This two-year project will enhance participant's content background and laboratory skills by incorporating the theories of physics and chemistry with applications. Teachers will be involved in hands-on activities which can easily be implemented in their classes. The project design includes both a summer workshop at Eastern Oregon State University and an academic year component delivered at different sites in eastern Oregon using a mobile classroom. The summer workshop will have the following format. Twenty teachers, (K-3 grades will be accepted in a three-week workshop. Following this, there will be an additional three- week workshop with twenty teachers (4-6 grades). In each workshop, one or two principals will be involved. The format of the workshops will be a session of physics theory and another session of chemistry theory in the morning. These sessions will be fundamental in nature and the participants will be furnished textbooks of similar level. Each session will be 1 1/2 hours in length with a short break between them. Next is a break for lunch, after which, a three hour session of hands-on activities or experiments for the teachers. The design of these activities will closely follow the theory lectures presented in the morning sessions. Only on Wednesday afternoon will the participants have an unstructured schedule to create their own activity, work in the curriculum library, or read. An unusual feature of this project is the mobile classroom. A science specialist will coordinate a meeting schedule with the school districts. She will travel with the mobile classroom to provide inservice, during the academic year to teacher located at selected locations in eastern Oregon. Fully equipped for science instruction, this unit will arrive ready for teachers to participate in hands-on science activities during inservice sessions. These sites will be visited six times a year. The inservice will keep the teachers current, resolve problems stemming from unanswered questions from inquisitive students, and confront the teacher with a constant reminder of using science activities in the classroom. Mobile classroom science activities are plannedfor immediate implementation at the appropriate grade level as the teacher's school. Theory will be presented inconjunction with the hands-on segment in each case. Six credits will be offered for the summer workshop and one credit will be offered for the mobile classroom inservice sessions. Cost sharing in the amount of $127,924 equals 33%of the NSF award.
