GK-12 Home People Science Lessons Math Lessons Partner Schools Pictures
This GK-12 program is no longer active.
Please click here to view the active UCLA GK-12 project web site.
“I’ve heard many, many students exclaim, ‘This is tight,’ ‘this is cool,’ and other such expressions. Also, students have been proud to show me, ‘See, I’m doing my work now!’ …I think that through the GK-12 lessons, some of the students are having limited success in school for the first time.” Ben Wang, Science Fellow (2003-2005)
Our program is supported by the NSF GRADUATE TEACHING FELLOWS IN K-12 EDUCATION (GK-12).
The Divisions of Physical and Life Sciences at UCLA in conjunction with the School of Education are committed to improving mathematics and science instruction in our most poorly performing local schools, which overwhelmingly serve underrepresented populations.
In the UCLA NSF GK-12 program, graduate students are paired with first year secondary science and mathematics teachers in urban schools. Together, they design and implement inquiry-based lessons.
The challenges of classroom management in urban schools, the time required to prepare new daily lesson plans, and the limited resources and facilities available in urban schools prevent new teachers from developing and conducting inquiry-based activities. Lessons for first-year teachers too often slide into lectures and rote assignments. Our GK-12 program addresses this void in support. Our GK-12 Fellows, who have both the content expertise and time that the teachers lack, work side-by-side with the teachers and assist them in providing resources for standards-based lessons that meet the needs of all students--especially low income racially, culturally, and linguistically diverse learners. The teachers and GK-12 Fellows form year-long collaborations that begin in the summer before the school year starts.
One
size does not fit all teachers. The specific support that we provide our
teachers depends on the grade level of their school and the subjects and classes
to which they are assigned. A teacher with an advanced biology class may need
assistance in
materials and set-up for a biotechnology genetic-fingerprinting
laboratory. Another teacher, who majored in chemistry, may need help with a
ninth-grade integrated science lab that teaches plate tectonics. Recently
adopted state graduation requirements for algebra put new demands on mathematics
teachers. Implementing active learning tasks that teach slope, factoring,
graphing, and graph interpretation are key topics for algebra courses currently
taught at all middle and high schools in California.
Over the past two years, dozens of lessons have been developed and field-tested in science and mathematics. These lessons represent an effort to improve urban science instruction. In addition to heightened interest in science by the middle and high school students in our partner classrooms, a key outcome of the project is a broadening of Fellows’ views of effective teaching, such as the use of inquiry-based instruction and strategies for teaching diverse learners. In the words of one Fellow: “I have definitely changed some of my basic thinking about science teaching. I had always assumed that book teaching and learning from just reading about a topic were effective as long as they were discussed and tested…I found that approach was really ineffective and that engaging [the students] during the entire lesson was very important.”
UCLA GK-12, Enlivening Science Instruction. UCLA Chemistry and Biochemistry Fall, 2005 Newsletter