RAFT Hands-On Education

Middle Grades Learning Progression Voted on at November 6, 2013 SBE Meeting On November 6, 2013 the State Board of Education approved a modified recommendation from CDE regarding the adoption of the middle school progressions proposal. Rather than approve an "integrated only" option for schools, the Board approved both the integrated model as proposed by the Science Expert Panel as California's preferred model AND a domain-specific model that will be developed by the same SEP. Districts will have the option to choose what best meets the needs of their students. More information to follow. Commentary: The State Board of Education adopted an “option” for California school on Nov 6th. School in California can either adopted an “integrated” approach to science or a “domain” specific model as has been done previously in the past. This is a relief for teachers who have been in the “game “for years as “domain” specific has been the route taken in California by most distri...

Integrated Learning in the Classroom A few days ago I was talking to a friend about issues that he felt needed to be addressed in order to “fix education”, as he put it.  His background is in electronics and he knows little about the daily activities of most teachers so his perspective on teaching is somewhat limited. But even so, he did raise an interesting point when he mentioned that “teachers should spend less time compartmentalizing everything and more time tying the disciplines together, making them more real for students.”  My friend was talking about providing an integrated learning approach to education.  As he said this I began to think about my own teaching and the number of examples I provided my students to show relatedness between the content areas, which admittedly could have been higher. Most elementary teachers have ample opportunities to show an integrated view of learning to their students.  This becomes more difficult at the highly-compartmen...