Making Sense of SCIENCE™: Force and Motion for Teachers of Grades 6-8

By: Kirsten R. Daehler, Mayumi Shinohara, Jennifer Folsom

This comprehensive professional development course for grades 6–8 science teachers provides all the necessary ingredients for building a scientific way of thinking in teachers and students, focusing on science content, inquiry, and literacy. Teachers who participate in this course learn to facilitate hands-on science lessons, support evidence-based discussions, and develop students’ academic language and reading and writing skills in science, along with the habits of mind necessary for sense making and scientific reasoning.

Force and Motion for Teachers of Grades 6–8 consists of five core sessions:

Session 1: Motion

Session 2: Change in Motion

Session 3: Acceleration and Force

Session 4: Force

Session 5: Acceleration and Mass

The materials include everything needed to effectively lead this course with ease:

• Facilitator Guide with extensive support materials and detailed procedures that allow staff developers to successfully lead a course
• Teacher Book with teaching, science, and literacy investigations, along with a follow-up component, Looking at Student Work™, designed to support ongoing professional learning communities
• CD with black line masters of all handouts and charts to support group discussion and sense making, course participation certificates, student work samples, and other materials that can be reproduced for use with teachers

Also available are Facilitation Academies designed to prepare staff developers, district science leaders, and other teacher educators to effectively lead Making Sense of SCIENCE courses. For more information about Making Sense of SCIENCE courses and Facilitation Academies, visit us at WestEd.org/mss.

Additional Making Sense of SCIENCE courses will be available in 2012.