Alignment with California Content Standards

Alignment with California Content Standards


Initial assumptions:

Attracting more students to engineering careers is a goal of IEEE.

You want to connect with middle school and high school students to achieve this goal.


Obstacles:

Few middle schools and even high schools have speaker days and career days anymore.

Even when they are available, speaker days and career days offer limited contact with students.

Teachers resist single career oriented exploration as taking too much time out of class.


Solution?

Help teachers deliver required content while also teaching the student about your profession.

This is easy . . .

. . . except for all the stuff I didn’t know when I came out of industry.


I didn’t know why I should be concerned with California content standards.• They standardize what is taught so your project or presentation works in all same subject classrooms.

•The longer you connect with students the more impact you will have, and . . .

• The longer you want to be in the classroom with students the more important it will be for you to incorporate standards.


When don’t you have to worry about standards?• Single class period presentation (like a speaker day).

• After school project or presentation.

• Club presentation.


What are California Content Standards?• Explicit content that students need to acquire at each grade level.

• Standards describe what to teach – not how to teach it.


I didn’t know:• that I should be interested in connecting with the same students for more than one class period.

• that I should be focusing on projects (new or existing).

• that I should connect with students who are studying a content standards based subject.


• English Language Arts, Adopted December 1997 • Mathematics, Adopted December 1997 • History-Social Science, Adopted October 1998 • Science, Adopted October 1998 • English Language Development, English Version, Adopted 1999• Visual and Performing Arts, Adopted January 2001 • Physical Education Model Content Standards, Adopted Jan-2005 • Career Technical Education, Adopted May 2005

What subjects have state content standards?

Students are tested in grades 2-11


http://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/

Where can our state standards be found?


Why do students and teachers care about standards?

Because they are both held accountable for them through testing.


California State High School Exit Exam - CASEE

STAR Testing (Standardized Testing and Reporting)

• CST (California Standards Tests)

State Academic Performance Index (API) Evaluates teachers, schools, districts, and students – drill right down to the classroom level

Federal NCLB Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) Tied to Title 1 money

• In our district this is $ 22,000,0000 !


I didn’t know how standards are used in the classroom.

•Textbooks

• Daily lesson plans and objectives

• Unit Tests

• Projects get aligned with standards


Keyword: Project (for us read HOOK)

• Teachers know what powerful teaching tools hands-on projects can be.

• This is called Project Based Learning (PBL)

• PBL engages multiple learning modalities

• Education jargon again. Multiple learning styles.

• But I found out that PBL is not used very often in the classroom!

Why?


Teachers have been taught to teach in traditional ways that don’t necessarily include PBL.

and,

Creating standards based projects takes a lot of time, creativity, and hard work.

and,

Teachers are not necessarily experts in the application of what they teach.

and,

They’re simply not used to doing it.


And,

Projects cost money.


So I learned that:

Teachers would like to do more projects but may lack the training, resources, and time to pull it off.

So here’s the money shot . . .


I became a standards supporting, project based learning, I understand what you’re facing, teacher champion!

And got invited to deliver 80 classroom sessions totaling 2,400 student hours of engineering workforce development this year.


Starting a new standards based project from scratch:

• Teachers know the standards, the subject matter, and the texts.

• You know the application of what they teach.


What subject should we use?

• Every student in 7th through 11th takes English and math (they call it Language Arts in middle school).

• Math is an easy connection, but almost any subject is found in engineering . . .

. . . Science, English, Social Science, Physics, History


More education jargon:

Cross curriculum project

You could potentially connect nearly every class in a common, engineering based project

Take a bridge, for example . . .

But we digress . . .


So we’ve chosen a subject, say math.

And we’ve chosen a target audience, say 8th grade

Notice we haven’t chosen our topic yet?

This is where we need to include teachers.


Our goal is to find the easiest way inside the classroom. . . which is:

Find a unit or units that students have difficulty with or the teacher thinks is especially important.

How?

Go to your nearest middle school (works just as well in high schools), find the lead math teacher or math department head, or principal . . .

. . . and say the magic words:


I’d like to bring a turn-key project to your classroom(s) that will support your content standards. I’ll provide the materials and the people to put it on (or help put it on if you will help us choose a topic that will really help you with a unit.

If you’ll assist us to put this together all you’ll have to do is help with classroom management. We’ll do the rest.

This never fails to connect you with teachers.


The teacher will help you:

Brainstorm a topic that will help him and interest his students.

Identify the content standards and lend you the text they use in class.

Coach you on what will work with their students.

Help you sell the project to other teachers.


See?

I told you it was easy!


The teacher will help you:

Brainstorm a topic that will help him and interest his students.

Identify the content standards and lend you the text they use in class.

Coach you on what will work with their students.

Help you sell the project to other teachers.


Existing projects are exactly the same.

Find the school.

Find the lead or department chair, or principal (or someone they recommend)

Ask for their help.

Tell them what you’ll do for them.


Variation on a theme:

Teacher delivered project:

Same process to create.

Teacher’s manual that clearly covers the material.

Box of supplies they will need.

Offer an engineer volunteer in the classroom.


Creating your own project outline with standards:

www.cteonline.org


Creating your own project outline with standards:

In California (but appropriate for all)

State Center Consortium

www.statecenter.com

A standards based approach for . . . lots of industries

A phenomenal primer!


Contact information:

Larry LobanEducation Entrepreneur for Engineering and TechnologySacramento City Unified School DistrictCareer Technical Preparation [email protected]

Documents

Alignment with California Content Standards