Hi Renee,

 Thank you for your question. As our co-presenter Beth mentioned, we had already planned for an RCT in the spring of 2020 - of course, we weren't anticipating school closures and distance learning for the rest of the year. We were very fortunate that many of our treatment teachers wanted to continue the program - which was already mostly on a digital platform. While educators were frantically figuring out how to teach language arts and math, they appreciated that the Hero Elementary program, aligned to NGSS, already existed. Our team quickly pivoted and added video demos for hands on activities - and this provided educators with the flexibility to watch the videos synchronously or asynchronously.  Of course, attrition rates were quite high - but this was identical across treatment and control groups so we don't think it is due to the program - rather, due to the shift to distance learning.

We're in the middle of conducting an RCT with first graders and life science content. Stay tuned for results coming in this summer!

Hi Dionne,

We've created a set of equity strategies to help educators bridge the gap between science and equity. Many of the educators we work with have little to no experience with science curriculum for 5 to 8-year-olds. These strategies are guiding principles to incorporating a child's cultural background and lived experiences in the curriculum.

Hi Dionne, 

Thanks for the question. As Mai mentioned, we have a set of equity strategies for educators to use. These were based on the work in NGSS for ALL Students, by Okhee Lee, Emily Miller, and Rita Januszyk. These strategies support educators in connecting the science content to the lives and communities of children from a wide variety of racial, ethnic, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds. We develop coviewing guides to foster meaningful conversations about the science in the Hero Elementary episodes. And our hands-on activity guides include recommendations for age-appropriate science discourse, with attention to supporting children who are becoming bilingual.

Throughout the development of our project, we took intentional steps to ensure that equity concerns would permeate the very "DNA" of everything we create. We developed a framework, the Transformative Transmedia Framework for Early STEM Learners (https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1282814), to guide our work. We have found that children and educators respond very positively to our diverse cast of characters -- the main characters as well as supporting cast! Educators report that kids identify with the characters and with the settings and experiences depicted in the animated show; and we have our Framework to thank for that! We introduce family members in the show, to provide depth and context for who our characters are. And throughout the project, we emphasize the equity-focused message that the "Superpowers of Science" -- otherwise known as Science and Engineering Practices -- are powers that everyone has and that everyone can use. In addition, we promote three social-emotional themes: teamwork and collaboration, the importance of resilience and persistence, and using science to help one's community. 

Hi, Remy--

It's always great to meet a former PBS Kid! I love hearing which programs people watched growing up. It really demonstrates the importance of our work in public media and the system's long-term commitment to educational programming.

To answer your question about STEM content differentiation, PBS Kids -- the network -- has frameworks (based on national standards) and aims to make sure all content areas are covered. So if they have a gap in content, some topic that isn't covered, they will encourage producers to fill it. Another consideration is age. So if you are a preschool show, your work covers different topics than a school age show. We are always interested in what our colleagues in the system are doing -- in terms of television, digital, and education programs. We know our colleagues are the best! This is particularly true in the digital space because other networks typically don't invest in digital the way PBS Kids properties do.

Your question about what lessons these considerations have taught us about what's engaging is very interesting! I'm not sure I have an answer to that. Television typically does the world building for PBS Kids properties. And creating a new show really is about having an idea and building from there. It's more art than science, if you pardon the pun! We all think about what's come before us and what we like that's being done now. And of course originality is important, too!

I hope this answered your question(s)! In closing, I see that you are from FIU. A colleague, Dr. Monica Cardella, is on her way to Miami from NSF/Purdue. I can't wait to see what she does there!   

Hi Remy,

Thanks for the kind comments! Like Joan said, we definitely built on successful practices of other PBS properties that teach STEM concepts. We give viewers fun and engaging stories with relatable science concepts, we show the characters working through problems, and invested a lot of time and effort into shaping our characters. For our outreach, we also built on successful models like the one use in our other TPT property, Sci Girls.

That said, one thing I think sets Hero Elementary apart from similar programming is the focus on overarching science practices. In our episodes, you don’t just learn about how plants grow, you learn how important it is to make observations, collect data, and test your hypothesis. I think the team did a great job in presenting those science practices as super powers that anyone can use allowing kids to roleplay those concepts at home.

