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The North Cascades and Olympic Science Partnership is a National Science Foundation funded project involving 28 school districts, two education service districts, four community colleges, Washington State LASER, the Naval Undersea Museum, Washington State MESA, and Western Washington University. The project involves close interaction of the partners to reform science education in grades 3-10 through teacher professional development, implementation of new curriculum materials, and development and support of learning communities in the schools. The partnership will also focus on increasing the diversity of new teachers and improving the science teacher preparation program in the higher education institutions. This will be done through innovative recruitment programs, the development and refinement of courses, and carefully planned interactions between the colleges and school districts.

NCOSP Summer Program 2009

This summer we will have a 5-day earth science content immersion experience from Monday, August 3rd through Friday, August 7th. The content immersion is for K-8 teachers who have not been NCOSP Teacher Leaders in the past, but may have participated in last summer’s physics immersion as members of their building science Professional Learning Community. New participants are welcome, especially as members of supported science Professional Learning Communities.

There will also be an NCOSP sponsored 2-day Professional Learning Community planning workshop for active NCOSP Teachers Leaders and administrators from schools that are sending teachers to the earth science content immersion.

All content immersion sessions are full this summer. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Shannon Warren at 360-650-3373 or email Shannon.Warren at wwu.edu. We look forward to hearing from you.

Join our Facebook Group

We have an NCOSP Facebook Group! So, log on to Facebook, search for NCOSP, and join the group. Let’s see if we can’t stir up some geeky science education conversations online!

Center for Instructional Innovation (CII) features NCOSP
in their Innovative Teaching Showcase!

The Center for Instructional Innovation (CII) featured NCOSP in their Innovative Teaching Showcase. The Innovative Teaching Showcase is an online publication created to highlight and share exceptional teaching practices by WWU faculty and their collaborators. Programs are nominated to be featured and then work in collaboration with CII to create the showcase. Take a look at the NCOSP Profile!

Article: Depth vs Breadth

The study below was just released in December and may provide you with some food for thought regarding the merits of "covering" too many topics in high school science courses. Enjoy!

"Depth Versus Breadth: How Content Coverage in High School Science Courses Relates to Later Success in College Science Coursework," Marc S. Schwartz, Philip M. Sadler, Gerhard Sonnert, Robert H. Tai, Science Education, December 2008.

Impact of NCOSP Teacher Leaders’ on Students’ Achievement in Science

Students with more contact with NCOSP Teacher Leaders show significantly higher levels of proficiency on the 5th and 10th grade science WASL (see graph below).