Page prepared for SERC by Sandra Rutherford of Eastern Michigan University.

Capstone teaching methods class

15-30

This class is a seminar-style course with a prerequisite of a midlevel content class and a curriculum class. The students are all secondary pre-service teachers and are majoring or minoring in Earth Science Teaching or in the Integrated Science Major for Teaching. The class meets once a year in the fall only.

Students should be able to:

• use the blackboard or overhead effectively
• use PowerPoint
• speak in front of other students
• design a lesson plan
• alter a "cookbook laboratory" into an inquiry laboratory
• participate in a mock job interview
• learn the value of hands-on; minds-on activities
• find appropriate resources for teaching earth science
• understand laboratory safety
• become aware of the creativity involved with teaching
• increase their awareness of the kind of teacher they want to be with respect to rules and classroom organization
• improve their professional behaviors

• Activities for high school students including laboratories, projects, and demos
• Assessments for high school students including
  • authentic, formative
  • rubrics and grading
  • product
• Differentiation for high school students including
  • special education
  • TAG
• Writing in Science
• Technology in Science
• General Skills of Teaching
  • 5 E instructional model
  • misconceptions

Syllabus (Acrobat (PDF) 39kB Apr25 07)

For an example activity from this course, see Movie Clip Lesson Plan

The students have a variety of assignments to determine whether they understand earth science content with respect to a lesson plan. They have several opportunities for presentations and for being creative.

Most important are the new assessments they must pass to pass the course for NCATE. There are 4 assessments in this class. A general lesson plan, an inquiry lesson plan, a reflection of their work and their professional behavior disposition form.

Required Material

• Live Text subscription—This course requires a Live Text subscription. You must use Live Text for one or more assessments in order to pass this course. Live Text costs each student $66.75 for a five year subscription (or $81.75 if you add Untied Streaming video capabilities). United Streaming is not mandatory however it is a very powerful resource that you will want to consider purchasing.
• Content Textbook such as Earth Science by Tarbuck and Lutgens, 11th ed. Prentice Hall or another quality teachers edition high school earth science text no older than 1998
• Michigan State Board of Education, Michigan Goals and Objectives for Science high school http://www.michigan.gov/mde/0,1607,7-140-42814---,00.html
• National Research Council (1996) National Science Education Standards (http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/nses/ , Washington, D.C.
• Michigan High School Content Expectations http://www.michigan.gov/science/ http://www.michigan.gov/documents/Earth_HSCE_168206_7.pdf

My students have a course pack available on the ereserves. This is a collection of material from when I was a teacher. When they leave the class I also give them a CD with everything they have done as well as everything I used in my 8th grade earth science class. All in word files for them to alter.

I train the students in a few GLOBE protocols so they are aware GLOBE exists. They receive material from GLOBE as well. I have many earth science .pdf papers from the Science Teacher on the ereserves as well.

Of course they are introduced to SERC-CARLETON, DLESE and NDSL etc. http://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/
http://dlese.org
http://nsdl.org/
http://www.windows.ucar.edu/
http://www.globe.gov
http://www.nsta.org