Support your students in demonstrating their three dimensional learning! Many high-quality curricula use transfer tasks, phenomenon-based assessments where students demonstrate their three dimensional understanding while exploring novel phenomena. In this session, educators will be introduced to the research that led to this kind of assessment and how these assessments are designed. They will work through an example of a transfer task, analyzing the alignment to the three dimensions of the NGSS. Then, they will work through an activity structure that apprentices students into this new assessment practice, by breaking it down into smaller pieces, discussing in small groups, and participating in peer review. Finally, they will review scoring and feedback guidance to support student learning. Educators will leave knowing how and why to use transfer tasks in their own classrooms.

TAKEAWAYS:
Many high-quality curricula use transfer tasks, phenomenon-based assessments where students demonstrate their three dimensional understanding while exploring a novel scenario. In this session, educators will work through an example of a transfer task and an activity structure that helps students lea

SPEAKERS:
Kate Henson

Join us to explore how to leverage students' communication tools in the high school science classroom. This session will focus on strategies and approaches integrated into the OpenSciEd Chemical Reactions unit which challenges students to investigate chemical processes impacting oyster populations.

TAKEAWAYS:
Learn how to guide students in articulating their ideas, collaborating effectively, and constructing evidence-based explanations while encouraging the use of their own language and perspectives to make sense of complex scientific concepts and connect them to pressing environmental issues.

SPEAKERS:
Kristin Rademaker, Kristin Rademaker

HQIM must support students' increasing depth and sophistication with the three dimensions of the NGSS. Addressing the challenge of many HS students entering with underdeveloped SEPs, this session uses a unit from a free HS biology course designed to build SEP proficiency across the academic year. Each unit features a carefully crafted learning progression for a specific SEP, explicitly identifying and building upon prior student learning, fostering growth from guided practice to independent application. This session explores the intentional learning progression of the Modeling SEP within an EQuIP-reviewed, storyline-based unit on homeostasis. Participants will engage with key components of this progression, using a compelling phenomenon of a marathon runner falling into a coma as a context for modeling. The session concludes with a discussion of strategies for implementing intentional SEP progressions to ensure all HS students develop proficiency in these essential practices.

TAKEAWAYS:
Designing HQIM for the NGSS requires an emphasis on building progressions across the three dimensions. See how students develop their use of the Modeling SEP over time to reach high school proficiency in this EQuIP-reviewed homeostasis unit.

SPEAKERS:
Jonathan Tam

In this workshop, participants will experience a part of the Student Experience Improvement Cycle (SEIC), a teacher-team based approach to using evidence of the quality of student experience formatively to make OpenSciEd classrooms more equitable. The SEIC begins by a teacher team setting a goal for improvement in one of three aspects of student experience: coherence, relevance, and contribution. Then teachers review, adapt, and test research-based strategies for improving the quality of student experience overall and for students from systemically marginalized groups and communities. In this workshop, we’ll practice gathering and interpreting data using the digital Science SEET and explore strategies that other teachers have tested and found to be effective in promoting more equitable participation in OpenSciEd classrooms. Teachers will leave with research briefs they can use in their teacher teams and an understanding of how to lead the SEIC with their colleagues.

TAKEAWAYS:
How do we know which students of our students are figuring things out that they care about? Which students are contributing to knowledge-building in small groups? Join us to learn about a simple approach to using data from exit tickets with research-based strategies to promote more equitable partici

SPEAKERS:
Melissa Campanella

Explore how UDL principles are integrated into the OpenSciEd Natural Selection unit. This session will focus on using high quality instructional materials that meet the needs of all learners, ensuring accessibility and engagement for diverse student populations.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will gain practical strategies for scaffolding complex concepts, providing multiple means of representation and expression, and fostering student agency in collaborative, real-world problem-solving.

SPEAKERS:
Kristin Rademaker

Earth Science teachers have a range of comfort with the various DCIs in ESS1. To engage students in figuring out and using these abstract ideas, such as how the process of nuclear fusion in the center of the sun releases the energy that reaches Earth as radiation, we have developed a unit to support three-dimensional teaching and learning related to stars and exoplanets. The modeling activities, data analysis and simulations utilized in this unit empower students to feel like space scientists and argue from evidence about which exoplanet is most likely to be habitable. The unit exemplifies how to engage students in both unit and lesson level phenomena aligned to high school level performance expectations in space science. Participants will immerse in an activity from the unit, exploring how it addresses 3D learning goals for space science (HS-ESS1), and discuss how to leverage engaging phenomena and problems to make this content interesting and accessible to all students.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will deepen their understanding of how prioritizing phenomena-driven learning supports key HQIM features through exploring a free NGSS-badged ESS unit that engages student interest and relevance while integrating the three dimensions of argumentation, stability & change, and various DCIs.

