With our teacher impact workshops as a solid foundation, our teacher educators can customize a teacher professional development experience to address your particular goals.  We are familiar with the major science curricula / kit based modules (i.e. FOSS, STC, GEMS, etc.) and can modify our workshops (given sufficient lead time) to align with the instructional products you’re utilizing.  Whether your teachers have great tools and need additional instruction on using those tools or you have a bare bones science budget and want to conduct engaging activities using inexpensive materials, we can adapt our professional development sessions to address your specific concerns.  Our staff will work with you to plan and implement a science professional development experience that will be engaging, educational and relevant for your teachers.


Three hour Professional Development Workshops (Grades K – 8):
It’s All in the Question
Effective teaching, utilizing a hands-on approach to science, involves students making observations, manipulating data and learning how to both ask and answer questions that arise.  This workshop focuses on working with teachers to stimulate student thinking through open-ended questioning and making predictions. Hands-on activities illustrate questioning techniques, wait-time and the learning cycle.
2009 NJCCCS: 5.1 A-D, 5.2 A, C; 5.3 A

Science Grabbers
Stumped for exciting, hands-on activities to fill those hard-to-teach times? Are you looking for “cool” activities to introduce a science unit? The fun activities in these workshops get your students “into” science. Learn how to prepare your own hands-on science survival kit with activities versatile enough for all science disciplines. Science Grabbers is Liberty Science Center’s most popular workshop for a reason!
2009 NJCCCS: 5.1 A-D, 5.2 A, C; 5.3 A

Famous New Jersey Scientists
Meet some famous scientists who called New Jersey home.  Participate in lessons that illustrate their contributions to New Jersey’s scientific history.
2009 NJCCCS: 5.1 A-D; 5.2 A,B; 5.4 A,B,C,E,F,G

Earth, Moon and Stars
Explore the forces (inertia, gravity, centripetal and centrifugal) involved as people, planets and stars interact.  Learn the reasons for the seasons and the phases of the moon.
2009 NJCCCS:  5.1 A-D; 5.4 A

The Human Body:  Getting to Know Me
Amaze your students with what is packed inside their bodies.  Explore the science behind the senses and test your own reaction time with easy to do experiments.
2009 NJCCCS: 5.1 A-D; 5.3 A,B

Micro-Observations
Participate in clever activities to lead your students into the microscopic world.  See ordinary things in an extraordinary way with an indestructible classroom microscope.
2009 NJCCCS: 5.1 A-D; 5.3 A; 5.4 C

Matter, Matter Everywhere
Intriguing chemical combinations spark critical thinking skills.  Investigate the properties of strange substances and experience the tasty side of science.
2009 NJCCCS: 5.1 A-D; 5.2 A,B

The L.A.W.S. of Weather
Learn the LAWS of weather and how land, air, water and the sun interact to create our weather.  Examine the water cycle and make it “rain” indoors.  Build and test simple weather instruments to use with your students.
2009 NJCCCS: 5.1 A-D; 5.4 F

Earth’s History:  Written in the Rocks
Investigate earth’s history by making your own soil, doing soil sampling and examining Earth’s natural forces.
2009 NJCCCS: 5.1 A-D; 5.4 B-D

Eco-Awareness
Participate in ecology and environmental awareness lessons that are applicable to Earth Day and any day of the year.  The hands-on activities will allow participants to become more familiar with both beneficial and harmful ecological impacts, allowing for more informed decisions regarding our role(s) on the planet.
2009 NJCCCS: 5.1 A-D; 5.4 C, G

The Sky’s The Limit: Investigating Flight
Find out why airplanes fly and humans do not!  Explore air pressure with balloons, parachutes, balloon rockets and astrotubes.
2009 NJCCCS: 5.1 A-D, 5.2 E

Electricity: Making it Work for You
Participate in lessons to investigate how electrical energy can be converted into light, heat and sound. Get a charge out of static explorations!
2009 NJCCCS: 5.1 A-D; 5.2 C, D

What’s So Simple About Simple Machines?  
Explore new ways to teach a simple machines unit.  Uncover simple machines found in everyday life and how they work.  We put the emphasis on inexpensive methods of putting together and demonstrating simple machines.  The simple machines that are explored include levers, pulleys, inclined planes, wheel and axle, screws and wedges.
2009 NJCCCS: 5.1 A-D; 5.2 E

 

Three hour Teacher Workshops specifically designed for grades 7 - 12 :
Math and Science Connection Workshop
During this hands-on workshop, teachers will experience the inextricable connection between math and science. Activities will explore concepts including early calculators, the applications of probability, Platonic solids, constructing flexagons, Fibonacci numbers, graphing collected data, the Golden mean, and much more.
2009 NJCCCS: 5.1 A-D

