CATALyST
to Yield Scientific Thinking
Professional Development Workshops
CATALyST CLUE (Using Chemistry to Look at and Understand Evidence) Capers is a workshop designed to offer teachers an interactive way to engage students in the development of skills used in this real world career-based application. The three-day series provides a variety of experiences that introduces participants to the problem-based world of forensics.
Creating Cranial Champions is a workshop focused on brain based research as well as strategies developed from the research.
Developed by a team from CATALyST's GK-12 partners, this workshop highlights issues related to topics appropriate for Earth Day. It provides teachers with interactive reform-based strategies that not only engage the students in hands-on/minds-on learning, but interdisciplinary and brain based instruction as well.
Developed from the nationally recognized "Private Eye" materials, CATALyST's Eye Spy workshop takes participants on a trip through space and time as they explore creative ways to use inquiry in the classroom.
Developed from materials typically found in post secondary lab resources, Field Trip in a Box provides participants the opportunity to function as a science field biologist while examining issues related to water quality.
Modeled after an interdisciplinary unit on the tropical rainforest, Louisiana GUMBO explores the rich, diverse culture and history of CATALyST's home state.
With this workshop, teachers learn to "hook" students through the integration of pop culture, explore the laws of motion through an inquiry-based experience while developing critical thinking and problem solving skills, put the pieces of hovercraft history together through a jigsaw and interactive timeline, construct a hovercraft guaranteed to carry their students away, and finally, experience alternative assessment that connects all of the workshop components and concepts together.
Navigating Through Data Analysis Workshop
The CATALyST team offers an exciting approach to multiple aspects of middle grades mathematics with its Navigating Through Data Analysis workshop. Participants become immersed in reform-based teaching and learning as they engage in experiences that focus on four main areas: Introduction to Data Analysis, Comparing Data Sets with Equal Numbers of Data Points, Comparing Data Sets with Different Numbers of Data Points, and Comparing Bivariant Data. Additional topics are also included that allow participants to collect and analyze their own data while becoming more proficient in the skills needed to help maximize student success and achievement in the classroom.
This exciting addition to the CATALyST workshop menu offers middle grades and high school teachers an opportunity to focus on integrating reading and writing strategies while improving content knowledge in math and science. Working along side an education specialist, the CATALyST staff provides a series of learning experiences that allow teachers the opportunity to engage in strategies that are designed to increase student achievement in the content areas.
Workshops Hosted by CATALyST
Developing Environmental Education Decision-making Skills (DEEDS)
Through participation in Project DEEDS, Louisiana educators learned specific strategies that will help them to teach their students how to make informed decisions based on scientific evidences.
On January 8, 2005 CATALyST hosted a workshop from JASON Expedition: Louisiana's Disappearing Wetlands sponsored by Shell Oil Company and presented by Pat Ziegelbauer. (Both the Office of the Governor and the Louisiana Department of Education have approved JASON Expedition.) Sixteen educators received materials and learned how to implement the award-winning, standards-based JASON curriculum. To find out more about JASON visit: www.jason.org.
Additional Workshops
- Physical Science
- Mathematics in Elementary School: Investigations in Numbers, Data, and Space
- Integrating Math and Science
- Introduction to Standards Based Teaching: The Pendulum Puzzle
- Engineering Design
- Technology in the Classroom
- Using Science Kits to Teach
- Designing and Teaching Integrated Units
- Using Multiple Intelligences and Learning Styles to Reach All Children
- Family Science and Family Math
- Making the Grade in Math and Science: Introducing Parents to High Stakes Assessment
- Using Graphic Organizers to Improve Students Critical Thinking