SPEAKERS:
John Salazar

Localizing instructional materials provides the potential for students to be able to identify with science and engineering ideas they are learning and helps students connect with their communities. It can also help students see where science and human systems intersect, particularly when students are made aware of issues and different points of view. In this workshop, participants will discuss how to elicit students’ own interests in local phenomena and community priorities and explore how to examine and use survey data from students. In addition, they will encounter and learn about five different strategies for adapting OpenSciEd instructional materials to be more local: (1) adding or swapping an anchoring phenomenon; (2) adding or swapping an investigative phenomenon; (3) writing a local transfer task; (4) making use of the related phenomenon board throughout a unit; and (5) using exit tickets to help students connect the lesson to something important to them.

TAKEAWAYS:
It is powerful to connect science instruction to local phenomena and community priorities—but it is challenging work! Join us to explore benefits and cautions of adapting OpenSciEd instructional materials to local contexts and to learn multiple strategies for localization of resources. In this works

SPEAKERS:
Kate Henson

Developing classrooms where students productively engage in sensemaking across all three dimensions of the NGSS can be challenging. Our OER genetics unit provides embedded curriculum supports and examples for educators. Students engage in a series of opportunities to consider how genetic variation impacts isolated populations and develop conservation solutions. They analyze authentic genetic data sets, develop cause-and-effect models, and learn about LS3 and LS4. The unit provides detailed guidance for educators on how to structure student discourse, support the revision of initial ideas, and guide collaborative learning opportunities to ensure all students are engaged in learning that integrates the three dimensions. Participants will experience the unit firsthand to better understand how it supports meaningful sensemaking of genetic-based phenomena and problems.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will learn how to support meaningful student sensemaking by effectively integrating the three dimensions of the NGSS, a key feature of HQIM, through experiences from a HS biology unit exploring the conservation of megafauna through the lens of the genetic viability of isolated populations.

SPEAKERS:
Jonathan Tam

Discover how to foster a classroom culture where students actively contribute to knowledge building in science learning. This session will highlight practices and strategies embedded in the OpenSciEd Electromagnetic Radiation unit.

TAKEAWAYS:
Gain insights into facilitating discussions, promoting equitable participation, and supporting sensemaking and explore how to create an inclusive learning environment that empowers students to collaboratively engage in sensemaking.

SPEAKERS:
Kristin Rademaker

OpenSciEd High School units include Electronic Exit Tickets. These are short formative assessments that occur 2-3 times per unit, in between other assessments. They include items to check for understanding of lesson-level PEs, to make connections between content and students’ lives, and to elicit information about their experiences and to help students reflect on their own progress in focal SEPs and CCCs. They are built in Google Forms but can be ported to any survey software. They can also be used in any lesson, and you can make your own. Incorporating Electronic Exit Tickets into your teaching routines can help you reduce the amount of time you spend grading and provide you the information you need when you need it about your students’ three-dimensional understanding. You will also learn how to use the keys that accompany Electronic Exit Tickets to support student learning and their experience of your classroom community.

TAKEAWAYS:
Reduce grading time and get the data you need when you need it with 3D Electronic Exit Tickets.

SPEAKERS:
Kate Henson

Discover the equitable assessment system applied in the OpenSciEd Thermodynamics in Earth’s Systems unit. Examine assessment practices that value and elicit diverse ways of knowing, supporting all students in demonstrating their understanding.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will explore how formative and summative assessments are designed to be inclusive and culturally responsive, providing students with multiple opportunities to engage with, reflect on, and communicate their learning.

SPEAKERS:
Kristin Rademaker

Educators often face the challenge of adapting OER materials to their local context and student needs while preserving the intentional design of NGSS-driven curricula. Educative features embedded within HQIM support teacher agency by strengthening understanding of the NGSS, facilitating effective implementation, and guiding decision-making to ensure productive adaptations that maintain curricular integrity. The New Visions high school Earth and Space Science (ESS) course leverages tools such as targeted callout boxes to highlight NGSS elements, differentiation strategies, and formative assessment opportunities. In this interactive session, participants will explore these educative features through an immersive experience, demonstrating how they support teacher learning, decision-making, and sustainable curriculum adaptations to meet the specific needs of their students.

TAKEAWAYS:
Through an immersive experience, attendees will have the opportunity to consider educative features of OER science materials, including targeted callout boxes, that are designed to support enactment of the curriculum and localized adaptations to the materials that maintain the vision of the NGSS.

SPEAKERS:
Jonathan Tam