Modeling Instruction Workshop
We invite you to apply for a 3-week professional development opportunity in physics. The program is suitable for physics and physical sciences teachers at High School. This workshop is run by teachers, for teachers. It is being hosted by the three Regent's universities as a way to build community amongst physics educators.
Modeling Instruction is completely aligned with the practices outlined in the Iowa Core curriculum: the program cultivates teachers as school experts on effective use of guided inquiry in science teaching, thereby providing schools and school districts with a valuable resource for broader reform. Program goals are fully aligned with National Science Education Standards. The Modeling Method corrects many weaknesses of the traditional lecture-demonstration method, including fragmentation of knowledge, student passivity, and persistence of naive beliefs about the physical world. (see http://modeling.asu.edu/modeling-hs.html).
Register Here
Questions: cogilvie@iastate.edu
This workshop is funded by a Grant from the Roy J. Carver Charitable
Trust
Program Objectives
- To provide high school teachers with a strong rationale for instructional design and pedagogical practice.
- To provide high school teachers with a unifying approach to the different sections of a physics course.
- To build community amongst physics educators
- To improve student learning of physics
Major Activities
- Teachers will begin the program with an introduction to modeling.
- Most of the time will be spent working as students on modeling activities
- Instructionally, modeling begins with a paradigm event, group examination, interpretation and deliberation while processing data, and purposefully induced student discourse in a whole class discussion of results.
- The end result is a conceptual model using a variety of representations (numerical data, graphs, symbolic relationships, diagrams, maps, and linguistic interpretations).
- Following the model development stage, students are exposed to a wide variety of situations in which they have to test and refine the model, called the deployment stage.
- The deployment stage is characterized by students representing interpretations of situations on small marker boards and publically negotiating appropriateness through student discourse and Socratic questioning.
Program Highlights
- Stipend: approximately $750/week for 3 weeks
- Travel: travel allowance or on-campus housing. The exact amounts of travel allowance will depend on how many applicants require this funding from our fixed budget.
- Classroom supplies allowance to incorporate modeling into classroom and curriculum
Program Dates: June 13 - July 1, 2011
Application Deadline: March 15, 2011
