This three-year demonstration project is designed to educate 75 New York City elementary school teachers from approximately 15 schools to develop materials from the urban environment as the vehicle for science teaching in their 4th, 5th and 6th grade classrooms. Objectives that are unique to the project are: (1) to identify issues from the urban environment which lend themselves to elementary classroom learning; (2) to provide opportunities for teachers to use artifacts and issues from the children's immediate urban environment as the raw material for elementary science investigation; and (3) to demonstrate how the NY State Elementary Science requirements can be motivated using issues which are both familiar and important to children. Participating schools will remain part of the project for all three years, and active involvement of administrators will be engaged to guarantee school-wide dissemination. This project is appropriate for the Teacher Enhancement Program because it targets a needy urban student population and because it plans to develop a cadre of master teachers who will mentor their colleagues and work with school administrators to plan school-wide dissemination of the project. Non-NSF cost-sharing is approximately 78% of the amount requested from NSF.
