Science Team Meeting - 9/8/08

The meeting covered a discussion on the following agenda items:

- Student Notebooks: students will have notebooks in science with a table of contents and numbered pages for class notes and labs stapled to the applicable dated page. One suggestion was to have the notebook divided into sections for class notes, labs, etc. The idea is to increase student organization of notes. The teacher will also have a notebook, with a complete set of notes, to model what the students should have;
- Baseline assessments will be distributed by Wednesday to be given to the students by Thursday, Sept. 11. All grades will be given the same assessment, since the science curriculum is spiraled, and will only be scored to note what the students know and what knowledge they will need to gain by the end of the year. As an alternate means of assessment, we will explore the use of SCANTRON now being implemented by the Literacy teachers to do their reading baselines;
- Inquiry-based learning: students will develop projects based on the topic covered in class, with the teacher facilitating the gathering of information. This fits right in with...
- Renzulli Learning System: each grade will be signed onto the system through the science classes, 6 at a time. The students will receive a print out of their profiles which the teachers will use to help students establish their own goals and to help students come up with projects of interest across the curriculum. The target finish date is September 29. A copy of the student profile will be kept in...
- Student Data Binders: students will have a binder in which they will keep their information to track their progress and maintain a snapshot of where they are academically. It was suggested to keep a folder for each subject in the binder for any subject-specific data/assessments;
- Weekly walkthroughs will be conducted every other Wednesday beginning September 17. Several documents were shared with the teachers, including Science Instruction Checklist, Good Science Instruction, Project Based Learning and 8 Dimensions of Teaching and Learning, all of which can be found on the school wiki under the Teacher Page tab.