Environmental Science
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This science course is a ninth through twelfth grade course. When I first started teaching, it was used as an alternative for those lower-level students who were not taking Chemistry, as an alternative third science course. I taught it to low level students as an earth science and environmental introductory course for students who would not be going to college. When I became department chair at Higgins, as a department, along with the Assistant Principal over curriculum, we looked at the GEE for science and our scores and determined that our students were really behind in earth and space science GLE mastery. We decided that we wanted all students to take environmental science, so we enrolled every freshman in both environmental science AND integrated science. This would ensure that EVERY student would get a base of earth and space science standards before taking biology, which would allow the biology teachers to reference those previously learned GLEs and focus more on the biology GLEs sophomore year. This worked tremendously in raising student test score in science at Higgins. At Rummel, this course is taught as a fourth year science alternative to either Biology II or Physics. I had varying levels of ability in my environmental science courses at Rummel, which made it somewhat difficult to differentiate, but I instead created essentially three assignment levels for each problem-based learning activity we completed. Inquiry labs were set up into stations, with lower level students completing more basic labs, and higher-level students completing more complex labs. The problems researched in my environmental science courses were all real-world problems, in which students would also be required to brainstorm, and sometimes apply solutions.
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