Original Vision
Gilbert's Vision Statement
This vision is to provide every elementary student with an integrated, hands-on, inquiry-based curriculum that includes important science concepts and processes. The curriculum will:
- stimulate interest in science
- develop critical thinking skills
- facilitate positive attitudes toward science so that every student can learn at the highest level
- provide every student with equal opportunities to learn science
The district shares the following principles, which have been shown to ensure success in science for all students:
- Learning is an active process enhanced by hands-on, discovery-based experiences and by interaction with other students.
- To be meaningful, science must be taught in context rather than in isolation. It should be taught emphasizing the link between science and technology in society. A science curriculum needs to stress the broad application of the critical and analytic thinking skills developed through science instruction.
- Curriculum coverage should focus on a deeper understanding of scientific principles and processes by reducing the number of topics to be covered allowing each topic covered to be explored in more depth.
- Materials have to be available for teachers to support effective inquiry teaching/learning.
- Effectively changing the science program requires sustained teacher enhancement with teacher involvement in planning.
To accomplish this vision we thought we needed to:
- Adopt a complete curriculum of four units at each grade level
- Create scientist/teacher partnerships for each unit
- Highly train a core of science leaders - at least two from each elementary school
- Develop partnerships with outer school districts, organizations, and businesses
- Upgrade the time and quality of unit training
- Move more teachers into quality science content courses
- Have a half day of Vision Training in Science for all teachers
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