Teaching Fellows’ Meetings

All-Fellows' Summer Meetings

July 24-26, 2008 

  In July, all 111 KSTF Teaching Fellows met in Philadelphia, PA, for the three-day Summer Fellows' Meeting. As in years past, the primary focus of this meeting was lesson study. The newer cohorts of teaching fellows were introduced to lesson study through a two-part workshop with Jane Gorman of the Educational Development Center and Marjorie Woodward of TERC. As an overview of lesson study the fellows viewed video of Japanese Lesson Study and discussed phases of the process, and also worked to elaborate goals for studying a lesson. Jane and Marjorie also introduced the fellows to the use of evidence, including video, student work and other classroom artifacts, as a way to probe student thinking and understanding.

During the previous academic year, the more senior cohorts of teaching fellows taught the lesson study sequences that they had planned at prior Summer Fellows' Meetings. They used the lesson study time at this meeting to review video of their lessons and examples of student work to look for evidence of student understanding. Based on their observations of student thinking and learning, they reworked their instructional sequences into plans that they will teach again this year. As a capstone to their work over the past four years, the 2003 lesson study groups presented their instructional sequences on gas laws and waves.

In addition to lesson study, each fellow had the opportunity to attend panel sessions on early career teaching issues and KSTF supported opportunities. These panels were led by fellows and facilitated by KSTF staff. Fellows also participated in roundtable discussions about various teaching issues and reflected with fellows from different cohorts on the events of the meeting. Our nine KSTF Young Scholars also attended the meeting and presented workshops for the teaching fellows on topics including scientific argumentation, formative assessment and democratic teaching in science and mathematics.

Jim Madsen, a professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin - River Falls, delivered a keynote address about the Ice Cube and Ice Top neutrino detector project in progress at the South Pole. He was joined by high school teachers Eric Muhs (Seattle, WA) and Steve Stevenoski (Wisconsin Rapids, WI) who have worked on research projects in Antarctica through the National Science Foundation's Teacher Enhancement Program.  Finally, we were pleased to recognize our five newest KSTF Alumni, the former 2003 Science Teaching Fellows.

Previous Summer Fellows' Meetings:

July 26-28, 2007

August 3-5, 2006

August 4-6, 2005

August 4-7, 2004

August 1-2, 2003