The St. Vrain Valley School Board adopted a new curriculum for science in the elementary and middle school levels and art education for all levels.
Elementary schools across SVVSD will begin the 2023-24 school year with a new science curriculum called Discovery Education’s Mystery Science and Mystery Packs. The new curriculum will meet Colorado Academic Standards and to Three Dimensional Science Instruction — which allows students to shift to learning science in an environment that utilizes core ideas, crosscutting concepts and the ability to describe how and why phenomena occur.
The district examined several options and found that the Mystery Science curriculum best aligned with the literacy program — ReadyGen — that is used in the district’s elementary schools.
According to Mike O’Toole, K-12 science coordinator, the district had already begun using Mystery Science as a supplement in the science curriculum since the pandemic.
“Students will be doing more figuring out than simply learning about,” O’Toole told the SVVSD Board of Education.
The middle school levels will adopt Discovery Education’s Science Techbook, PASCO Science Probes and Explore Learning Gizmos Simulations. The district will spend around $1.2 million on all instructional materials over the next two fiscal years.
Each middle school will receive 10 PASCO Science Probes kits that allow students to attach various scientific probes directly to their iPads for data collection, according to O’Toole.
“Our job as educators is to prepare our students for a future we can only imagine … In my opinion, with the way technology is changing our daily lives, students will need the ability to discern the credibility of information, analyze and interpret data, reflect, evaluate and know the difference between opinions and scientific evidence and be brave enough to use these skills to make decisions, solve problems and innovate,” said Tammy Root, a seventh-grade teacher at Westview Middle School.
Root was one of 28 teachers who piloted the program in the district over the past year. She gave a glowing recommendation for the curriculum and was excited to see how her students reacted to it.
The school board also adopted a new art curriculum — Art of Education — that will cost the district an estimated $204,972 based on projected student enrollment. However, the only ongoing cost will be a renewal of the instructional resources in three years.
The newly adopted curriculum connects with AP and IB curricula and opens up an opportunity for new courses in the future.
The new curriculum will allow teachers to remain flexible with their lesson plans while also proving structure for activities.
“Basically, the Art of Education is this amazing resource. It is a giant library of videos, resources and assessments and it is accessible for all K-12 students across all content and courses. And it is standard based,” said Janay Bird, SVVSD fine arts coordinator.
