This course has 3 major objectives:

1.) Participants will receive professional development on learning how to draw together evidence-based explanations to create and design assessment practices according to the Ambitious Science Teaching (AST) technique. This will be the focus of Day 1 and Day 2. We will be studying the book “Tools for Ambitious Science Teaching” Chapter 11 and 12 along with Appendix G; “Supporting Explanation Writing”.

2.) Participants will receive professional development by receiving instruction on Chapter 13 in the book “Tools for Ambitious Science Teaching”. This will be the focus of Day 3. Attendees will learn how to organize with colleagues to improve teaching in an AST based classroom along with a focus on Appendix D; “Reminding ourselves of the bigger picture of instruction”.

3.) Participants will receive professional development by receiving instruction on Chapter 1 in the book “Tools for Ambitious Science Teaching”. This will be the focus of Day 4. Attendees will learn how to create coherence between AST and Professional Standards for Practice and how to align the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) with AST techniques by focusing on Appendix A.