• Elementary Science
• Middle Grades Science
• High School Science
• Resources
  • DPI Science Consultant Directory
  • Listservs for Teachers and Administrators
  • Web Resources
  • New Curriculum Timeline
  • Testing
  • Other Resources

Elementary Science

The Elementary Mathematics and Science Section has gone through many changes over the last year. In that time, we have created a cohesive team of specialists to assist elementary teachers across the state of North Carolina.

Elementary Science Team Members:

Linda E. James, Section Chief, BS in Early Childhood, MAEd in Elementary Education, PhD in Curriculum and Instruction with a concentration in Elementary and Science Education. 10 years of elementary classroom experience, 8 years of university instruction in Science Education (ECU).

Melody Hudson, Program Assistance, 16 years of service at the Department of Public Instruction. She is an expert at working through the many procedures at DPI and an excellent support person for the consultants.

Bonnie Curtis, Science Consultant, BS in Elementary Education, MAEd in Elementary Education with Educational Leadership and Curriculum and Instruction add on Certifications. 11 years of elementary classroom experience, 5 years as a LEA Science Resource Teacher. 5 years as Elementary Curriculum Specialist, 1and a 1/2 years of university instruction in Elementary Science Methods, Barton College and Wesleyan College.

Beverly Vance, Science Consultant, BS Biology, MEd in Biology/Science Education. 12 years of middle and high school classroom experience. 1 year as Science Education Testing Consultant at TOPS. 5 years with MSEN at NCSU as an instructor for the Pre-College Program.

Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching are awarded to elementary teachers in even years. A reception honoring the finalists will be held September 21, 2006 from 4:00-6:00 pm at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, Raleigh, NC. The 2006 finalists in Science are:

Cheryl Collazo – Cumberland County Schools
Erin Denniston – Chapel Hill/Carrboro Schools
Francine Forsyth – Guilford County Schools

Future Plans for Elementary Science

• Elementary School Conference – Update Session October 9-10
• NCSLA - Update Session November 8
  NCSTA – Updates and Presidential Award Session, November 9-10
• Teacher Leader Cohort with Dr. Lorin Anderson December 11-13

Focus: Inquiry and Integration
The 2006-2007 Elementary Summer Leadership Institutes will offer mathematics and science content professional development in concurrent session in three areas across the state.

June 25-29 Central Institute, Camp Caraway, Sophia
July 16-20 Western Institute, Blue Region Conference Center, Asheville
August 6-10 Eastern Institute, Trinity Center, Salter Path

Middle Grades Science

Middle Grades Science is continuing to receive positive comments on the Support Documents and Strategies Book which came out in January of 2006. Since these documents are still "living" we will have extensions and revisions available on CD at the North Carolina Science Teachers Institute in November. LEAs can get the Support Documents and Strategies Book from publications at DPI or online at http:www.ncpublicschools.org/curriculum/science/middlegrades/

Edd Dunlap is the new Middle Grades Section Chief for Mathematics and Science. We are certainly glad to have him in this position. He has been with DPI as a Lead Science Consultant on the State Assistance Teams and with Raising the Achievement and Closing Gaps section. His e-mail is edunlap@dpi.state.nc.us and his phone number is 919-807-3607.

Other members of the Middle Grades Section are:

High School Science

DPI Resources
The new Reference Tables for the 2004 curriculum for Physics, Physical Science, and Chemistry are finally available as are many other useful resources. Please check our website at http://community.learnnc.org/dpi/science/.

List Serves
Now is the time to make sure new teachers are signed up for the list serves that can keep them updated on curriculum, testing, professional development, grants, contests, and teacher resources. And if your e-mail address has signed be sure you have made the change with all the list serves you subscribe to.

To sign up for DPI’s High School Science Teacher curriculum support or K12 Science Supervisor list serve e-mail Susan Hart at shart@dpi.state.nc.us. Let her know your first and last name, LEA, e-mail address and phone and ask to be added to the Support_Documents List Serve.

Science House http://www.science-house.org/info/comm.html has a great resource summarizing how to join various NC Science List Serves. We encourage everyone with an interest in Science Education to join NCSciteach which carries many non-DPI announcements of professional development opportunities, etc. 

Exit Standards 
New Exit Standards passed by the board will affect this year’s incoming 9th graders. To read more about the new exit standards please go to http://www.ncpublicschools.org/accountability/policies/highschoolexit

NCSTA Fall Institute
Please drop by and visit with us at DPI’s booth at the Fall Institute! We look forward to meeting you. Teacher Leaders and DPI Consultants will provide sessions on Biology, Chemistry, Earth/Environmental, Physical Science and Physics. DPI Consultants will also provide a session on increasing enrollment in higher-level science courses.

DPI Summer Science Leadership Institute
The Summer 2006 Institute held at UNC-Asheville was very successful. In addition to our regular curriculum based session we had two wonderful keynote speakers: Dr. Michael Ruiz, Physics Professor at UNC-A spoke on the Physics of Music and Dr. Carla Easter, National Human Genome Project spoke on the Human Genome Project. Our 2007 Summer Institute will be held from July 9-12. More information will be announced soon.

Resources

DPI Science Consultants

Listserves for Teachers and Administrators

Science Supervisors Listserve: Designed to communicate with Central Office Science Curriculum Supervisors. Science teachers are also welcome to join. To join send your name, LEA, e-mail address, phone number and job title to Susan Hart shart@dpi.state.nc.us. Note: Some school system firewalls prevent all list serve messages – please check with your Technology coordinator to be sure you can receive list serve messages. In some counties this has not been possible and supervisors have had to join with their home e-mail.

