The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) has been developing grades 3-8 science performance assessments to provide open-source examples of high-quality science assessments for educators to use in the classroom. These are designed to meet the expectations of the NGSS and be coherent with high-quality instructional materials.  During the presentation, DESE staff will provide an overview of the performance assessment system design, opportunities to explore the open-source classroom science performance assessments, and resources for implementing the assessments and analyzing student work.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will explore open source, NGSS-aligned performance assessments and engage in a protocol to analyze student work.

SPEAKERS:
Corrine Steever, Sonia Neuburger, Michele Snyder

Sponsoring Company: Edvotek, Inc.

Explore the world of forensic science with these fun and exciting escape room activities! Try forensic blood detection and agarose gel electrophoresis experiments, decipher clues, and solve puzzles. Learn to design your own escape room to have students unravel the evidence and free the innocent.

SPEAKERS:
Maria Dayton

Place-based education enhances learning when students have purposeful activities to engage them. From the school playground to exploring the neighborhood to botanical gardens to zoos to environmental learning centers, nature offers opportunities for teaching and learning. Come hear about a variety of activities and experiences and receive handouts you can adapt for your elementary students as they learn about life science topics such as needs for survival, growth and development, life cycles, food webs and chains, and interconnectedness of living and nonliving materials . Learn how to maximize student focus and attention through observations, hands on activities, and explorations.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will be able to identify and apply engaging activities for students to help them learn about life sciences in natural environments.

SPEAKERS:
Laurie Boulden

Experience a small-scale demo of the Watershed Game, where students become community leaders solving real-world environmental challenges. This transdisciplinary tool engages learners in systems thinking by integrating science, social studies, math, and civics as they tackle water quality, land use, and flood resilience. Aligned with NGSS and state standards, the game promotes collaboration, equity, and local problem-solving. Participants will explore how students use data, policy, and engineering strategies to develop innovative, community-based solutions. Free to borrow, with lesson plans and teacher support included.

TAKEAWAYS:
Inspire student action with a game that connects environmental science, policy, and community planning.

SPEAKERS:
Maggie Karschnia

High school students embrace leadership guiding elementary scientific inquiry sparked by leveled storybooks. Using the Science Process through the Magic of Literacy (SPML) approach, the Centennial Science Club teaches science concepts through exploration while reinforcing reading, writing, and math standards. This program brings science back into the elementary classroom, fostering student leadership and helping teachers confidently integrate science into their daily lessons. Topics covered to date are thermal energy, motion, kinetic energy, energy transfer, biomimicry in engineering, and density. The littles are guided to ask questions from reading a storybook followed by collaborative development of a hypothesis and a procedure followed by data collection and analysis. The group ends with a conversation of errors and extensions. Come see the excitement, ask questions, and discover how literacy can be a powerful launchpad to provide autonomous scientific thinking at your school.

TAKEAWAYS:
High school students guide elementary scientific inquiry sparked by storybooks, reinforcing cross-curricular skills. This encourages student leadership, boosts teacher confidence, and fosters independent scientific thinking, demonstrating how literacy can be a powerful tool for hands-on learning.

SPEAKERS:
CHERYL FARRER

Inquiry-based life science can flourish in the many facets of a pollinator garden. Pollinator gardens become the gateway to student engagement. The Dakota Science Center has been using citizen science to encourage students and families to take their curiosity outdoors. Pollinator gardens are used as a launching pad by sharing multiple avenues of investigation from the leaf litter to the weather above. Blending mobile phone applications with paper handouts allows everyone to be an investigating scientist. GLOBE offers both formal and informal curriculum. National Geographic Society offers software for species identification and a BioBlitz program. NASA has a suite of environmental education applications. Citizen science applications provide an additional layer of inquiry which encourages students to participate in environmental education beyond the classroom.

TAKEAWAYS:
Inquiry-based life science can flourish in the many facets of a pollinator garden. Citizen science applications provide an additional layer of inquiry which encourages students to participate in environmental education beyond the classroom.

SPEAKERS:
Douglas Munski, Laura Munski

The Summer Research Academy is a series of two-week research opportunities for students in grades 7-12, developed as a collaboration between our school and a local college with sessions co-lead by faculty from both institutions. We’ve developed a model for engaging students in the research process by introducing accessible topics and techniques, and facilitating the research process in an developmentally-appropriate manner. This includes developing research questions and experiments that can be answered in our limited time together. As students work through the experimental design and data collection process, they learn that science is not a linear process, continually revisit their hypothesis, and modify their experiment. The week ends with a research symposium where results are shared with their families and the community. SRA sessions have included a range of topics, such as: water quality of the local watershed, biodesign, astrophysics, zebrafish physiology, and microbiology.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will learn how to scaffold authentic science research experiences across a range of disciplines. We will present a model to help students develop research questions, design experiments, collect and analyze data, and present results - all in a two-week period.