Hi Remy,

Building on what Joan and Dennis said... It has become very clear in recent years that kids are moved by multifaceted play and learning experiences. The Hero Elementary team happens to have deep roots in digital learning environments, which helped us meld the TV world with the digital world and also into the real-life world. From the curriculum perspective, we were fortunate to be able to build from existing frameworks to create a unique framework that linked science and literacy. The NGSS Science and Engineering Practices became the key connection point -- every one of those practices involves communication. And our brilliant Television team helped us  envision these as "superpowers of science" that every child has and can use to be a hero in their own corner of the world. We set out to build a world that empowers kids -- particularly those from historically marginalized communities -- via engaging, heroic stories in contexts that ring true to kids' lived experience.

Hi Sabrina - great question. We're currently in the middle of conducting caregiver focus groups of Hero Elementary participants- so we'll know more in a couple of months! Anecdotally, because of children accessing the program virtually due to the pandemic, we've seen caregivers step in to scaffold the learning and extend the learning beyond classtime. For example, when kids were exploring the "Heating and Cooling" playlist, we saw a child record a video of their parent making pancakes and describing what is happening with the batter. 

Hi Sabrina,

Great question!  When it comes to family/caregiver engagement we try to find entry points for further discussion outside of the show. We have produced co-viewing guides that parents/caregivers can follow along with to discuss the concepts brought up in the show. We also have programs geared for family participation where participants can work through several activities together including a game, operation investigation, where the whole family plays together to observe the traits of a mystery animal. The goal of these programs is for the families to continue talking about the event long after by continuing to watch the show, downloading the game, or playing pretend with the hero cape they make.

Anecdotally, during one of these events I was lucky enough to observe a family working together to find a mystery animal in operation investigation. The Dad was convinced that the animal was a Piranha because “Piranhas eat only meat”. The kid was not as convinced and wanted to test more. They ended up going with the Dad’s guess and getting it wrong (Piranhas are omnivores!) at which point the kids said “See! we needed to use our super powers of science!” They were talking abut this the entire night, and I’m guessing they’ll never forget that Piranhas are omnivores.

Thank you for your responses, Momo and Dennis. This work is fascinating. Thank you for sharing those wonderful anecdotes that clearly describe how families engage with the content beyond the program. I look forward to learning more about the project as you collect more data through focus groups. I also look forward to viewing the show and playing the games! 

Hi Sabrina, you can watch the show on PBSLearningMedia and play the games on our website!

Thank you very much, Liandra. We're so happy to see that the kids love the show!

Thank you, Lindsay! We have resources for educators available at PBSLearningMedia, please pass along to your teaching friends.

Hi Jodi, Thanks! Participating classrooms in schools from underserved communities in northern and southern California were randomized into treatment and control groups. Control classrooms were conducting business-as-usual curriculum and treatment classrooms replaced their science activities with the Hero Elementary program. As for learning outcomes, we used the ScienceQuest digital assessment which is aligned to NGSS. (We also had teacher interviews that provided a lot of context around how it was actually implemented when we pivoted to distance in April). Interestingly, control teachers told us that once they had to pivot to distance, they scrambled to put together language arts and math learning experiences- and science was not a focus. 

Thanks, Shannon! I'm glad you and your kids are enjoying Hero Elementary! And if they are looking for even more games, please check out https://heroelementary.org/. It has been a joy to work on such a comprehensive project; it has reminded me, again, of the holistic nature of teaching and learning. What we have learned will certainly affect future programs! Random thoughts here... We have a ton of ideas for future work! The pandemic has given us new ways of working with each other, with educators, and with children. I do think that some kind of distance learning modality is here to stay, even for learners this young! We have gained insight into the importance of providing comprehensive technology support to families. We have seen where stress points exist and have a better idea of where things have to change as we move toward a more equitable learning landscape. It will take persistence, changes to organizational priorities, and lots of cross-organizational work. The partnerships that we have developed over the course of this project will help in this area.We expect to continue moving forward with our equity and social-justice work with content development and educators in the field. We have learned a lot from our research and outreach efforts; in particular the importance of building strong relationships with organizational partners. We want to get our distance learning materials into the hands of more educators, perhaps on PBS LearningMedia. And digital learning experiences will grow in importance and we will continue learning from those experiences. We are very interested in refining and expanding methods for assessing and responding to children's learning and to support language development.