The Environmental Education Summer Workshop for Teachers—co-sponsored by Drake University, MetroWaste Authority, and Prairie City-Monroe (PCM) School District—is designed to expose educators to a wide range of experiences connecting the natural history of Iowa’s plants and animals to problem-based learning exercises that address both science and math standards. Two week-long workshops will be held on July 7–11 and July 14–18 from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the MetroWaste Authority, Southeast Polk, and Drake Environmental Learning Center in Runnells, Iowa.
The workshop—led by Keith Summerville, associate professor of environmental science and associate dean at Drake University—is organized around two central themes: understanding how ecological experiments can be designed utilizing resources at the field station, and giving participants the opportunity to collaborate on integrated science and math lessons for PCM and Southeast (SE) Polk students.
“My goal is to energize teachers to develop lessons that connect students in grades K-12 to the natural environments in Iowa,” says Summerville. “Each teacher that participates in these workshops will develop five original lessons for use in the 2014-2015 school year. Each lesson is meant to integrate science and math outcomes of the Iowa Core by guiding students through field-based inquiry.”
Each day, participants will explore a different ecosystem or sub-part of an ecosystem at the learning center. The workshop will provide hands-on instruction as well as individual and group work.
Participants will have 90–120 minutes every afternoon to develop their own unit related to the material learned and the specific outcomes of the Iowa Core Curriculum. Summerville will collect the materials and redistribute to all workshop participants.
The workshops are open to teachers from PCM and SE Polk school districts at no cost.
For more information or to register, contact Keith Summerville at keith.summerville@drake.edu or 515-271-2265.