Chicago public schools capstone course for space science: the chicago public schools capstone course for space science will provide students with innovative engagement in scientific research. Students…

Chicago public schools capstone course for space science: the chicago public schools capstone course for space science will provide students with innovative engagement in scientific research. Students and teachers will participate in an intensive workshop experience, then move to sustained inquiry via a science fair project and end with a capstone course designed to use their experiences to explore issues in astronomy. Ultimately, this program has the potential to reach students at 120 different high schools. CPS is collaborating with researchers at five local partners: the adler planetarium, loyola, northwestern, and depaul universities, and the university of chicago. Each will offer a four-week summer workshop for teachers and their selected students using NASA content to design an original investigation. The goal is to provide students and teachers with the tools to engage in independent scientific inquiry. During the school year, students will develop and execute a research study using NASA content, for the CPS student science fair. Now in its 59TH year, this program brings students and practicing scientists together to evaluate independent student research. The science fair serves as a preliminary competition to both the illinois junior academy of science (IJAS) state science fair and the intel international science and engineering fair. In the summer of year 2, a second cohort of students will get workshops. In addition, returning cohort 1 teachers will receive professional development and preparation to implement the capstone course. During the academic year, we will implement the capstone course as an elective for seniors. IT will allow students to use their prior science instruction as a basis to conduct research in 5 different areas of space science. Students completing the course will have had multiple experiences in conducting experiments and analyzing data, and a better understanding of how different science disciplines connect synergistically to support discovery. Each of the five partners will use different NASA content as the basis for their four-week course. The adler planetarium will use NASA S lunar reconnaissance orbiter (LRO) camera mission. Loyola will use the NASA kepler mission. Depaul will use the NASA scientific ballooning program research technique. Northwestern will use aqua and cloudsat missions data. Chicago will use hubble space form the basis for the course. Telescope, cameo, voyager, and SIM data. The modules and instructional techniques developed for the summer workshops will form the basis for the course. This is a two-fold instructional approach. First, students will work in small groups with practicing research scientists on real-world problems using either NASA data or research techniques (e.g. scientific ballooning). Rarely, if ever, do students get the opportunity to learn science content and process first-hand from scientists in the course of scientific investigations. Second, students will then build on this summer learning experience throughout the academic year as they continue their research projects as well as scientific coursework. Ultimately, this coursework will take the form of an elective capstone course built from the workshop modules using NASA data to support student projects and investigations. By using the summer experiences as a design and evaluation step, we can ensure that the capstone course meets our objectives of a) offering a rigorous opportunity for students to improve and expand their scientific investigation skills, B) developing students understanding of space science and its connections with other science disciplines, and C) nurturing students interests in science with the hope of retaining and increasing students involvement in stem. Furthermore, we believe the structure that we will develop has potential to serve as a structure for future research experiences for teachers (RET), funded by NASA science projects at the partner institutions.