SPEAKERS:
Rachael Lancor

While student investigation using authentic data-driven phenomena can be a powerful tool for sensemaking, the process of identifying and integrating high-quality data can be overwhelming and time consuming. This session supports educators in tackling both of these challenges. Join us as we highlight sources and strategies for identifying locally relevant data-driven phenomena and share practices for transforming these into engaging and accessible phenomena for your students. Participants will leave with a curated directory of data-sources and classroom-ready strategies to bridge the gap between raw data and rich phenomena-based learning.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will leave with a curated directory of data-sources and classroom-ready strategies to bridge the gap between raw data and rich phenomena-based learning.

SPEAKERS:
Christopher Like, Tiffany Morgan

Research shows that providing opportunities for youth to interact with and learn from diverse STEM role models can break stereotypes and increase motivation to pursue a career in STEM. Join Twin Cities PBS as we share research-based strategies for incorporating role models into STEM learning spaces, created through 20 years of award-winning research and outreach as part of the SciGirls television series on PBS Kids. This session will outline: ways for teachers to prepare students for meeting a role model; how to prepare the role model for talking with youth (including specific talking points for role models and self-paced training for role models); how to find STEM Role Models; and printed guides on Role Model strategies and gender equitable teaching strategies.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will learn research based strategies for incorporating role models in formal and informal learning environments, with a focus on how to prepare youth and role models to get the most from the experience!

SPEAKERS:
Katie Hessen

FieldScope is a collaborative platform empowering communities to visualize and analyze environmental data that fosters a deeper understanding of science. This workshop introduces you to a tool transforming how participants engage with citizen science, moving beyond data collection to meaningful interpretation and storytelling. FieldScope is a common portal for collecting, sharing, and analyzing diverse data, a tool to help participants create place-based stories using data, and support for making sense of environmental information. Experience hands-on exploration of FieldScope tools, examination of partner projects featuring intergenerational collaborations, school/park partnerships, and public health initiatives, and guidance for integrating data storytelling into community programs. Join us if you want to enhance your programs with data-driven approaches or engage communities in participatory science. You'll leave with concrete steps for implementing data explorations.

TAKEAWAYS:
Leave with the next steps for planning data explorations in existing or future projects, examples of how to learn with data generated by participatory science projects, particularly in middle and high school settings, and how to host your own project data.

SPEAKERS:
Jamie Noll

Sponsoring Company: Edvotek, Inc.

Transforming bacteria with vibrant colored proteins is an unforgettable way to teach the central dogma of molecular biology. Take it further by creating bio-art with your students! In this workshop, we’ll share transformation tips, explore microbial creativity, and even award our favorite designs!

SPEAKERS:
Maria Dayton

Sponsoring Company: Edvotek, Inc.

Bring inquiry into your lab with food science! Start by extracting food dyes from candy to analyze using gel electrophoresis and paper chromatography. From there, expand the exploration to different foods, encouraging students to design and test hypotheses, and use STEM techniques to analyze data.

SPEAKERS:
Maria Dayton

This outdoor learning session will be great for educators of any grade level and location. Whether you're new to outdoor learning or a seasoned pro and if you teach in a classroom or an informal learning space, this session is for you! Naturalists from Wolf Ridge Environmental Learning Center in Finland, Minnesota will guide educators through different practices and ways of thinking about outdoor learning that will change their outdoor learning mindset. From there, practical ideas will be shared and explored that can be implemented in classes the following week!

TAKEAWAYS:
For outdoor learning to be successful, educators need to be able to say 'Yes! And...' to whatever comes their way. Educators will learn how to use nature as their co-teacher and embrace the spontaneity that comes with outdoor learning.

SPEAKERS:
Charles Pavlisich, Joseph Walewski, Emily Pavlisich

A Sidewalk Science display is the STEM version of the Little Free Libraries that appear in many places: a self-contained interactive science museum display. This idea will have two impacts: on the students who create them and on the kids who stop by to play with them. The creating students will need to deepen their understanding of their subject in order to design one, and design thinking (as done at the Stanford d school) can be applied to leverage their creativity to build an effective one. Neighborhood kids who come by will get a hands-on opportunity to learn a bit of science, engineering, math, or whatever topic is presented.

