Overview

River City Curriculum - Overview

The River City Project concentrated on areas of epidemiology, scientific inquiry, and experimentation. Based on recommendations outlined by the National Research Council (2000), the River City Curriculum supported students as they:

  • Learned the principles and concepts of science;
  • Acquired the reasoning and procedural skills of scientists;
  • Devised and carried out investigations that tested their ideas; and
  • Understood why such investigations are uniquely powerful.

River City was a 17 hour, time-on-task curriculum that included a pretest and a research conference at the end of the unit. Teachers were not expected to find extra time in the school year in order to implement River City. On the contrary, the River City Curriculum was designed and intended to replace existing lessons. The River City Curriculum was interdisciplinary in scope, spanning the domains of ecology, health, biology, chemistry, and earth science, as well as history.

Three diseases simultaneously affected health in River City, based on historical, social, and geographical content. As students explored these diseases, they learned how disease is spread and how human interactions can have effects far from the initial site. This situation allowed students to experience the realities of identifying a problem, investigating it, and delineating the multiple causes that underlie a complex phenomenon. Students followed multiple threads that potentially lead to very different hypotheses and experiments. This helped refute the common belief that there is one right answer to any science experiment.

Students in River City

As visitors to River City, students traveled back in time, bringing their 21st century skills and technology to address 19th century problems. River City was a town besieged with health problems. Students worked together in small research teams to help the town understand why so many residents were becoming ill. As they explored, they were encouraged to:

  • Form and then test a hypothesis regarding the health and environmental issues they had discovered;
  • Design a procedure with a control and an experimental group, using both current and historically accurate tools, to investigate their hypothesis;
  • Use appropriate tools to make quantitative and qualitative observations;
  • Gather data and then organize it in tables and graphs;
  • Draw conclusions from that evidence, and make inferences based on observed patterns in the data;
  • Report on their experiment and conclusions by writing a research report in the form of a letter to the 'mayor' of River City describing their investigations;
  • Share and synthesize their results with those of their classmates to understand the larger picture; and
  • Analyze their process and results.
Student interacting with River City Students interacting with River City

Teachers in River City

Overall, teachers acted as 21st century experts who did not travel back in time with students. They guided students through the scientific inquiry experience and encouraged students to problem-solve rather than provide answers.

Day to day, teachers oriented students to the day’s activities, helped students prioritize the day’s activities based on class needs, checked that students had achieved goals before progressing, and assessed student progress.

The River City Curriculum was a roadmap to a destination – an understanding of scientific inquiry. We viewed the teachers as "expert drivers" because they:

  • knew the terrain better than anyone (the students, parents, researchers);
  • decided when to speed up and slow down; and
  • emphasized and highlighted what they thought was most important.
Teacher interacting with students

Before Teachers Began the River City Project with Their Students

Activity Approximate Time to Complete

Teachers returned the following materials to their trainer or the River City office:

  • Signed Teacher Agreement Letter
  • Signed Teacher Consent Form
  • Signed Student Consent Forms for each student whose parents authorize participation in the research project
10 - 20 minutes
Completed the River City Teacher Registration, (online, in the Dashboard) 5 - 10 minutes
Completed the River City Professional Development training 8 hours
Completed the teacher Pre-Survey (online, in the Dashboard) 20 - 30 minutes
Completed student information forms (online, in the Dashboard) when they created students accounts 30 - 90 seconds per student
Administered student Pre-surveys (online, in the Student Dashboard) 20 - 50 minutes, depending on student's reading level

When Using River City

Activity Approximate Time to Complete
Completed the entire River City curriculum with their students 14 - 20 instructional hours
Sought technical and pedagogical support from trainers and/or members of the research team as needed 0 - 15 hours

Upon Completion of River City

Activity Approximate Time to Complete
Instructed their students to write Letters to the Mayor (online, in the Student Dashboard) One class period
Administered student Post-surveys (online, in the Student Dashboard) One class period
Completed the teacher Post-surveys (online, in the Dashboard) 20 - 30 minutes