T278 Promoting Literacy about Earth System Science Concepts

Wednesday, 21 October 2009
1:30 PM - 5:30 PM
C123

STRENGTHENING THE EARTH SCIENCE LITERACY OF ELEMENTARY TEACHERS: A MONTESSORI APPROACH

Paper number: T278-10
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 4:00 PM – 4:15 PM

Authors

Abstract

St. Catherine University is developing a Graduate STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) Certificate program. This new faculty development program for Montessori teachers uses a summer institute model, providing in-service K-8 teachers with an intensive week of hands-on teacher training followed by an academic year of mentoring and support. Over the course of the program, teachers receive content knowledge instruction coupled with curricular design and modeling in STEM areas including Earth science, chemistry, life science and engineering.

The first course, Earth Science for Montessori Teachers, has been developed, taught, and evaluated and one year of follow-up teacher support has been completed. In addition to Montessori principles, we centered the course around concepts from Harvard University’s Project Zero and the Earth Science Literacy Principles, with a focus on the immediacy of surface processes, within Earth Sciences. We developed a teacher (and later student) activity –the Rock Cycle / Water Cycle poster – that we found particularly helpful in assessing content knowledge throughout the program. We provided each teacher a custom stream-table kit; these have been used throughout the year in the teachers’ classrooms. We discovered how rich the Montessori curriculum is in Earth Science concepts. It provided very fertile ground for supporting and enhancing teacher and student Earth Science content knowledge.

Many approaches used in the Montessori teacher workshop were repeated in a course for undergraduates majoring in elementary education. The course, “Robots and the Earth”, is the capstone offering in a STEM minor program designed to enhance the content knowledge and confidence, in STEM areas, of students majoring in elementary education. In both courses, we found the Earth Science Literacy Principles helped focus our course development efforts and the students’ “big picture” understanding of Earth Science.