TAKEAWAYS:
Sidewalk Science projects will deepen your students' understanding of their subject and connect them more deeply to their communities.

SPEAKERS:
Steven Heilig

Ready to ignite real change in your school and community? This energizing session will show you how to design and host an Environmental Literacy and Sustainability Summit that unites educators, administrators, and local partners around a shared mission. From initial planning and promotion to hands-on sessions and lasting partnerships, you’ll get the full blueprint, plus practical tools like timelines, templates, and outreach strategies. Discover how this powerful event can boost curriculum, meet environmental literacy standards, and inspire action. Walk away ready to launch a summit that’s engaging, impactful, and unforgettable.

TAKEAWAYS:
Learn how to plan and host an impactful EcoSummit that builds school-community partnerships, supports environmental literacy, and inspires action through hands-on learning and collaboration—all with ready-to-use tools and a step-by-step planning guide.

SPEAKERS:
Stacey Dickerson

The co-presenters of this poster are a team of an informal educator who focuses on grades 3 to 9 and a university faculty member who works with pre-service educators. These two people have are part of a four-person group from three locations across North Dakota who are working to diffuse the National Geographic Society and the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation program for enhancing grades 6-12 STEM education by implementing a glocal-type social media competition to present possible solutions to various environmental issues. The 13-to-18 year old participants create a 60-second video that explains the suggestions for dealing with a world issue within the context of their local community. The program in North Dakota only has been in existence since summer of 2023 and is two-thirds completed in the three-year statewide project. This consortium is under the umbrella of the North Dakota Water Resources Department, the North Dakota Envirothon, and the Dakota Science Center.

TAKEAWAYS:
This poster and the interaction with the co-presenters by attendees will help diffuse the NGS Slingshot Challenge program to a wider audience whose students may benefit significantly in participating in a such a social media oriented competition as a way to share tentative project solutions.

SPEAKERS:
Laura Munski, Douglas Munski

Planet Stewards provides educators with opportunities and resources to build up scientifically literate students and communities, as well as support their efforts to implement hands-on action-based projects that conserve, restore, and protect human communities and natural resources from environmental challenges. The National Earth Science Teachers Association (NESTA) is a nonprofit-educational organization that supports educators with professional development offerings, learning communities and classroom programs. NESTA is now providing stewardship project funding opportunities to formal and informal educators working with elementary through college-age students. Learn about how to apply for funding for a project that focuses on habitat conservation and restoration, marine debris and waste reduction, carbon footprint reduction or climate resilience.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will learn how to apply for funding for the Planet Stewards project and how to be sucessful in obtaining funding for a local stewardship project.

SPEAKERS:
Peggy Steffen

UNCW's MarineQuest program has been working with students of all ages for over 45 years, immersing them in relevant marine science experiences both in the lab and out in the field. During this exciting workshop, participants will join the MarineQuest team to explore innovative ways to engage students in water quality investigations with a focus on salinity science. Before things get messy, participants will discover an online treasure trove of water quality data from estuarine reserves around the country and use the system to automatically generate graphs to evaluate current and historic data trends and visualize the impacts of hurricanes on ecosystem health. Participants will then learn how to engage their students with hands-on investigations by utilizing sensor technology to carry out several salinity-based experiments, emphasizing water quality, the global water crisis, and climate science. Don’t miss out on this thrilling workshop, it is your DENSITY, I mean destiny!

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will come away with a better understanding of the tools, technology, and engaging hands-on investigations available to increase salinity-based water quality comprehension and climate literacy for students in upper elementary-high school classrooms.

SPEAKERS:
Erin Moran, Harris Muhlstein

Immerse yourself, as a student, into a scientific inquiry sparked by an appropriately leveled storybook.The goal is to help teachers confidently teach science while integrating reading, writing, and math. The Science Process through the Magic of Literacy (SPML) is designed to bring science back into the elementary classroom. Since the incorporation of high stakes testing, students in the primary levels have had minimum exposure to science as a way of thinking. The spark is my desire that all students will love learning through exploration. Come and carry out a scientific exploration through a group generated hypothesis from questions proposed from a storybook. See where student autonomy can lead to procedure development, data collection, reasoning and further inquiry through justification by analysis of the data. Learn to use guiding questions to allow AI to assist in content and process clarity while discovering how literacy can be a powerful launchpad into scientific thinking.

TAKEAWAYS:
You will work collaboratively witnessing how storybooks can spark student-led science investigations, helping teachers confidently integrate science with reading, writing, math, and communication while fostering critical thinking and a lifelong love of learning through inquiry.