Intermediate Science Sampler
One of our most popular programs is offered to teachers of junior high school students.  The activities can be used at any time during the school year to initiate discussion and introduce fascinating new areas of scientific inquiry ranging from topology and color vision, to a simulation of the spread of a communicable disease.
2009 NJCCCS: 5.1 A-D, 5.2 A, C; 5.3 A

Explorations in Ecology
Learn the basics of the important science of Ecology through activities that use mathematics, simulations, and constructing graphs to understand topics that include predator-prey relationships, population growth, photosynthesis, biome comparisons and endangered species.  This in-depth view of ecological principles is applicable to students in grades 6 – 10.
2009 NJCCCS: 5.1 A-D; 5.4 B, C, G

Hidden Worlds Revealed Through the Microscope
Learn about the proper and varied uses of the microscope in the classroom, using subjects including pennies, feathers and fingerprints, along with preserved and living organisms.  Work with good quality, indestructible microscopes.  Grades 6 – 10.
2009 NJCCCS: 5.1 A-D; 5.3 A

Exploring Matter:  The Chemistry of the Universe
Introduce students to matter, the stuff that makes up the universe.  A diverse range of approaches to Chemistry will have students creating brochures describing their favorite chemical, use enzymes to change milk into cheese, create their own pH indicator from cabbage leaves, investigate the incredible absorption power of disposable diapers and extract DNA from wheat germ. Chemistry will prove to be their most exciting subject.  Grades 6 – 9.
2009 NJCCCS: 5.1 A-D; 5.2 A – D

Plants and Insects: Perfect Together

For reproduction, many plants, due to their immobility, rely on a pollinator to carry their DNA from one flower to another.  While in some environments, bats or birds may be the transporters, the job falls mainly upon the insects.  Over millions of years of evolution, close associations have been developed between these two major groups of organisms.  Members of both groups have evolved physical mechanisms to obtain something from their relationship.  This program investigates how the flower has become a billboard to attract the insect while the insect has developed senses and structures to capture the rewards offered by the flower, mainly in the form of food.  Participants will learn how plants reproduce, grow, make food and, some cases, even capture and consume insects.  The insects’ senses and behavior will be explored as well.  Grades 7 – 10.

2009 NJCCCS: 5.1 A-D; 5.3 B, C and E

Full Day (5 hour) Professional Development Workshops:
Liberty Science Center’s Full Day Workshops allow for immersion into a program of science focused methodologies.  Methodology (pedagogy) is typically taught in a generic fashion.  Liberty Science Center has developed programs which teach the methodology using examples from science as well as other disciplines.  The programs are five hours in length (start time is flexible).

NJ Ask 4 Science Preparation
During this full day workshop, NJ Ask 4 sample test items are linked with stimulating hands-on activities that demonstrate the science concepts being tested.  Participants learn the activities first-hand while exploring the science content related to the activity.  Preparing students for “the test” doesn’t need to be the traditional “drill, drill, drill” and this workshop offers teachers an alternative, hands-on approach that will motivate  students to greater understanding of science concepts.
2009 NJCCCS: 5.1 A-D; 5.2 A-C; 5.3 A-C; 5.4 A,C,G

NJASK 8 Science Preparation
This program is structured along the lines of the NJ ASK 4 program with a focus on the grade 8 assessment.  Both objective and open-ended questions will be reviewed and activities will be presented which teachers can incorporate into their regular teaching to avoid the “test prep” mode as the test date approaches. “Test-wiseness” tips for approaching standardized tests will also be covered.
2009 NJCCCS: 5.1 A-D; 5.2 A-C; 5.3 A-C; 5.4 A,C,G

Teaching Science using Multiple Intelligences
All of us possess eight intelligences: Linguistic, Mathematical, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal, Visual/Spatial, Kinesthetic, Musical and Natural (the one most recently identified by Howard Gardner.  Standardized testing sometimes forces over-reliance on linguistic and mathematical intelligences, hence not maximizing the instruction for students with strengths in the other intelligences.  This workshop utilizes demonstrations and hands-on lessons which illustrate each of the intelligences focused on science instruction.  In addition, a science lesson is presented which utilizes all eight intelligences.  Participants will also do their own multiple intelligence inventories and develop strategies to maximize use of all the intelligences in lesson design and implementation.
2009 NJCCCS:  Multiple intelligences can be applied to all science standards.

 

For questions or more information call 201.253.1290 or email abisulca@lsc.org.