Archives
Region 2 Update: Spring 2023
It’s that time of the year when many of our students, teachers and administrators in Region 2 (and across the state) are gearing up for their annual Science Fairs. Many have continued with the tradition of the large Science and Engineering Fair like…
Sky happenings for March 2023 and beyond
March opens with a spectacular pairing of the two brightest planets at dusk, Venus and Jupiter. They appear closest to each other, just half a degree apart – about the apparent width of the Moon’s disk – on Wednesday, March 1st. They’re still 11°-12°…
Why We Teach Science
It’s Springtime, and the school year is getting to feel a bit long in the tooth. Testing might be zapping the life out of the year, and students and teachers are starting to count days. It’s been a very rough few year(s), and summer is calling…
Region 4 Update: Spring 2023
The CA NGSS have an important birthday this year! 10 years ago, the State Board of Education adopted the CA NGSS as our science standards. With this exciting birthday, we want to celebrate the amazing work that is happening in Southern California to…
Planned Happenstance in Career Exploration
We’ve grown up being asked that question as early as Kindergarten and we continue to ask that of each other and ourselves throughout our years. From an early age we are conditioned to pick a title/career and focus solely on that career as we navigate…
STEAM Micro-Credentialing: Cultivating Educator Excellence
How can we cultivate and validate educator expertise in STEAM?
As the number of schools identifying themselves as STEAM increases, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) Human Resources Division developed and launched a research- and…
Science Education in an Age of Misinformation
Today, students turn to the internet for information about a range of science-related issues, like COVID variants and climate change. However, misinformation (misleading information shared by mistake) and disinformation (fake information shared with…
Making a Case for Elementary Science through STEAM
This October at the CASE conference in Palm Springs, the Call to Action for Science Education was heard loud and clear. One point really stood out to me: “Scientific thinking and understanding are essential for all people navigating the world, not…
5 Strategies to Support Multilingual Learners
English is not the primary language for a large number of students in the United States. And for many of them, academic challenges are compounded by struggles with language. How do we ensure we are properly supporting this population?
California Skies, Winter 2022
Coming events, December 2022 and beyond: Occultations of Mars by the Moon will be visible in parts of the U.S. on the evenings of Dec. 7 (a Full Moon, the next one after the eclipse), and Jan. 30 (a waxing gibbous Moon). From Los Angeles and Palm…