Curriculum Design
Accessible and Relatable Curriculum
Elementary School
In the spring of 2020, I wrote 4th grade lessons to be distributed across over 140 elementary schools in my district as part of students' distance learning materials. I included many supports to increase accessibility for multilingual learners and students with IEPs, including visual support and icons, alt text, and word banks. Each lesson aligned to 2010 Virginia Standards of Learning, and also includes a scenario to increase rigor and make it more relevant to students.
Observations and Inferences (VA SOL 4.1)
Open and Closed Circuits (VA SOL 4.3)
Plant parts and Speed (VA SOL 4.2 and 4.4)
Photosynthesis and Friction (VA SOL 4.2 and 4.4)
Accessible and Relatable Curriculum
Middle School
Students begin to have more negative feelings about science as they transition to middle school. To combat this, I worked to ensure that lessons are clear and include accommodations for all learners, including multilingual learners, students with IEPs, and Advanced Academic students. In this lesson, students used a hyperdoc to explore the Electromagnetic spectrum, and had choice in the level of difficulty of their exploration.
This artifact is an assessment of ionic and covalent bonding. Students sorted the chemical formulas on the sides of the document into the correct category. This assessment featured reduced language to increase access for multilingual learners and students with IEPs. On-demand read-aloud was also available to each student.
This artifact is a lesson written for a phenomenon-based module about climate change. Students are learning about how climate change affects weather patterns, and use a relevant phenomenon to explore this topic. This lesson is aligned to the Next Generation Science Standards.
Group of students using a very long Slinky to simulate and explore waves in the hallway.
Students explore density, a physical and characteristic property.
Problem-Based Learning
Problem based learning (PBL) is a student-centered approach where students learn content by solving an open-ended problem. While it has become a popular method in gifted and talented classes, it is important that all students have these experiences, as they build the 21st century skills that students need. In this PBL, students learned about physical and chemical properties while answering the driving question, "How can you, as a scientist, design a product that solves a common problem?