes to OpenSciEd from San Francisco Unified School District where she led the development and implementation of their Science Core Curriculum aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards across grades K-12. Sarah's experience includes six years as a middle school science teacher, four years as a professional development provider and instructional coach, and an exciting summer spent teaching science to three and four-year-olds. She has been involved in work at the state level, having been a part of California's development of an Environmental Literacy Blueprint and has led teacher professional development for teachers across all grade bands on a variety of science education topics.

Matt Krehbiel

Matt began his career in science education as a high school science teacher in Kansas, where he taught a wide range of high school science courses over ten years. In 2010, Matt joined the Kansas State Department of Education as the state science supervisor where he led Kansas' participation as a lead state in developing the Next Generation Science Standards, coordinated the standards adoption process that led KS to be the 3rd state to adopt the NGSS, and coordinated the state-wide effort to use the implementation of these standards as an opportunity to advance science education for all students. For his efforts to advance science education in Kansas, Matt was awarded the Kansas Association for Teachers of Science Outstanding Contributions to Science Education Award in 2013 and was selected by Bethel College for their Young Alumnus Award in 2015. Matt was elected President of the Council of State Science Supervisors in 2014 and transitioned to a new position at Achieve, where he became their Director for Science and coordinated efforts to develop the supply of and demand for high quality instructional materials designed for the NGSS. Matt also served on the Board on Science Education at the National Academies for Science, Engineering, & Medicine from 2013 through 2019.

Theresa Siliezar

As the Operations Associate, Theresa is responsible for the general operations of the organization. She will play a vital role in orchestrating the growth of OpenSciEd as a market leader in science education.

Theresa is deeply committed to her work in education and helping at-risk communities. Her most recent role in education was supporting Project Based Learning at PBLWorks as the Publications and Production Manager. For ten years she brought her project management skills to their publications department, while also meeting the e-commerce demands of a continually involving education community.

Prior to her current work in education, Theresa has an extensive history of supporting non-profits in the areas of humanitarian aid, physical disabilities, criminal justice, and homelessness. In her role as executive assistant, she mastered the art of office management, system implementation, teamwork, and customer service.

In addition to being passionate about providing a high quality education to marginalized communities, Theresa is excited about challenging her own limits and trying new experiences. She especially enjoys traveling to new destinations with her camera in hand to capture the land and people she meets along the way.

Our Commitment to Antiracist Action

We remain committed to acknowledging and taking on systemic racism in education. We recognize that the education system has often been a tool of oppression against people of color, specifically Black people, recreating power hierarchies and inequities. As science educators, we endeavor to develop science instructional materials and professional learning resources that provide equitable learning opportunities for historically disenfranchised students, with the goal to support their long-term self-determination. Our development process seeks to surface and address inequities in the engagement and participation of Black and Brown students in science learning, as well as other students who have been seen through a deficit lens rather than as knowledge builders in classrooms. Part of our work towards equity and justice involves recognizing the insidious ways racism has operated in science and rooting it out of science education. We strive to implement approaches that de-settle inequitable systems, routines, and assumptions that are in place in too many science learning environments and educational institutions.

We call on all curriculum developers to provide materials that bring forward and value all students' voices and surface the conversations that will empower students to own their education and their futures.

Our work as educators is central to the elimination of racism, Anti-Blackness, and white supremacy in science education and we dedicate our organization to advocate for and work toward a more just society.

OpenSciEd Brand Guidelines

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Science Materials - STEM Teaching Tools - About OpenSciEd

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To give teachers the materials, support, and power to get kids excited and curious about the world around them and confident in their ability to figure it out through questioning, investigating, and solving problems. We believe that: All students can excel in science Historical practices and entrenched cultural perceptions of

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3-PS2-1 Science 3rd Grade
3-PS2-1 Plan and conduct an investigation to provide evidence of the effects of balanced and unbalanced forces on the motion of an object.

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This lesson / unit could be better by giving the students a choice of what city they want to choose when studying their temperatures. This lesson could also be improved by modeling what is expected from the students.

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Thinking classrooms and curriculum are designed to promote critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving skills in students. The aim is to move away from rote learning and memorization towards a more engaging and interactive way of learning. Here are some of the basics of thinking classrooms/curriculum:

1. Active learning: In thinking classrooms, students are encouraged to take an active role in their learning. Teachers use a variety of teaching strategies, such as group work, discussions, and problem-solving activities, to promote active learning.

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#6 Overview for Elementary Science Curriculum Foundation

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#6 Overview for Elementary Science Curriculum Foundation

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We can integrate EdTeach into this curriculum by putting in padlet, or jamboard options, as well as putting in Youtube videos.

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Questioning techniques are an important part of thinking classrooms. Teachers use questions to encourage students to think critically, reflect on their learning, and make connections between ideas. Here are some questioning techniques commonly used in thinking classrooms:

1. Open-ended questions: These questions have no right or wrong answer and encourage students to think creatively and critically. Examples include "What do you think about...?" and "How would you solve this problem...?"