Archives
Celebrate Earth Day With CASE!
Earth Day will be here soon, and CASE is ready to celebrate! Our celebration won’t be just for a day, but for five! This year’s theme is “Restore our Earth.” Each day, we’ll give you tips to share with your class on how to help restore different…
The Space Race as a Model for Transforming Education in California
The space race began on October 4, 1957 with the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik. In less than one year, the U.S. Congress passed the National Defense Education Act of 1958 (NDEA) with the hope of spurring changes within education that would lead to…
California Skies, October through January 2021 (and beyond)
These star maps, Sky Calendars, and monthly summaries of sky events for October 2020 through January 2021 are intended to help teachers guide students to embark on following the seasonal progression of the stars; to notice changes in the arrangements…
California Skies, August through October 2020
These star maps, Sky Calendar, and detailed monthly summaries of sky events for August through October are intended to help teachers guide their students to a memorable start in naked-eye astronomy. Jupiter and Saturn appear near each other in the…
Informally Yours
Congratulations!! You made it to summer vacation…one more deserved and needed than any other. The last few months have been challenging to say the least. When I was first given the go ahead to work from home, I was ecstatic. I won’t lie and say there…
Does State Testing Help or Hurt Science Education?
CSTA and the STEM4Real team put this question up at the CSTA booth at the CA STEAM Symposium in Anaheim last December. We hoped the poster would get people interested in visiting our booth and start some discussions. We had no idea. As you can see,…
Sit Back, Put Your Feet Up, Relax, and Read
What better way to wrap up the 2019-20 edition of CCS, than to recommend a variety of books that you or your students might enjoy in the coming months. Here are five books representing environmental, physical and biological sciences.
Transforming the Classroom with OpenSciEd
How often have you heard the following questions from your students: Why do I need to know this? Is this going to be on the test? Why does this matter? I, like you, have heard these questions repeated like a broken record over the years of being a…
Making Choices and Making Messes: What student agency looks like in science classrooms
The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) encourage students to not just “know about science,” but to actively engage in “doing science.” Rather than carrying out pre-designed investigations, students should have “epistemic agency,” or ownership…
Science Adoption is Here!
Curriculum adoption is upon us! It is an exciting time to finally be getting a curriculum for science, but also a daunting task. Teachers know that curriculum comes and goes, but for the several years we have one, we have to make sure it's a good…