Green Schools Energy Curriculum – What opportunities do school buildings themselves provide for helping students develop a scientific foundation for making choices about energy resources and their use? In this exploratory study funded by the National Science Foundation, Project 2061 has developed an outline for a Green Schools Energy Curriculum and gathered feedback from the field on the feasibility of such an approach and what it would take to implement it. Contact: George DeBoer, Principal Investigator, gdeboer@aaas.org
Toward High School Biology – Developed with support from the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences and in partnership with BSCS, AAAS Project 2061 has developed and tested an innovative eight-week curriculum unit designed to integrate physical and life science concepts to help middle school students understand chemical reactions and their role in the growth and repair of living organisms. Field test results have shown that students using the new unit, which is designed to align with the three dimensions of science learning called for in the Next Generation Science Standards, have significant learning gains when compared to students using their district curriculum. The Toward High School Biology unit is available from NSTA Press and includes a Student Edition workbook, a comprehensive Teacher Edition, and a set of online resources. Contact: Jo Ellen Roseman, Principal Investigator, jroseman@aaas.org
Explore a sample chapter from the Teacher Edition.
Download a summary of the Toward High School Biology unit.
Read more:
- Roseman, J. E., Herrmann-Abell, C. F., & Koppal, M. (2017). Designing for the Next Generation Science Standards: Educative curriculum materials and measures of teacher knowledge. Journal of Science Teacher Education, 28(1), 111-141.
- Herrmann-Abell, C. F., Koppal, M., & Roseman, J. E. (2016). Toward high school biology: Helping middle school students understand chemical reactions and conservation of mass in nonliving and living systems. CBE-Life Sciences Education, 15(4). DOI:10.1187/cbe.16-03-0112.
- Roseman, J. E., Herrmann-Abell, C. F., & Kruse, R. (2016, April). Integrating NGSS core ideas and practices: Supporting and studying teachers' implementation. Poster presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Washington, DC.
- AAAS Project 2061. (2017). Toward high school biology: Understanding growth in living things - Introducing a new middle school curriculum. Washington, DC.
- Roseman, J. E., Fortus, D., Krajcik, J., & Reiser, B. J. (2015, April). Curriculum materials for Next Generation Science Standards: What the science education research community can do. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching. Chicago, IL.
WeatherSchool@AAAS Website - This online tool lets students analyze patterns in real-world data collected by weather stations, satellites, and other observation sites on land and sea. Supported by NASA and NOAA, this effort is also producing assessments that educators can use to get a better picture of what students know and don’t know about weather and climate concepts. Contact: George DeBoer, Co-Principal Investigator, gdeboer@aaas.org