MST PORTAL – Promoting Open, Reflective Teaching & Learning

What is Environmental Education? According to the Campaign for Environmental Literacy , environmental education:

• Includes learning in the field as well as the classroom
• Incorporates the teaching methods of outdoor education, experiential education, and place-based education
• Is inherently interdisciplinary
• Promotes school/community partnerships
• Is hands-on, student-centered, inquiry driven, engages higher level thinking skills, and relevant to students everyday lives
• Develops awareness, increases knowledge, builds skills, and creates the capacity for stewardship and good citizenship regarding the environment upon which we depend for life support.
• Helps address the causes of “nature deficit disorder”
• Boosts student achievement in math, science, reading, writing and social studies

Our work with students on our HP Technology for Teaching Leadership Grant directly ties their learning to real-world issues and challenges as we examine human impacts on the limits of our natural resources. With just nine days of school under our belt, 280+ students are now primed and ready to assume their roles as environmental scientist and take action. What have we accomplished as a team so far as we wade into environmental education with our kids?

• Team name: We are now known as the Klem South Stream Team.
• Collaborative space set up: http://streamteam.wikispaces.com.
• Making connections: So far we have 3 other schools across the country joining our work. Keep checking the wiki to see how the kids communicate their experiences with one another while extending their learning. Our first Skype call to chat with our learning partners took place today.
• Identifying on-site stream locations: This was tricky finding safe, accessible sites with homeowners permission to allow us access throughout the year, but we did it.
• Starting point for learning: We developed and administered pre-assessments K-5. As part of our partnership with SJFC, pre-service teachers will be conducting data analysis of both classroom and individual student performance and sharing their findings with our team so we may target instruction appropriately.
• Generate excitement: A core group of students held an assembly for all of the classes to introduce them to the project. Not a polished performance, but with only 30 minutes of planning time & writing their scripts, they did a good job.
• Start exploring: All classrooms have visited the MST room to explore the Why? and How? of the project. We’ve learned how to collect water quality data using handhelds and sensors as well as conduct a visual survey of the stream and surrounding area. We’ll also be examining and documenting the macroinvertebrates in our stream samples to provide important information on stream health.
• Get outside: Trips for 14 classes are scheduled and begin next Tuesday. Let the fun begin!

After all of our initial on-site visits have been completed, the real work by students in the classroom begins. Stay tuned for more.

Teachers at Klem South Elementary care deeply about environmental issues. If you are not familiar with the importance of environmental education for our children, please visit the Campaign for Environmental Literacy for more information. They have also been leading advocacy efforts on H.R. 3036 No Child Left Inside Act of 2008 , scheduled for a vote in the House this week. Click here to have a voice and take action on environmental education issues.

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My attendance at NECC in San Antonio was made possible through the HP Technology for Teaching Leadership grant award. Last year a team of five teachers from our school were awarded the Technology for Teaching grant and because of our success with implementing our Pond Partners project we were awarded the additional funding as part of the Leadership grant for year two. We now have 15 teachers on the project with 13 k-5 classrooms participating. Saturday and Sunday at San Antonio were spent in meetings with14 other schools awarded the Leadership grant to discuss and plan for the coming year.

Debra Reed, our district’s K-12 Science Curriculum Supervisor, and I mapped our course for next year. The biggest shift in year two of the grant is moving from project-based planning to an initiative based on systemic change for our elementary building. Here’s our draft from our initial planning sessions.

Focus of Team Initiative

Goal #1: Our most important initiative is to shift instructional practices in our school to become constructivist in nature using inquiry-based methods. Both problem and project-based experiences will be the foundation for long-term student-driven investigations centered on living environment concepts. All teachers and students should be involved in real issues that require creativity and innovation, communication and collaboration, critical thinking and problem solving to generate possible solutions and share findings and learning experiences with stakeholders.

Goal #2: Our second initiative is to increase the use of technology to facilitate learning for both teachers and students. We believe that technology (goal #2) must serve pedagogy (goal #1). We believe the infusion of technology must enable teachers and students to research, create, communicate, and collaborate. This initiative will create the transformative process we are seeking in technology infusion for our teachers and students.

Initiative Objectives

As a result of our initiative, teachers will:

• Understand constructivist theory
• Implement inquiry-based lessons (5E) and experiences (including PBL)
• Integrate technology into lessons
• Involve students in real-world issues that require creativity and innovation
• Establish their own personal learning network
• Design pre/post and formative/summative assessments tied to NYS/National standards
• Use data to inform instructional practices
• Work in collaborative teams focused on student learning

What will change?

Our current state of practice reveals many teachers using traditional, teacher-centered (didactic) direct instruction, where students are passive receptors of knowledge. The change will be the systemic impact on instructional practices and student learning.

As a result of our initiative, students will:

• Develop and implement their own scientific inquiry investigations
• Collect, organize, display, and analyze data from investigations to make decisions and develop solutions
• Increase content understandings related to the living environment
• Use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively
• Create and share multi-media presentations to reflect information learned through the project
• Exhibit a positive attitude toward using technology

What will change?

The change will be the shift towards a student-centered environment where they take the lead and responsibility for their learning and are supported and guided by classroom teachers.

As a result of our initiative, systems of technology support, leadership and administration will:

• Facilitate and support collaborative technology-enriched learning environments conducive to innovation for improved learning.
• Support hardware/software/networking

Plan for Measuring Impact on Teaching and Learning

Guiding Action Research Questions

1. What is the effect of implementing inquiry-based instruction on student learning?
2. How does technology support learning?

Multiple Measures of Data

1. Student Learning
   1. How do the post test measures of participating classes compare to the control classes?
2. Perceptions
   1. How do students, parents, and teachers gauge the importance/value of learning through inquiry?
   2. How do students, parents, and teachers gauge the importance/value of using technology?
3. Demographics
   1. How is student learning affected within various demographic groups? (special ed., gender)
4. School Processes
   1. How does the collaborative nature of this initiative support the shift in instructional practice and school/district goals?
   2. How does this initiative support collaborative technology-enriched learning environments that are conducive to innovation for improved learning?

Student Measures

• pre/post content assessment
• open ended task (post)
• journals/learning logs
• inquiry investigations
• graphing & analysis of data collection
• multi-media presentations
• surveys
• post reflections

Teacher Measures

• survey on student learning
• reflections
• pre/post HP technology survey
• pre/post Klem South pedagogy & technology use survey
• peer classroom observations

Leadership, Technology Support, & Administration

• survey
• reflections
• classroom observations

What’s important to note about this initiative is that it is TEACHER DRIVEN with administrative support. Planning for this systemic change for our school is incredibly exciting, yet brought about some personal stress and uncertainty. Last year it was a tremendous amount of work to be the Lead Teacher on the grant with just 4 other teachers and three classrooms working on the year-long project. Now that I’ll be working with 14 other teachers and 13 classrooms, how will we not only implement the environmental science year-long project with k-5 students, but also attain the pedagogical changes in instruction? In my next blog post, I’ll share what happened when our team of teachers in San Antonio met to tackle the obstacles and create a workable plan to create cohesion, excitement, and success for all teachers on the grant.

Questions and feedback on our plan are welcomed as well as other examples of systemic changes driven from the classroom.

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