The Irvine Unified School District serves approximately 27,000 students with over 1,100 credentialed teachers. IUSD has a long history of successful instructional programs, consistently scoring at or near the top of state and national measures of student performance and knowledge. The Beckman@ Science Program has helped IUSD build on its strong foundation of academic success and provide additional opportunities for students to engage in hands-on, inquiry-based science instruction.

2009-2010 marks the 11th year of IUSD’s participation as a Beckman@ Science District. During 2009-2010, IUSD implemented 3 hands-on, inquiry-based kits for each classroom in grades K-3. Thanks to the Beckman Foundation, monies were available to train teachers in the most effective instructional strategies when using these kits. Thus, three times each year, every primary grade student has three separate six-to-eight week units where the focus of instruction is on standards-based, hands-on science with students actively engaged in the “doing” and learning of science. Teachers, administrators, students, and parents have commented on how much the students enjoy working with these science materials. Several teachers and administrators have reported that the training provided with the kits has brought a willingness to investigate science in a way that far exceeds any experiences they had during their educational careers. Even teachers who are initially reluctant to engage in hands-on science instruction find the kits easy to use and see the strong results so in terms of student learning and understanding of science.

As part of our new science instructional materials adoption process, K-3 teachers were surveyed in February, 2007 about the implementation and use of the Beckman kits. From this survey, we found that 76% of our teachers were spending one hour or more per week teaching science, 46% of our students used a science notebook frequently or always in their science class, and 95% of our teachers prefer a kit to a textbook when teaching science.

This implementation of Beckman Science Kits has served as a wonderful introduction to our Elementary Science Specialist program for students in grades 4 through 6. In these grades, all students have two 60-minute lessons per week taught by the Elementary Science Specialist and an additional 60-minute lesson per week taught by the classroom teacher. The hands-on, inquiry-based lessons are taught by the Elementary Science Specialist, all of whom have received ongoing professional development in science to enhance their teaching skills. The classroom teachers supplement these hands-on, inquiry-based lessons by introducing the students to reading science content and relating the reading to the hands-on experiences taught by the Elementary Science Specialists.

The highlight of our secondary science program is the fact that either University High School or Woodbridge High School has been named Outstanding High School at the Orange County Science and Engineering Fair for 20 of the past 22 years. The success of our high school programs is due in large part to the strong foundation that students receive in the elementary grades. This is further supported by a two-year requirement for science/health instruction at all of our district middle schools. The instruction at the middle schools is aligned to the science content standards and provides frequent opportunities for additional hands-on, inquiry-based lessons. Enrollment in high school science courses and Advanced Placement classes in science continues strong as a result of a concerted effort by all teachers to develop a love for science in all IUSD students.

2003-2004 saw the implementation of on-line assessment in science. Students are assessed on their knowledge of grade level content standards in science. Teachers use the results from these assessments to modify instruction and to be aware of areas that students have learned the content as well as those areas where additional instruction was needed. This information has also helped us plan additional training for our upper grade elementary teachers on science content knowledge. Benchmark testing in science now includes grades 4 through 8.

IUSD students do quite well on the CST Science Tests. In 5th Grade, 87% of IUSD students are proficient or advanced. 88% (72% Advanced) of 8th Grade students also scored at those levels. In 2008, IUSD High School Students averaged a score of 4.21 on the Chemistry AP Exam compared to State and National averages of approximately 2.8.