Slide 1: Teaching Science in Florida: CPALMS Resources for Science Instruction
PJ Duncan, Secondary Science Program Specialist
January 2018
Hello and welcome to the Teaching Science in Florida Webinar Series, CPALMS Resources for Science Instruction my name is PJ Duncan and I am the Secondary Science Program Specialist at the Florida Department of Education.
Slide 2: Objectives
Determine how to utilize CPALMS resources for planning science instruction.
The objective for the webinar today is to determine how to utilize CPALMS resources for planning science instruction.
Slide 3: CPALMS Resources
CPALMS is a repository of resources that are aligned to the Florida standards. Recent data indicates that CPALMS is accessed in 239 countries and territories.
Resources are thoroughly vetted to ensure alignment with Florida Next Generation Sunshine State Standards. Please be aware that Florida is not a NGSS state. The national standards are often confused with the Florida Standards because of the similarity of the names. For more information about the Next Generation Sunshine State Standards for science please see the Teaching Science in Florida webinar Understanding the NGSSS standards. If you have questions, please make note of my contact information at the end of this webinar and give me a call or email me.
Slide 4: Course Descriptions and Directory Tab
CPALMS is extremely user friendly and allows the user to get information in several different ways. The first tab I would like to talk about is Course Descriptions. This tab allows the user to access the information and related standards for the course or courses that they are teaching.
Slide 5: Resources Tab
The resources tab can be used to search for resources by standard, resource number or name.
Slide 6: Standards Tab
The standards tab is where I begin when looking for resources. Of course once you become familiar with CPALMS you will develop your own method, today I will demonstrate how to access the standard and identify the resources aligned to the standard.
Slide 7: Some of our Resources
If you scroll down to the bottom of the page you will see information about additional resources, tools, support and links for more information.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the resources available.
Slide 8: Some of our Resources
Looking through this list I would like to point out the Model Eliciting Activities and mention that a future webinar in the TSIF series will be specific to MEA’s.
Slide 9: Some of our Tools
Icpalms offers tool to personalize your own professional development. The curriculum mapping tool has been updated and will save time when developing a map. It allows for easy editing, sharing and even will import your district calendar. Tutorials are available on CPALMS to learn more and a future TSIF webinar topic will cover utilizing the tool to plan for science instruction
Slide 10: Let’s investigate further using a standard
I begin my search for resources with a standard. For today I have selected standard SC.8.P.8.5. Recognize that there are a finite number of elements and that their atoms combine in a multitude of ways to produce compounds that make up all of the living and nonliving things that we encounter.
Slide 11: Standard SC.8.P.8.5
So I went to CPALMS, went to the standards tab and followed the prompts to get to my standard and you will see here that in addition to the standard itself it gives some more supportive information. You will see a green box that shows you the course that are related to this standard, the access points for this standard and the purple box gives you all of the resources that are aligned to this standard. This number is constantly changing because the CPALMS website is a work in progress. If you go to a standard and you take a look and you don’t find what you need don’t cross that off of your list, make sure you go back and check on a regular basis for what’s been updated on the site. So let’s take a look at the purple box a little closer.
Slide 12: CPALMS Resources
Here you will see for this particular resource there are six lesson plans, three text resources, 2 videos, an assessment, an original tutorial and more. So we are going to focus for just a moment on the text resources that are aligned to this standard. And again the resources have gone through a vetting process, a review process, to make sure the resource is aligned to this NGSSS standard. The importance there is if teachers are looking for resources say on Google for an article, a current event for this standard, it is a lot of work to align to the standards here in Florida, develop questions. Great time saver for teachers.
Slide 13: Text Resources
Three resources are available. If you look in the box to the left you will see three titles: Explainer: How and Why Fires Burn, Tungsten vs. Lead, and We are Stardust. So for our purposes today we are going to select Explainer: How and Why Fires Burn.