SPEAKERS:
CHERYL FARRER

Learn how K-8 teachers integrate outdoor experiences into their curricula (NGSS) and introduce real-life phenomena in the world’s biggest classroom: outdoors! Get tangible tips for communicating with admin, grounds staff, & parents—outdoor time is never wasted. The more you teach outside, the more you create science experiences your students will remember. Session will cover how outdoor instruction can improve student academic, mental, and behavioral health. Get practical outdoor teaching tips. Address common barriers such as first-timer’s fear, schedules, administrative support (or lack thereof), the supplies you really do need (and don’t need), and finding funding and volunteer help. We’ll share a few of our favorite lessons too. Teachers will get valuable resources from Minn’s School Forest Program: How to Teach Outside and Getting Help and Funding. Even if your school has “no nature,” natural phenomena persist. School grounds can always be improved…it’s worth the investment!

TAKEAWAYS:
Teachers will learn how to use the outdoors to teach science: what to look for; how to establish/maintain; and why, what, and how we do it. Learn the critical requirements: administrative support, a map, lessons that can be done outside, student gear. We will share a few NGSS lessons as examples.

SPEAKERS:
Kim Benton, Martha Hovde, Laura Duffey

Come explore ways to engage students in community centered collaborative climate action now and on into the future. This workshop will engage participants in frank conversations about avoiding indoctrination, designing for varied forms of action, and building community collaborations.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will gain skills in how to weave different forms of climate action into their current learning resources as well as design new lessons that center locally contextualized and appropriate collective action efforts; such work can be framed for the goals of any educational environment.

SPEAKERS:
Lindsey Kirkland, Deb Morrison

How do we care for plants? How do plants care for us? Using this simple pre- and post-assessment, we can see how student thinking about their relationship with plants changes in response to learning that includes Indigenous knowledge. In this session, we reflect on the opportunities and tensions we consider as white educators working to incorporate Indigenous Ways of Knowing (IWK) into our science teaching. We share a variety of strategies we have used to incorporate Indigenous knowledge and voices into teaching about plants and place, focusing especially on inquiry about the phenology and cultural significance of milkweed plants and on seed adaptations relevant to restoring plant communities. Indoor and outdoor activities have been used with learners from elementary through post-secondary. We present evidence about how learners’ thinking changes in response to the activities, and we reflect on continued opportunities for growth, both in ourselves as educators, and for our learners.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will learn and evaluate a variety of strategies for incorporating Indigenous Ways of Knowing into teaching and learning about plants and their significance in both social and ecological communities.

SPEAKERS:
Kara Baldwin, Emily Mohl

This presentation will showcase an innovative partnership between a local family-owned hobby farm and an elementary teacher preparation program that resulted in an outdoor, experiential teaching experience for pre-service teachers within their science methods course. This presentation will discuss the planning, design, and delivery of the outdoor, experiential teaching opportunity at the hobby farm, and the shared perspectives of the pre-service teachers as they navigated the research, creation, and rehearsal of their outdoor-based science lessons that were delivered during a one-day field trip for local students at the hobby farm. Additionally, the presenters will share their research findings on the impact of the outdoor, experiential teaching opportunity on the elementary pre-service teachers’ science teaching self-efficacy, and their insights into the planning, implementation, and assessment of the outdoor, experiential teaching experience within the science methods course.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will leave this presentation with a basic knowledge of how to integrate an outdoor, experiential teaching opportunity within a science methods course for elementary pre-service teachers.

SPEAKERS:
Sarah Sanderson, Trish Arnold

STEM instruction and curriculum can be difficult to write. Where do you begin? What should be included? What lessons are imperative and what standards should be focused upon to best support student learning? This quick 30-minute session will help you learn how to begin your path towards building a STEM program that is meaningful, powerful, engaging, and fun. Explore what I did to write and design fully detailed curriculum maps for STEM instruction that integrate national and state standards for science and engineering for grades K-6 as well as gifted instruction and enrichment for grades 3-5 to begin a new STEM program for 900 students at one elementary school site. We'll discuss the curriculum map design, how to begin in Quarter 1, day 1 with each grade level, how to write engaging lessons using a framework, what to include in your instructional presentations for topics including STEM, Engineering, Physics, Life Sciences, the Scientific Method, Coding, and so much more.

TAKEAWAYS:
This session will give ideas, insights, and improvements needed to design and write curriculum maps and intriguing lessons, along with powerful instructional practice needed to guide student learning and inquiry in STEM. Take aways include the curriculum map template and lesson framework.

