GBH Education, co-producer of PBS LearningMedia is seeking a grade 3-5 AZ science teacher who might collaborate with us on the National Science Foundation proposal described below. Interested/curious educators can respond to Carolyn_jacobs@wgbh.org who will introduce you to the project lead, Shawn Stevens, Director, STEM Curriculum and Instruction for much more background. Please respond by August 22nd. (Feel free to pass this along to your colleagues.)
GBH Education is currently working on an NSF DRK-12 proposal for the project, One Earth for All Peoples, which focuses on creating instructional materials for Grades 3–5 that focus on Earth as a system and the role that people play in that system.
To prepare students to understand and deal with complex issues like climate change and its impacts, it should be beneficial to start kids building proficiency considering complex systems in the elementary grades. We’d like to develop project-based learning (PBL) units to engage students in socio-ecological phenomena in the Earth system that are relevant to their lives and address the impacts that various factors have on local environments and communities. The resources will address NGSS performance expectations and Geography standards related to the interactions between people and the physical environment. We will investigate how students’ ideas about the Earth as a system, and their role in it, develop during the Grade 3–5 level.
