GK-12 SUNRISE: Schools, University 'N' (and) Resources in the Sciences and Engineering
Overview
SUNRISE is a NSF GK-12 project aimed at partnering STEM graduate students "Fellows" with elementary and middle school teachers from three different school divisions. The project draws heavily on the experiences of Mason's faculty, school administration, and teachers to mentor the Fellows in creating a strong Fellow-teacher partnership, through which the Fellows will be able to successfully bring their STEM content knowledge into classrooms.
Goals and Objectives
The objective of this project is to build a unique model of collaboration among elementary and middle schools, school division administration, and Mason to foster systemic efforts in implementing Information Technology (IT) rich STEM content-knowledge into grade 4-6 education by graduate Fellows. This is supported by science topics from contemporary areas such as GPS, nanotechnology, and oceanography which are brought into classroom via lessons with hands-on experiments.
Program
Every Fellow is paired with a teacher from one school. Fellows spend 10 hours/week in the classroom with the teacher and students, and 5 hours/week planning activities for the classroom. Fellows and teachers spend a maximum of 2 years the program. Biweekly project meetings (Project staff and Fellows) help to exchange ideas. Fellows fill out time sheets signed by the teacher and weekly journals that reflect their activities.
Funded by the National Science Foundation