Foundation for OCPS

STEM

Biology Lead Teacher (BLT) Professional Development

Quarterly workshops funded by Lockheed Martin provide content knowledge and create resources for teachers to successfully prepare high school students for the Biology I End of Course assessment and for future scientific learning.

Workshops use pedagogical practices to move participants from having teacher-centered to learner-centered classrooms. Each workshop follows the outline below:

Discussing "bell work” – what to do in the first 5 to 10 minutes of the class.
Deconstructing the benchmarks to reveal the depth and breadth of the content and using the deconstructed benchmarks to focus and plan instruction.
Learning from expert speakers and participating in follow-up activities. Activities focus on engineering design challenges and labs. Lockheed Martin engineers help teach participants how to take inquiry labs to the next level.
Creating lesson plans by learning community for the next quarter. Each participant group creates 1 to 2 weeks of lesson plans for the next quarter. Lesson plans are posted on the district's professional development portal for use by all Orange County teachers.

2011-2012 Outcomes

In the 2011-2012 school year, high school students taking Biology I were required to take the Biology I EOC assessment, and it counted as 30% of each student's grade. In 2012-2013, the 9^th grade cohort must take and pass the Biology I EOC assessment to graduate. This applies to all students entering 9^thgrade, regardless what year they take Biology I.

Quantitative Analysis

At the beginning of the school year, only 1% of the Biology I students were "on-target.” In spring 2012, approximately 35% of Orange County's high school students scored in the "on target” (proficient) level on the 2012 Biology I EOC assessment. Results by schools are as follows: eight of the high school had 45%- 59% of its Biology I students "on target,” including Colonial High School 9^thgrade which was recorded separately from the main campus. The percentage of students scoring "on target” was 30% - 44% in five high schools; 20%-29% in four schools; and 12%-15% in the remaining two, including Colonial's 10 – 12 graders.

While there is still much room for improvement, progress is being made as teachers change their teaching methods and incorporate more engineering design challenges, labs, and other hands-on activities to help students analyze, synthesize, evaluate and apply what they learn.

Qualitative Analysis

Survey responses of 10 of the 19 teachers in the Biology Lead Teacher (BLT) program are below. Recommendations from the survey have been incorporated into the 2012-2013 program design.

90% said the program was "Extremely helpful; I appreciated new ideas from my colleagues and it improved my lessons.”
90% indicated "The BLT trainings greatly improved my knowledge in NGSSS (Next Generation Sunshine State Standards) Biology.”
70% replied "I used some of the information provided. I did not have time to use it all.” The remaining 30% indicated they "used all the information provided as recommended, and it added value to my lessons.”
40% of the participants found networking with their colleagues the most useful part of the quarterly workshops.

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