Adventures in Science, Teaching, Exploration and Resourceful Stewardship at the Garden of the Coastal Plain at GSU

Session Format

Poster Session (60 minutes)

Location

Holiday Inn

Second Time and Location

Friday, March 8 from 9:00-9:20 a.m. at the Nessmith-Lane Conference Center

Abstract for the conference program

ASTERS is an extremely successful teacher training program conducted by Garden of the Coastal Plain at Georgia Southern University and the Georgia Southern University Departments of Biology and Education in cooperation with school districts in our rural area. ASTERS provides K-5 teachers with information about plant biology and ecology and shares effective inquiry-based hands-on ways to teach these concepts. This project improves botanical and ecological understanding and aids teacher efforts to meet Common Core/Georgia Performance Standards (GPS) by providing grade-specific CC/GPS aligned units and the materials needed to implement the inquiry based hands-on activities; improves teacher content knowledge and teaching strategies by offering two workshops (K-2, 3-5; 3 PLU each); increases teacher skill and confidence in inquiry-based teaching by providing support, practice and feedback on projects generated in the field; and provides ongoing content and teaching expertise for each unit. Thousands of school children have learned at the Garden through ASTERS, and ASTERS has been extremely effective at meeting teacher training needs; measures of content proficiency show a 40%-60% improvement in content learning, and participant teachers give the training the highest possible scores in improving their content knowledge and helping them implement hands-on learning and meeting GPS.

Proposal Track

Non-research Project

Start Date

3-7-2014 7:00 PM

End Date

3-7-2014 9:00 PM

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Mar 7th, 7:00 PM Mar 7th, 9:00 PM

Adventures in Science, Teaching, Exploration and Resourceful Stewardship at the Garden of the Coastal Plain at GSU

Holiday Inn

ASTERS is an extremely successful teacher training program conducted by Garden of the Coastal Plain at Georgia Southern University and the Georgia Southern University Departments of Biology and Education in cooperation with school districts in our rural area. ASTERS provides K-5 teachers with information about plant biology and ecology and shares effective inquiry-based hands-on ways to teach these concepts. This project improves botanical and ecological understanding and aids teacher efforts to meet Common Core/Georgia Performance Standards (GPS) by providing grade-specific CC/GPS aligned units and the materials needed to implement the inquiry based hands-on activities; improves teacher content knowledge and teaching strategies by offering two workshops (K-2, 3-5; 3 PLU each); increases teacher skill and confidence in inquiry-based teaching by providing support, practice and feedback on projects generated in the field; and provides ongoing content and teaching expertise for each unit. Thousands of school children have learned at the Garden through ASTERS, and ASTERS has been extremely effective at meeting teacher training needs; measures of content proficiency show a 40%-60% improvement in content learning, and participant teachers give the training the highest possible scores in improving their content knowledge and helping them implement hands-on learning and meeting GPS.