This winter, NEED has been loving the City of Brotherly Love, and the city has been loving us back! We have been so pleased to be a partner in the PECO Energizing Education Program and this year we have been able to reach even more Philadelphia teachers!
NEED was thrilled to provide professional development for the School District of Philadelphia this winter. NEED held three PD sessions in January and February for teachers in the district, and participated in three additional sessions as part of The Philadelphia Education Fund Science Forum. These six sessions focused mostly on elementary content and standards. The first few sessions focused on the forms of energy and energy transformations and teachers were able to explore NEED’s Science of Energy materials. The middle sessions allowed teachers to get hands-on with electricity, batteries, and circuits by taking a closer look at ElectroWorks – Ben Franklin would be proud! These hands-on workshops also included time for teachers to brainstorm and create an investigation of their own that centers around the topic. This discussion and planning was especially valuable for teachers with limited resources.
At the final session, teachers from all grade levels came together to investigate the sources of energy and their advantages and disadvantages. Teachers learned strategies for introducing important vocabulary, such as renewable and nonrenewable, rehearsed a few energy chants, and practiced facilitating classroom discussion and debate as they worked through Energy in the Balance and Great Energy Debate.
NEED is proud to have the opportunity to come into Philadelphia schools, to share our love for energy education with these fantastic and dedicated educators. By the final session, we realized we had plenty of familiar faces joining us from past sessions. We hope to be back next year to continue bringing fun to Philly professional development.