New Martinsville, W.Va. (West Virginia Handle on Science Project)

The Bayer Foundation and Bayer’s New Martinsville site have donated funds to West Virginia to develop the WV-Handle on Science Project, a science education reform program that implements the National Science Resources Center curriculum in elementary school classrooms.

This project is providing quality hands-on science curriculum materials along with extensive professional development for teachers in 46 schools in five West Virginia northern panhandle counties, including Brooke, Hancock, Marshall, Ohio and Wetzel. All of the approximately 575 K-6 teachers receive professional development focusing on inquiry-based teaching strategies, science content and alternative assessment relating to exemplary instructional materials. These materials consist of a combination of units from Science and Technology for Children (STC), Full Option Science System (FOSS) and Insights. The modules that the teachers use are housed and refurbished at the Materials Resource Center located at West Liberty State College’s SMART-Center.

An expansion project, WV Reach Out, has been funded by the National Science Foundation as a pilot Local Systemic Change project to provide leadership and science content enhancement and materials for 11 seventh-and eighth-grade science teachers from seven West Virginia counties. This project utilizes distance-learning technologies and provides science curriculum kits for teachers to pilot in their classrooms. WV-Handle on Science Project staff serves on the advisory board.

The WV-Handle on Science Project has established strong links with West Liberty State College, particularly with the instructor of the Materials and Methods course, who is utilizing the Project’s pedagogy and instructional materials. The instructor also serves as a WV-Handle on Science Project mentor and classroom observer. Students from the course are required to fulfill volunteer hours in the college’s Materials Resource Center and are performing internships with many of the project’s teachers one day per week. The project’s teachers have commented that the pre-service teachers now are more comfortable and competent at teaching science and are familiar with the methods used in the curriculum materials.