Early Science Hub is a professional learning resource co-designed with partner preschool educators and families to meaningfully integrate science into early learning classrooms.
The science practices library will include short clips that describe the different practices and showcase public preschool teachers facilitating them in real world classrooms. The goal is to allow teachers to see these practices in action, highlighting both practices that are common in preschool classrooms such as making observations, as well as practices that may be less familiar to teachers such as analyzing and interpreting data. In addition, the library may include posters and other infographics that teachers can use in their classrooms as support for their instruction.
This component will leverage emerging technology to provide teachers with playful and interactive ways to become familiar with science ideas. These resources may include animated visualizations and interactive simulations. A core feature of these educational tools is to embed support to help increase teachers’ content knowledge and comfort scaffolding children’s understanding of science phenomena. For example, the tools may provide a digital space for teachers to manipulate different ramps and pathways to explore science core ideas related to force and motion.
This interactive map will highlight evidence-based cross-disciplinary connections between science and other key disciplines, such as math, engineering, literacy and approaches to learning. The map will also link to sample integrated activities that highlight these connections, such as science investigations where children track the growth of plants over time and learn math skills related to measurement.
This toolkit will provide resources that can help teachers a) promote school-family partnerships, b) better understand families’ strengths, needs and approaches to learning together at home and in the community, and c) gather information from families about their experiences and knowledge related to science phenomena in the curriculum. The goal for this collaborative toolkit is to support teachers in designing and implementing authentic science learning experiences that connect to children’s everyday lives.
Stay tuned for additional project updates!
Contact us at earlylearning@digitalpromise.org.
Read about the project on the CADRE website here.