Welcome

Welcome
This 16-week graduate level course has been developed at the Center for Educational Technologies™, Wheeling Jesuit University. This course is structured as a collaborative, inquiry-based model and is held in an electronic environment where K-4 teachers can study Earth system science.

This course is designed around essential questions for you and your students to address. Essential questions allow students to take more responsibility for learning in every lesson because they provide clear expectation of what students should know and be able to do. Essential questions

are posed within the context of important life questions;
are written so students can understand them;
have no obvious right or simple answers;
require higher order thinking and problem-solving or decision-making skills;
use concepts which require students to organize their knowledge to uncover important ideas now and in the future.

Asking and answering essential questions serve as powerful educational tools because they help teachers and students focus learning on building relevant knowledge that is centered around a particular idea or concept.

Overview: The first three weeks of the course will provide an introduction to the other course participants, your team members, and Earth system science.

In the fourth week of the course, you will begin the first of four, three-week cycles during which you will examine a different sphere (land, living things, water, air).

During each week of the cycle, you will work on individual and team assignments. In Week A: Teacher As Researcher of each three-week cycle, you will conduct an activity with your students and reflect on the effect it has had on their learning. As a team, you will develop Criteria for Effective Activities. Week B: Teacher As Scholar is devoted to improving your Earth system science knowledge by answering your individual questions and by addressing essential questions with your team. In Week C: Teacher As Designer, you will design a sphere lesson for your students and explain in your portfolio how the lesson helps students answer their essential questions. You will also offer feedback to your teammates concerning their sphere lessons.

In the last week of the course, you will weave the four sphere lessons you have created in the previous weeks into an Earth system science unit plan that addresses a unifying essential question, problem, puzzle or situation so that students will apply what they have learned from those lessons to achieve a greater understanding of Earth's interacting systems. You will also provide a rationale for your unit plan design stemming from your action research, scholarship and sphere lesson design experiences as well as you collaboration with teammates.

Course Goal: To identify how students develop Earth system science concepts through hands-on activities.

Specifically, answer the following questions:

How do you know what students are learning about content and process from hands-on activities?
What are the characteristics of hands-on activities which effectively help students to develop knowledge about Earth as a system?
What is the relationship between how you teach during a hands-on activity and what students learn?
How will you use what you have learned to help your students address essential questions in Earth System Science?

Methodology: To address the questions above, you will act as an action researcher, scholar, and designer and will:

collaborate in learning teams of four to six teachers;
work with a facilitator and an Earth Science mentor;
engage in weekly online discussions;
use Earth system science activities with your students;
offer feedback to the other participants; and
reflect on your own learning in an online portfolio.

Outcomes: As a result of your research, interaction, reading, and reflection, you will:

develop action research skills for assessing student growth in addressing the essential questions of Earth system science;
develop criteria for activities that are effective in helping students address the essential questions of Earth system science;
increase your own scholarly knowledge of Earth system science by locating and posting resources to answer essential questions;
learn to collaborate with other course participants as designers in developing sphere lessons; and
create a comprehensive unit plan composed of sphere lessons to have your students address essential questions about land, living things, water, and air and their relationships in Earth system science.

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HTML by Chris Kreger
Maintained by ESSC Team
Last updated August 04, 2000