NRCA's Teacher Professional Learning program (TPL) will be held on the UConn Storrs Campus during three consecutive days in August (details below). The theme will be water, weaving in all three dimensions of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) framework: core ideas, key practices, and cross-cutting concepts.
TPL will focus on the connections between land use and water resource health. We'll start globally but quickly focus in on Connecticut. Concepts will be explored in the classroom but also in a half-day field tour of the UConn campus, which is known for its innovative stormwater management practices. Participants will be taught how to use existing online mapping tools to explore these concepts for themselves in ways that align with NGSS, and for their particular geographic area of interest.
This professional development workshop may be most ideal for high school teachers who teach in the Earth Sciences (via integrated or stand-alone courses), and will be teaching one of the following NGSS Performance Expectation (PE) bundles:
All participants will leave the workshop with 10-15 lessons on a Water & Sustainability Unit that are aligned with the PE bundles listed above. You can view an outline of the curriculum here. This unit was developed by UConn Neag School of Education researchers.
Day One
We’ll start at the global level but quickly bring the issues down to the regional and local scale. We’ll be in the classroom, but also carrying out field activities and field visits around the campus that illustrate points about sustainability of water resources from both the quality and quantity angles.
Day Two
The second part of the class will focus on the use of online mapping tools as a way to explore local water resources and connect them to larger issues. You will be exploring maps, but also making online maps of their own!
Day Three
On the last day, you will be devising tailored water module to take back to your students, based on templates provided by the instructors but also designed to be focused locally and to take advantage of your new skills.
Select participants and their classes may be interviewed when modules are implemented by UConn researchers to study the effectiveness of these modules.
Note: Below is an example from our last workshop year. Stay tuned for future workshop offerings.
If you have any questions, please contact: Laura Cisneros, Assistant Extension Professor
