Giving teachers a helping hand

At the heart of the Sanford Lab Summer Teacher Workshop is the desire to help teachers across South Dakota facilitate three-dimensional science learning. This year, 63 teachers attended a week-long summer institute June 12-16, which was held at Black Hills State University and the Sanford Underground Research Facility and facilitated by the entire Education and Outreach staff.

Two years ago, E&O developed and implemented several curriculum modules for use in K-12 classrooms. The summer workshop focused in part on equipping the teachers to implement these specific units. Also through learning about the units, teachers developed more generalizable pedagogy related to curriculum design, adaptation, and integration of the three dimensions, classroom discourse, questioning and assessment. Along the way, teachers deepened their content knowledge across a wide array of science and engineering disciplines.

“Many teachers do not have a mental framework for three-dimensional instruction in practice, which is new with the recently adopted South Dakota Science Standards,” said June Apaza, director of Education and Outreach. “Teachers can’t do what they can’t envision. We see a critical role in helping teachers reate that vision.”

The teacher workshop utilizes Sanford Lab instructional units as models to help provide teachers with this vision. Facilitators shared how the units were developed and helped participating teachers reflect on adapting their current curriculum to better align with the new state standards.

The professional development placed a strong emphasis on anchoring lessons with scientific phenomena and engineering design challenges.

“Teachers find it difficult to identify engaging phenomena and design challenges, yet doing so represents an important shift,” Apaza said. “It is imperative to show teachers models, give them experiences, and support them through implementation —and ultimately helping them achieve the model of teaching and learning required by the new standards.”

The workshop was funded by U.S. Department of Education/SDBOR Title II Part A funding and Sanford Lab.

What teachers are saying about the workshop:

“This workshop was very informative and helped with my comfort level with the NGSS. The new standards are so complex that any increase in comfort is huge!”

“I really need this in my classroom.”

“I came to this workshop thinking I knew more than I did. After this workshop I realized there is such a large amount of information to learn it is almost overwhelming. I learned a lot, but I need to spend more time learning.”

“I would love to use all of your curriculum units!”

“To be honest, in the past, I haven’t really thought about Three-Dimensional lessons, but I am going to start next year.”

“Thank you for giving us the ‘how-to’ activities. So many workshops are the theory and the ‘why’ but the ‘how-to’ is missing. Please keep that going in the future.

“Loved the week, Thanks!”

“I had so much fun, thanks for everything!”