NCSciTeach: Science teachers list serve hosted at NCSU. This list serve includes a variety of professional development opportunities, contests for students, grants, and interesting science education news. We do not put non- DPI Professional Development announcements on the Science Supervisors List Serve. Therefore it is important for science teachers and supervisors to belong to both! To join the list visit http://lists.ncsu.edu/cgi-bin/mj_wwwusr and type ncsciteach in the mailing list box. Enter your email address on the next page and click subscribe.

High School Curriculum Support: Designed for high school teachers interested in serving on curriculum support committees. Members receive information for all subject areas and are expected to share with their departments. To join e-mail Susan Hart at shart@dpi.state.nc.us with all of your contact information (name, school, subject area, e-mail address and phone) and ask to be added to the High school science support documents list serve. Note: Some school system firewalls prevent all list serve messages – please check with your Technology coordinator to be sure you can receive list serve messages. In some counties this has not been possible and teachers have had to join with their home e-mail.

Middle School Curriculum Support: Middle School teachers can receive curriculum and testing updates by signing up to be on the Middle grades science list serve. To get on the list serve, please send your name, your school name, your LEA code, the grade you teach, email, and your phone number to Janet Bailey jbailey@dpi.state.nc.us.

Elementary Curriculum Support:Teachers can receive curriculum and testing updates by signing up to be on the elementary science list serve called “eScience”. To get on the list serve, please send your name, your school name, your LEA code, the grade you teach, email, and your phone number to Bonnie Curtis bcurtis@dpi.state.nc.us.

Web Resources

http://www.ncpublicschools.org/curriculum/science/ links to the curriculum, revised curriculum, curriculum support documents, sample EOC questions, etc.

http://www.ncpublicschools.org/accountability/parents/highschool links to test overviews and additional sample EOC questions sorted by goal

http://www.ncpublicschools.org/accountability/policies/highschoolexit information on Exit Standards.

http://www.ncpublicschools.org/accountability/testing/reports/archive the North Carolina State Testing Results, also known as the “Green Book”

http://community.learnnc.org/dpi/science NCDPI Curriculum and School Reform’s site hosted by LearnNC. Follow links to announcements, professional development, science safety and more resources! DRAFT Support documents are posted here!

http://www.schoolclearinghouse.org/pubs/SCIENCE.PDF school science facilities planner – helpful guide when designing or remodeling science classrooms, laboratories and prep rooms. Important information about safe science facilities.

http://149.168.35.203/publications_catalog/ look in the on-line catalog for various curriculum materials, science safety posters, science posters, etc.

Timeline for New Curriculum

• 2004 Curriculum adopted by SBE December 2003.
• Adoption of Instructional Materials - 2004-2005
• Revised Support Documents – Drafts available now at http://community.learnnc.org/dpi/science/
• Implementation for Elementary and Middle School 2005-2006.
• Implementation for High School: 2006-2007 (except Biology which will still have an operational EOC test based on the 1999 curriculum in 2006-2007).

Testing

• Contact Mike Jones, Education Consultant-Science, Technical Outreach for Public Schools (TOPS), (919) 515-1130, Mike_Jones@ncsu.edu
• Moving to embedded field testing
• Physics – will have be field testing an online test in 2006-2007.
• New Tests 5th and 8th - Operational in 2007-2008
• Biology will have an operational EOC based on the 1999 curriculum through 2006-2007.
• New EOC Science Tests field test in 2006-2007, operational 2007-2008

North Carolina Specific Resources for Developing Assessment:

Revised schedule for EOCs.
http://www.ncpublicschools.org/accountability/testing/revisionofscsposting112304.pdf

Form to volunteer to be an item writer or reviewer.
http://www.ncpublicschools.org/accountability/testing/itemwriters/

Style manual for item writers – information for science is on pages 18-21.
http://www.tops.ncsu.edu/control/Text/style%20manual.pdf

 Other useful Resources:

Brief description of advantages and disadvantages of different kinds of test items and checklist for item editing. http://www.oir.uiuc.edu/dme/exams/ITQ.html 

NAEP Question Tool:This is sample questions from the NAEP Assessment. Some good sample questions here –also information on how students score nationally on each item. It does take a little time to use. http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/ITMRLS/pickone.asp 

Edinformatics:This site pulls together links to states with released science test items. The site can help classroom teachers by providing model test questions. www.edinformatics.com

SCASS: This site is houses a database of science questions for use in the public domain. Log in as a “guest” and surf the database. www.sciencescass.org

Print Resources:

NSTA has published a series of science content books called Stop Faking It. These books are designed to help teachers better understand specific content topics. www.nsta.org Link to the store.

Misconceptions Research:

Private Universe materials including videos for teacher workshops can be located at the Private Universe website http://www.learner.org/teacherslab/pup/

Making Sense of Secondary Science: Research into Children’s Ideas. (1994) Rosalind Driver, Ann Squires, Peter Rushworth and Valerie Wood-Robinson. RoutledgeFalmer Taylor and Francis Group New York. ISBN 0-415-097657

How Students Learn Science in the Classroom. (2005). National Research Council. M. Suzanne Donovan, John Bransford, editors. National Academies Press, Washington, DC. ISBN0-309-08950-6