Deleware department of education DI-namic DI-namic stands for delaware extends its use of NASA materials in high school curricula 1 this proposal will use NASA materials and curricula to improve…

Deleware department of education DI-namic DI-namic stands for delaware extends its use of NASA materials in high school curricula 1 this proposal will use NASA materials and curricula to improve secondary stem teaching and learning by developing three standards-based courses that bill be used statewide in delaware high schools. Delawares k-12 statewide science curriculum, of the delaware science coalition, has been adopted/developed by a team of teachers and university professors who HA\c worked with the state for the past ten years, has been implemented in all schools, and has significantly raised student test scores. With support from basa, we can accelerate work on the statewide science curriculum for high school. The three courses we will develop have been selected because their content closely ties to NAS.4's mission and educational objectives. Our team WIL1 develop three courses for statewide use. These courses will fit in to an existing k-12 science program, filling gaps where no curriculum currently exists. The courses are: 1.9TH grade earth science: we will build students; understanding of energy and energy transfer in plate tectonics as a natural consequence of heat flow through the earth, using empirical evidence. This course includes a brief treatment of the origin of the solar system. 2.12TH grade environmental science: students will have taken a biology course in 10TH grade which includes evolution, genetics, and chemical biology. Delaware 11TH graders take both chemistry and physics. This 12TH grade course will integrate these sciences into a culminating course that engages students with contemporary issues. 3.12TH grade astrobiology: students will see how ideas from a variety of disciplines connect together to answer one of humanities deepest questions, ;are we alone?; experience in teaching this material shows that students respond well to the opportunity to become engaged with this topic. We will include NASA images in all of these courses. We have made a preliminary assessment of our curricular design for these courses and identified some NASA-developed curriculum packages which can play a promising role in the courses. Specifically, we hate in mind such units as 3D-view, signals of spring, and astros ventures, and special collections of images like the geomorphology from space CD. We request that our space grant education liaison actively work with US. We are aware of, and will adapt, the astrobiology curricula developed by NASA astrobiology institute in cooperation with NASA-ames research center. Our courses are for high school students. However, for US to reach these students, teachers and administrators need to adopt our curriculum. The delaware science coalition, formed a decade ago, offers a forum where teachers, science curriculum supervisors, principals, and district superintendents regularly meet, and have endorsed these courses. We expect that our high school curriculum, of which the courses supported by this project are an integral part, will be as successful as the k-8 curriculum has been. We measure success by measuring the fraction of the state's teaching force which signs up for our professional development workshops, since only teachers who participate in professional development can use the curricula and the materials which we provide. We will keep track of specific data relevant to NASA's educational frameworks such as the percentage of teachers who use NASA materials and the percent of students who perform at a passing level on our assessments.