Professional Development Offering Helps Teachers Support Educational Standards while Concurrently Improving Student Engagement in STEM Fields and Careers
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San Diego, CA, August 28, 2014—Today, Sally Ride Science announced the launch of an all new professional development (PD) course,STEM Connections to Common Core, training designed to help educators use classroom lessons in STEM to support specific Common Core State Standards. The course has been made available to all Sally Ride Site License customers for no additional charge.

The one to two hour, online PD supports educators by providing both high-level strategies and detailed lesson ideas for supporting specific standards in Common Core—in Reading; Writing; Speaking and Listening; Language; and Mathematics—using Sally Ride Science eBooks and classroom activities. Within the course and the Sally Ride Science resources on which it is built, educators will be able to easily correlate STEM-focused classwork to Common Core standards.

“We are very excited about this new ‘mini PD’ we’ve created to support educators in meeting the Common Core State Standards while teaching STEM subjects,” said Sally Ride Science Cofounder and CEO, Dr. Tam O’Shaughnessy. “Frankly, creating this training was a natural fit for us: Sally Ride Science and the educational resources we provide have always had college- and career-readiness at their foundation, and college- and career-readiness is also at the foundation of Common Core.”

The Common Core State Standards are the result of a state-led effort launched in 2009 and driven by governors, state commissioners of education, and other educational leaders from 48 states, two territories, and the District of Columbia. The standards’ objective is ensuring all students—regardless of where they live—graduate high school prepared for college and a career.

“Our team was getting feedback from educators telling us they needed to do more to support Common Core. We knew our resources, in many ways, did that already, and we really just needed to help create a more concrete connection,” said Dr. O’Shaughnessy. “For example, the Common Core standard ‘CCSS-ELA.Literacy, Informational Text’ requires grade specific levels of comprehension of nonfiction by students—every STEM and STEM Career text we provide is nonfiction. And the PD gets granular, directly connecting specific standards to specific classroom activities, even down to the exact pages in our texts that support a standard. I am extremely proud of our team for designing, developing, and delivering this timely, comprehensive training.”

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