Mi-STAR

Mi-STAR Curriculum

Mi-STAR’s curriculum is designed to empower teachers to provide high quality STEM experiences to students. Each unit in the curriculum is built around a problem-based “unit challenge.” Every unit challenge is related to one or more of the 21st-century grand challenges identified by the National Academy of Engineering and other professional science/engineering societies (e.g., energy, water, sustainability, health). Each unit challenge is also designed to focus on a question that is relevant to young people and their families.

Because Mi-STAR units focus on developing solutions to real-world problems:

• Engineering is central to the Mi-STAR curriculum, it is not an add-on or afterthought;
• The units require students and teachers to integrate content and methods from across the science and engineering disciplines;
• The curriculum prompts collaboration with local communities and businesses to promote place-based learning and career exploration.

The Mi-STAR Instructional Model supports students’ ongoing mastery of the transferable or ‘employability’ skills that are critical for future success in the workplace, which include the ability to:

• Work independently and as part of a team;
• Communicate effectively verbally and in writing;
• Approach new problems with creative solutions;
• Think critically about the strengths and weaknesses of possible solutions to problems;
• Use data and logic to make ethical, socially responsible decisions when faced with choices;
• Recover from disappointing outcomes and adapt to new situations;
• Function as a leader or a follower depending on the situation;
• Work on a problem over an extended period of time.

Each unit in the Mi-STAR middle school curriculum addresses multiple Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) performance expectations (PEs). The lessons within each unit and the units that comprise the curriculum scaffold students’ mastery of all three dimensions of the PEs (that is, the science and engineering practices, disciplinary core ideas, and crosscutting concepts).

Every unit in the curriculum includes multiple opportunities for multi-dimensional classroom-based assessment that gauge students’ mastery of each of the three dimensions of the PEs. Multi-dimensional items are also included in pre- and post-assessments for each unit. The items on the pre/post assessments are designed to measure student growth and to provide students with opportunities to practice responding to questions that are similar in content and format to what they will encounter on high-stakes tests.

Mi-STAR Professional Learning

Mi-STAR’s professional learning program is uniquely suited to empowering STEM teachers because it provides scalable opportunities for intensive in-depth learning that is augmented by long-term sustained interaction with Mi-STAR staff, experienced professional learning facilitators, and other teachers who are using Mi-STAR.

Mi-STAR’s professional learning program emphasizes strategies designed to help teachers implement Mi-STAR’s curriculum in an effective, student-centered way. Mi-STAR’s scalable train-the-trainer model for professional learning also provides a framework for teachers to grow as leaders.

The professional learning program begins with an online training that introduces the basics of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), including the nature of the performance expectations and their component science and engineering practices, disciplinary core ideas, and crosscutting concepts. The concepts of credible evidence of mastery and multidimensional assessment are also addressed. Further, the online program introduces teachers to best-practice pedagogy that supports student-centered, teacher-facilitated learning.

Following the online introduction to NGSS-aligned teaching and learning, teachers engage in face-to-face experiential sessions that give them the opportunity to interact with trained facilitators (the Mi-STAR Professional Learning Facilitators) and their teacher-colleagues as they work through issues related to classroom-based implementation of the curriculum and associated pedagogy. Assessment of student learning is also addressed using samples of Mi-STAR embedded assessments and associated scoring rubrics.

Prior to classroom implementation of any Mi-STAR unit, teachers work their way through an online “Unit Primer.” Unit Primers are available for each of the units and are designed to give teachers a broad overview of each unit’s challenge, storyline, science and engineering practices, disciplinary core ideas, and crosscutting concepts. Teachers who wish to gain more experience helping students use the science and engineering practices or crosscutting concepts can implement one or more of the Mi-STAR “off-the-shelf” lessons, which specifically address these topics.