Teachers of the gifted spend two days at the Museum making salt dance, building and testing mousetrap cars, launching rockets, and more. Thanks to the GPEX Science Collaborative Curriculum Challenge Grant, funded by the Florida Department of Education, 25 teachers from gifted student programs at eight Title-I MDCPS K-5 and K-8 schools recently participated in two days of professional development at the Museum.
The GPEX Science project goals focus on improving gifted students’ academic achievement in science, increasing the number of hands-on inquiry science lessons provided to gifted students, and providing professional development to all project staff. Participants learned to use the Museum’s After-school Program Exploring Science (APEX) curriculum to address science standards, and practiced inquiry-based teaching strategies. They are now using APEX Science in their classrooms throughout the school year, and are working collaboratively to develop extensions of the APEX Science curriculum to meet the needs of gifted students.
This is the third year that the Museum has collaborated with Miami-Dade County Public Schools’ Advanced Academics Program to provide hands-on science training, curriculum and materials for teachers of the gifted. To date, almost 4,000 K-5 gifted children have been served, and 3 published collections of APEX curriculum extensions for gifted children (developed by master teachers trained at Museum) have been distributed to all K-5 gifted teachers.