PRE-SERVICE ELEMENTARY TEACHER'S USE OF DLESE
EMU has been the nation's largest producer of professional educators, including teachers, counselors, administrators, and other school personnel (Focus EMU, 2003). EMU is also graduating hundreds of elementary teachers every semester. If these teachers have ideas and resources in place that they are familiar with for teaching specific National and Michigan benchmarks they are probably more likely to use them when they begin their teaching careers.
The first objective of the study was to determine if the students in ESSC 202 became better acquainted with the Michigan Curriculum Framework (MCF) benchmarks for earth science after completing the DLESE project. The second objective was to determine the ease and effectiveness with which the ESSC 202 students found appropriate activities to teach grades 3-5 earth science from the DLESE website. Greater than 75% of the students remembered the benchmarks, which implies that this project obtained its first goal of acquainting students with the MCF. The second goal was a little less positive. However, the project was worthwhile and will be included in future ESSC 202 classes.