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Hello Everybody, My name is James Lee, a long-time NSTA member and a first-time poster at the Community Forums. I'm a new science teacher at City Polytechnic High School in Brooklyn, NY. This is also my first year of full-time teaching at the high school level. This semester, I teach four preps of a class called "Physical Science Research." This is a new class that City Poly is trying out for the first time. From what I can glean off the Principal's vision of that class, it's the class to kindle student interest in the sciences. Towards the end of the trimester, the students should be better prepared to take on the coursework of Regents-level (New York State Exam) Chemistry class. There are no textbooks or department-wide curriculum in place for this class. Material resources are hard to come by in general and I'll most likely have to front it out-of-pocket. However I choose to handle this class is my call. Regarding my student population: City Poly admits students unscreened and thus, there is a very wide range of academic abilities. While student behavior is a generally on the rowdy side, I found that the vast majority of my students does seem to have some interest in the sciences and I feel that if I do things right, I have a fair shot at drawing most of them in. --- I understand that this kind of freedom and relative lack of pressure is rare as far as teaching at a New York City high school goes. But at the same time, I can't help but feel that I'm wasting this great "carte blanche" opportunity because I just don't have much ideas in my repertoire to hold exciting, meaningful activities, lessons, projects, etc. With that, I would love to hear from you folks on your ideas on how best to approach this class. My tentative idea is to spend a fair amount of time (e.g.: to mid-November) with projects and activities and then start phasing in principles of Chemistry after that. Also, I would love to take in specific recommendations on books, lessons, activity ideas, etc. that I can draw from to conduct my class. (Yes, I know about Google, but I'm just getting overwhelmed with the deluge of links and information that doesn't seem to pertain very well to my situation) With much thanks, < James

Hi James and welcome to the NSTA discussion forums! Wow! You have a wonderful predicament. I know you will receive gobs of great ideas and resources here. The first one that comes to my mind is the SEIMENS teacher resources site. With the push for including STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) elements into high school science curricula, watching a few of the teachers' videos and webinars about their initiatives might fuel your brain with ideas.
While at that site I stumbled upon Discovery Student Adventures
That looked very cool!
If you are considering Problem-Based Inquiry, this article is an excellent resource on how to get started: Inquiry in the Community. Best of luck for a highly successful effort to engage your students in exciting science adventures!
Carolyn

Hi James - You might try searching the NSTA Learning Center (LC) for some of the new SciPacks, SciGuides and SciObjects (free) in Physical Science. You may find some ideas to spark your teachng creativity! You can filter your LC library search by grade level, topic and type of item. SciPack topics in Physical Science include - Energy; Force & Motion; Chemical Reaction; and Explaining Matter with Elements, Atoms & Molecues. Dorothy Ginnett

Hi James,

What an opportunity! If I were in your shoes, I would be jumping up and down for CPO materials. I am not a text book teacher but this one breaks the mold. The book itself is in the landscape format, the sections are designed with Cornell Note taking in mind, and the lab activities come in threes. Well, fours I guess I should say. There's an introductory activity (because the materials have been developed based on the 5E instructional model) and then there are three additional labs for you to choose from to conclude the lesson (one basic, one average, one advanced).

I just can't say enough good things about these materials. If I were to design science curriculum materials - they would look a lot like what CPO offers.

Thanks!
Kendra

I forgot to mention Fresh Science too! I reviewed some of their introductory materials but was waiting for more titles to come out. I was especially interested in their materials because there's no textbook and there's a focus on hands-on processes.

Thanks again!
Kendra

Welcome James! Thanks for starting this thread and as you can already read from the previous posts, there are many great resources available to you within the Learning Center. It is very encouraging to do a personal search and to review the forums for previous posts and information as pointed out by the other responders. Please give your personal searching a shot. Do not be daunted by the depth of the reply, however. For example if you use the keyword 'chemistry' in a search, you will get over 400 resources to examine. The web seminars that will be given this fall are also helpful and there are great ones focusing on chemistry. Also, look at the archives of past webinars that have been offered. 1. http://learningcenter.nsta.org/products/webseminars.aspx This url will get you to the web seminar pages; however, you may easily access it by pulling down the learning Resources & Opportunities menu and clicking on web seminars and/or webseminar archives. 2. Please note that you may also examine the Science Objects, SciPacks, and SciGuides available in chemistry 3. If you want to do a personal search for 'project based science' or another key word, go to your Online Home and scroll down to the window entitled Explore Learning Opportunities. 4. Click on the underlined words Advanced Search 5. Enter your Keyword in the search engine and begin your search You may not want to use any filters for your primary search but you may elect to narrow the serch by Subject or Grade Level. 6. You might also enjoy scanning the Collections that have been put together by NSTA - to access these, merely click on the menu on the right of the search page that has returned some resources that is entitled Collections Created by NSTA or use this url to go straight there now -- http://learningcenter.nsta.org/search.aspx?action=browse&text=chemistry&price=0&product=0&subject=0&topic=0&gradelevel=0&qolid=&state=&subid=&gl=&docyear=&sort=Relevancy&coll=2 7. The really neat thing about being a member of the Learning Center is having your personal Online Library -- transfer any and/or all resources that are of interest to you to your Personal Library. This enables you to save resources and to access them anytime - 24/7 as the saying goes. Happy searching, James :} Designing a course and working to enhance the content and skill knowledge of your students will be exciting and perhaps challenging to both you and them. Please keep us in the loop and let us know what you are thinking. One of the neat things about the NSTA forums is that all may chime in and share ideas with you and everyone is excited to learn about your approach to the projects and to the chemistry that you wish to include in this course. There are pedagogical ideas that you may wish to explore with readers, so don't be shy about putting your questions out there. I find sharing pedagogical content knowledge a wonderful way to glean ideas and to share with colleagues. Thanks again for starting this thread, James, and I look forward to carrying on this conversation with you and with the other thread participants. Have a wonderful week. What are you doing this week? ~ patty

A few years ago, I had to come up with a new science class. I chose forensics and found lots of resources online. The students loved it, too.