Science

21st Century Curriculum Design in ACPS Content and Program Areas: Science

Students in classroom An effective 21st Century science curriculum promotes students' development of scientific habits of mind, including the capacity for careful observation, hypothesis generation and testing, critical and creative thinking, and self-regulated thinking. Perhaps most significantly, students' involvement in an effective science curriculum ensures that they internalize the big ideas of science, including the universal concepts of science (i.e., understanding how everything fits together within and across scientific disciplines such as earth and space science, life science, and physical science).

Key Curriculum Design and Learning Principles for Science:

  • An effective science curriculum emphasizes inquiry-based laboratory experiences, encouraging students to come up with their own questions and designs and find their own answers to significant scientific questions.
  • Science curriculum will encourage students to explore all types of inquiry, from teacher-directed to more open-ended, student-led inquiry that emphasizes student interests.
  • The instructional/pedagogical practices included in an effective science curriculum should reflect a range of teaching strategies and organizational approaches, including cooperative learning and inquiry-based individual student hypothesis testing.
  • Students in science should be engaged in seeing it as a pathway to understanding themselves, their world, and their universe.
  • A great science curriculum promotes students' life-long excitement about scientific investigation, formulating and testing hypotheses, questions, and predictions.
  • The most effective science curriculum emphasizes big ideas and essential questions that students revisit at multiple grade levels, getting them excited about science, building upon their progress from elementary to middle to high school and beyond.
  • Students' investigation of science must connect to their own passions and interests.
  • We must ensure that professional development supports all educators to understand and support these principles through experience-based, inquiry-driven, and technology-focused lesson study, study groups and collaborative cohorts.

Exemplary Science Programs Reflecting These Principles: Students in classroom

  • ACPS Science Fair: This annual event serves as the pathway for the Intel Regional, State, and International Science and Engineering Fairs. The primary goal of the ACPS Science Curriculum and the Virginia Science Standards of Learning is to teach students how to investigate and understand scientific phenomena through independent research. By emphasizing these techniques through the science fair, our teaching does not limit the student to one observable behavior such as "describe" or "explain". To do so would narrow the interpretation of what is intended to be rich, highly rigorous, and inclusive content standards. The concepts of "investigate" and "understand," however, employ the use of scientific methodology and suggest that inquiry skills were present during the learning process. Participating in the science fair is voluntary and is a fun way for students to learn. By joining us for this event, you will be introduced to a diverse group of young scientists, some of whom will be very nervous first-time researchers and others who will be experienced science fair participants.
  • Inquiry-Based Science Kits and Materials: These resources are available in grades K-8. These materials emphasize concepts that help students to understand the scientific principles instead of memorizing isolated facts. At the elementary grades, the goal is to have at least one inquiry based program at each grade level K-5. Currently, all elementary grades have at least one physical science kit with Earth Science kits in the process of being selected and implemented for the upper elementary levels.
  • The Independent Science Research Class: Offered at the high school level, this class has students researching their own projects, collaborating with university professors and hearing guest lecturers. For example, in December a physics and mathematics expert spoke to the students about some of the more recent developments in String Theory.