Focus on Energy: Implementation Workshop Guide

PDF of the Implementation Workshop Guide

These materials will help you get ready to lead an Implementation Workshop for the Focus on Energy curriculum. This curriculum is a carefully crafted, research-based progression about Energy for grades 3-5. The curriculum includes a detailed Teacher’s Guide and additional resources for teachers. Why hold an implementation workshop? A teacher who is about to use the Focus on Energy curriculum for the first time has a lot to think about and will have many questions:

• big picture questions about the key science ideas, science practices, and crosscutting concepts,
• logistical questions about using and managing materials,
• pedagogical questions about how students collect and use evidence or learn to reason scientifically.

This workshop

• helps teachers answer some of these questions
• illuminates the organization of the Focus on Energy website
• facilitates teachers’ own firsthand experience of key investigations, using the student notebook and materials from the classroom kit
• models ways to ask and answer questions, use evidence to argue, explain or support a claim, and lead discussions
• highlights resources available for teachers when they want to know more about science content, using practices, in particular, developing and using models, arguing from evidence and developing explanations.