Culturally relevant science: An approach to math science education for Hispanics. Final technical report

As planned a letter was sent out to 17 teachers who had participated in a Summer 1994 workshop on ``Culturally Relevant Science for Hispanics`` at Michigan State. These teachers were supposed to have spent the intervening time developing lesson plans and curricula. The letter requested a report of any activities undertaken and copies of lesson plans and materials developed by February 1996 with a stipend of $400 for satisfactory reports. It was a disappointment to only get 9 responses and not all of them demonstrating a satisfactory level of activity. Diana Marinez, Dean of Science at Texas A and M University, Corpus Christi, who is the other developer of this curriculum and the author reviewed the submitted materials and chose those showing the most promise to be invited to participate in the Summer Writing Workshop. Spring of 1996 and particularly in May--June, the author wrote a partial first draft of a companion volume for the teacher`s manual which would provide a rationale for doing culturally relevant science, present the cultural and the scientific background that teachers would need in order to be able to teach. One of the goals of this curriculum is that it should be off-the-shelf ready to teach and that teachers would not have to do extra research to encourage its adoption. The outline of the book is appendix 1. The Writing Workshop was held at Texas A and M University, Corpus Christi from July 14 to July 27, 1996. Participating teachers chose topics that they were interested in developing and wrote first drafts. These were distributed to all participants and critiqued by the workshop directors before being rewritten. Some teachers were more productive than others depending on their science background. In total an impressive number of lesson plans were written. These lesson plans are listed in Appendix 3. Appendix 4 is a sample lesson. Work still needs to be done on both the source book and the teachers` manual