Slide 14: Explainer: How and Why Fires Burn
So when I click on the resource it brings me to this page. You will see a resource ID number. If you want to go back to the resource at a later time you can just make note of the number and go to the resources tab to get to it. As I said before there are a lot of ways to get to the information. The red arrow is beside the link to the article and the summary is below it. We see the grade level 6, 7 and 8 and is aligned to 6 standards.
Slide 15: The Final Recommendation
Down here you see the attachments and we will go through them quickly. The final recommendation placement form, a qualitative rubric and text dependent questions. When I teach model lessons in schools I use these resources for planning. They allow me to plan in advance when I don’t really know who my audience will be, they are an even better resource when you do know.
Slide 16: Final Recommendation
When you click on the link this is what you will see, the text complexity analysis. This document allows for advance planning. How many times have you taught a lesson and you taught it better at the end of the day compared to the beginning because you learned as you went what the students needed to be successful. Or maybe it was year to year. This document helps to speed up that process. It gives you a lot of information such as the potential challenges for readers of the text.
Slide 17: Qualitative Rubric
The next is the qualitative rubric. This gives you the complexity of the article. Again it is great for planning. This document along with student data allows for the teacher to select an article that is best suited for the students.
Slide 18: Text Dependent Questions
These are the text dependent questions and the writing prompt for this particular article. This is a great time saver for teachers. The writing prompt could be an extension piece if time is an issue, or homework.
Slide 19: Text Complexity Resources on CPALMS
To recap the text resources are aligned to NGSSS and provide supporting documents planning and implementing instruction.
Aligned to Next Generation Sunshine State Standards for science (NGSSS)
Informational Text
Text Dependent Questions
Text Complexity Analysis
Qualitative Measures Rubric
Slide 20: FloridaStudents.org
Slide 21: FloridaStudents.org Resources
Original Tutorials
Virtual Manipulatives
Problem-Solving Tasks
Educational Games
Text Resources
Tutorials
This is a great resource for teacher, students and parents.
Slide 22: Let’s investigate further using a standard
SC.912.E.7.1
Analyze the movement of matter and energy through the different biogeochemical cycles, including water and carbon.
Everything that I do starts with the standard, so I have selected an earth science standard from the biology course that deals with biogeochemical cycles.
Slide 23: FloridaStudents.org
This is what you will see when you go to Floridastudents.org. You select the content area and proceed. It is an easy site to navigate. No sign-on information is required. We will select science.
Slide 24: Biology I on Floridastudents.org
We are going to select grades 9-12. Chemistry and physics are currently under construction. We will select biology and you can see that there are over 200 hundred resources.
Slide 25: Closer look at standard
You will see that there are 4 resources for this standard.
Slide 26: Florida Resources – Original Tutorial
You will see here that there are Florida resources and additional resources, let’s look at the Florida resource first. This resource is specifically produced for our Florida standards. Primary resource type say original tutorial.
Slide 27: Energy and Matter Movement through Biogeochemical Cycles
Over on the right hand side you will see an outline of the tutorial. This includes practice items. At the end of the tutorial students can print out a certificate of completion that also notes how much time they spent on it. It will not allow students to press next until the page is complete. This is a great remediation tool that can be tailored to meet individual student needs. It won’t replace instruction, but is a great study tool.
Slide 28: Return to Resource Page
Additional resources at the bottom are aligned to the standards, but are not original tutorials.
Slide 29: Original Tutorials from CPALMS.org
If you are looking at this standard in CPALMS you can get to the original tutorials and additional resources in the purple box. Please see the red arrow.
Slide 30: Recap
Aligned to Next Generation Sunshine State Standards (NGSSS)
Text resources and original tutorials
Lesson plans, MEA’s, Perspective videos and more
Please make sure that you understand that Florida is not a Next Generation Science Standard (NGSS) state, which are the national standards. We use the Next Generation Sunshine State Standards (NGSSS). This has caused quite a bit of confusion for our teachers.
Slide 31: Questions??
Visit our website at
Email PJ Duncan, Secondary Science Specialist
Email Alicia Foy, Elementary Science Specialist
Slide 32:
Thank you for joining us and have a great day!