Alignment with California Content Standards
Alignment with California Content Standards
Initial assumptions:
Attracting more students to engineering careers is a goal
of IEEE.
You want to connect with middle school and high school
students to achieve this goal.
Alignment with California Content Standards
Obstacles:
Few middle schools and even high schools have speaker
days and career days anymore.
Even when they are available, speaker days and career
days offer limited contact with students.
Teachers resist single career oriented exploration as
taking too much time out of class.
Alignment with California Content Standards
Solution?
Help teachers deliver required content while also
teaching the student about your profession.
This is easy . . .
. . . except for all the stuff I didn’t know when I came
out of industry.
Alignment with California Content Standards
I didn’t know why I should be concerned with California
content standards.
• They standardize what is taught so your project or presentation works in all
same subject classrooms.
•The longer you connect with students the more impact you will have, and . . .
• The longer you want to be in the classroom with students the more
important it will be for you to incorporate standards.
Alignment with California Content Standards
When don’t you have to worry about standards?
• Single class period presentation (like a speaker day).
• After school project or presentation.
• Club presentation.
Alignment with California Content Standards
What are California Content Standards?
• Explicit content that students need to acquire at each grade level.
• Standards describe what to teach – not how to teach it.
Alignment with California Content Standards
I didn’t know:
• that I should be interested in connecting with the same students for more
than one class period.
• that I should be focusing on projects (new or existing).
• that I should connect with students who are studying a content standards
based subject.
Alignment with California Content Standards
What subjects have state content standards?
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•
•
•
•
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English Language Arts, Adopted December 1997
Mathematics, Adopted December 1997
History-Social Science, Adopted October 1998
Science, Adopted October 1998
English Language Development, English Version, Adopted 1999
Visual and Performing Arts, Adopted January 2001
Physical Education Model Content Standards, Adopted Jan-2005
Career Technical Education, Adopted May 2005
Students are tested in grades 2-11
Alignment with California Content Standards
Where can our state standards be found?
http://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/
Alignment with California Content Standards
Why do students and teachers care about standards?
Because they are both held accountable for them
through testing.
Alignment with California Content Standards
California State High School Exit Exam - CASEE
STAR Testing (Standardized Testing and Reporting)
• CST (California Standards Tests)
State Academic Performance Index (API)
Evaluates
teachers, schools, districts, and students – drill right down to the
classroom level
Federal NCLB Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP)
Title 1 money
• In our district this is $ 22,000,0000 !
Tied to
Alignment with California Content Standards
I didn’t know how standards are used in the classroom.
•Textbooks
• Daily lesson plans and objectives
• Unit Tests
• Projects get aligned with standards
Alignment with California Content Standards
Keyword: Project (for us read HOOK)
• Teachers know what powerful teaching tools handson projects can be.
• This is called Project Based Learning (PBL)
• PBL engages multiple learning modalities
•
Education jargon again. Multiple learning styles.
• But I found out that PBL is not used very often in the
classroom!
Why?
Alignment with California Content Standards
Teachers have been taught to teach in traditional ways
that don’t necessarily include PBL.
and,
Creating standards based projects takes a lot of time,
creativity, and hard work.
and,
Teachers are not necessarily experts in the application
of what they teach.
and,
They’re simply not used to doing it.
Alignment with California Content Standards
And,
Projects cost money.
Alignment with California Content Standards
So I learned that:
Teachers would like to do more projects but may lack
the training, resources, and time to pull it off.
So here’s
the money
shot . . .
Alignment with California Content Standards
I became a standards supporting, project
based learning, I understand what you’re
facing, teacher champion!
And got invited to deliver 80 classroom
sessions totaling 2,400 student hours of
engineering workforce development this
year.
Alignment with California Content Standards
Starting a new standards based project from scratch:
• Teachers know the standards, the subject matter, and
the texts.
• You know the application of what they teach.
Alignment with California Content Standards
What subject should we use?
• Every student in 7th through 11th takes English and
math (they call it Language Arts in middle school).
• Math is an easy connection, but almost any subject is
found in engineering . . .
. . . Science, English, Social Science, Physics, History
Alignment with California Content Standards
More education jargon:
Cross curriculum project
You could potentially connect nearly every class in a
common, engineering based project
Take a bridge, for example . . .
But we digress . . .
Alignment with California Content Standards
So we’ve chosen a subject, say math.
And we’ve chosen a target audience, say 8th grade
Notice we haven’t chosen our topic yet?
This is where we need to include teachers.
Alignment with California Content Standards
Our goal is to find the easiest way inside the
classroom. . . which is:
Find a unit or units that students have difficulty with or
the teacher thinks is especially important.
How?
Go to your nearest middle school (works just as well in
high schools), find the lead math teacher or math
department head, or principal . . .
. . . and say the magic words:
Alignment with California Content Standards
I’d like to bring a turn-key project to your classroom(s)
that will support your content standards. I’ll provide
the materials and the people to put it on (or help put it
on if you will help us choose a topic that will really help
you with a unit.
If you’ll assist us to put this together all you’ll have to
do is help with classroom management. We’ll do the
rest.
This never fails to connect you with teachers.
Alignment with California Content Standards
The teacher will help you:
Brainstorm a topic that will help him and interest his
students.
Identify the content standards and lend you the text
they use in class.
Coach you on what will work with their students.
Help you sell the project to other teachers.
Alignment with California Content Standards
See?
I told you it was easy!
Alignment with California Content Standards
The teacher will help you:
Brainstorm a topic that will help him and interest his
students.
Identify the content standards and lend you the text
they use in class.
Coach you on what will work with their students.
Help you sell the project to other teachers.
Alignment with California Content Standards
Existing projects are exactly the same.
Find the school.
Find the lead or department chair, or principal (or
someone they recommend)
Ask for their help.
Tell them what you’ll do for them.
Alignment with California Content Standards
Variation on a theme:
Teacher delivered project:
Same process to create.
Teacher’s manual that clearly covers the material.
Box of supplies they will need.
Offer an engineer volunteer in the classroom.
Alignment with California Content Standards
Creating your own project outline with standards:
www.cteonline.org
Alignment with California Content Standards
Creating your own project outline with standards:
In California (but appropriate for all)
State Center Consortium
www.statecenter.com
A standards based approach for . . . lots of industries
A phenomenal primer!
Alignment with California Content Standards
Contact information:
Larry Loban
Education Entrepreneur for Engineering and Technology
Sacramento City Unified School District
Career Technical Preparation Department
916-643-9208
larry-loban@sac-city.k12.ca.us