500

Students will focus on using the local environment as a unifying theme for interdisciplinary learning at all grade levels. Field work will predominate. Students will investigate soils, rocks and fossils; plants; animals; and other components of natural systems; and how these factors interact to create ecosystems. Students will write and model lesson plans and accompanying assessments which will address N.Y.S. learning standards.

Students learn how to use a one-square-kilometer area surrounding their school as an outdoor laboratory for interdisciplinary learning. Students learn how to keep field journals, read and create maps, do ecological survey, use community resources, and create a plan for interdisciplinary place-based natural and cultural studies linked to their curriculum.

Students will learn how to use a specific component of the local natural environment - vernal pools - in their standards-based curriculum. Students will learn how to keep field journals, read and create maps, identify vernal pool organisms, enter data into the project Website, and become part of a growing community of citizen scientists focused on these unique and threatened ecosystems.

An examination of how science ideas are constructed in informal and formal social settings. Exemplary science teaching methods will be demonstrated and evaluated. Research focusing on elementary students' formal and naive science understanding concerning the relationships between the Earth, Moon, and the Sun will be investigated in detail.

The behavior of simple electronic circuits is examined as a basis for the constriction of scientific models, which allow for the prediction and explanation of electrical phenomena. The course concludes by examining magnetic interactions to develop a model of behavior of magnets and magnetic materials.

An examination of how science ideas are constructed in informal and formal social settings. The course investigates and begins with the investigation of the formation of shadows and images. The course then develops a mental model that helps students account for the behavior of light in the formation of images and the effects of color. Exemplary science teaching methods will be demonstrated and evaluated. Research focusing on elementary students' formal and naive science understanding of light and color will be examined.

The course studies how motion can be described in terms of the concepts of position, displacement, force and speed. Graphical and algebraic representations are introduced and used to predict and represent the motion of objects.

An examination of how science ideas are constructed in informal and formal social settings. The course investigates some basic properties of matter. The course will also develop the concepts of mass, volume, and density and use these in the context of how students explain physical phenomena. The inquiry will be extended to the study of solutions while providing a context for developing the important scientific skills of proportional reasoning, reasoning by analogy, and control of variables.

Courses which are interdisciplinary in science and education. Titles and topics will vary each semester based on instructor and student interest.