SPEAKERS:
Debbie Posniack

The integration of Food Standards within the NGSS/SEL/Common Core. The roundtable discussion demonstrates school across the US have integrated food within the curriculum. Whether it is within the study of Climate Change, Biology, Environmental Science.

TAKEAWAYS:
1. Food Standards aligned to the Common Core/NGSS/SEL 2. Engagement and Exploration through the lenses of Critical Thinking, Communication, Collaboration, Critical Thinking, Curiosity. and Creativity. 3. Integration of School Gardens.

SPEAKERS:
Lisa Ernst, Antoinette Schlobohm, NBCT, NCST

Teaching Science in Middle School with new purpose and vigor. Students who learn through experiential learning have a greater chance at retaining the information by way of using multiple learning styles concurrently.  This presentation gives examples of science demonstrations and activities that the students perform and give their observations and hypothesis about. Then, they are guided toward the lesson from there. This session will define Experiential Learning, compare it to traditional learning, and provide the audience with several hands-on activities and demonstrations to see what it feels like to be the student exploring phenomenon to open discussions about science topics.

TAKEAWAYS:
The main takeaway is how students learn through experiential learning by having attendies be in the student role.

SPEAKERS:
Denise Galiano

Join this interactive session to explore how hands-on, inquiry-based activities using recycled and low-cost materials can boost student engagement, deepen understanding, and increase retention of core science concepts in grades 3–5. Drawing on 23 years of classroom experience and current work with RAFT (Resource Area For Teaching), the presenter will demonstrate easy-to-implement lessons aligned with national science standards. Attendees will actively participate in sample activities and leave with practical strategies and free resources they can immediately bring back to their classrooms—proving that meaningful science learning doesn't have to break the budget.

TAKEAWAYS:
Teachers will leave this session equipped with low-cost, high-impact strategies and hands-on activities that foster student engagement and understanding using recycled and affordable materials—making quality science education accessible to all.

SPEAKERS:
Nancy McIntyre

In this engaging professional development session, educators will explore how to effectively integrate the Writing Revolution approach into the middle school science classroom. This course provides practical strategies for using writing as a powerful tool to deepen students' understanding of scientific concepts, enhance critical thinking, and improve communication skills. Through hands-on activities and real-world examples, teachers will learn how to implement sentence-level writing techniques, structured responses, and content-based writing exercises that support inquiry-based learning and foster student engagement in science.

TAKEAWAYS:
By the end of this training, educators will have a clear understanding of how writing can be seamlessly integrated into science instruction to benefit their students, enhancing both their scientific knowledge and writing skills.

SPEAKERS:
Christa Samber

Join naturalists from Wolf Ridge Environmental Learning Center in Finland, Minnesota to discuss outdoor learning pedagogy. Participants will share what they're already doing with outdoor learning, what they would like to be doing, and where they are struggling with getting their students outdoors. Wolf Ridge naturalists will facilitate discussions and build a network of educators to help strengthen educators outdoor learning skills.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will engage in discussions around outdoor learning with naturalists from Wolf Ridge Environmental Learning Center.

SPEAKERS:
Charles Pavlisich, Joseph Walewski, Emily Pavlisich

Discover how global experiences can transform science education in this dynamic panel featuring Fulbright Teacher Exchange alumni. Panelists will reflect on how they leveraged their exchanges abroad to integrate international perspectives into their K–12 science classrooms, enriching student learning and fostering global awareness. These educators will also share practical strategies for weaving real-world themes and examples into science instruction, providing insight into the profound impact of cultural exchange on teaching practice. Come learn how you and your classroom can benefit from these fully-funded international opportunities!

TAKEAWAYS:
This moderator-led panel discussion will provide innovative, actionable teaching strategies from Fulbright educators' global experiences. Participants will explore cultural exchange in K-12 science classrooms, hear real-life examples, and connect with fellow educators for future collaboration.

SPEAKERS:
Pamela Joslyn, Rochelle Darville, Lindsey Smaka, Kelsey Anderson

Help your students connect science learning to the real-world environmental challenges facing their local communities with the Watershed Game. In this hands-on workshop, you'll play a large-format game that engages students in solving complex issues around water quality, land use, and flood resilience, bringing environmental science to life. The game aligns with NGSS and state-specific standards and is available free for loan. Designed for middle and high school classrooms, the Watershed Game allows students to take on the roles of community leaders and use prevention tools, practices, and policies to reduce water pollution and increase flood resilience while considering equity. Supportive lesson plans and teacher support materials will allow you to explore local environmental challenges, and engage students in local stewardship and citizen science projects. Participants will leave ready to play the Watershed Game with their classrooms and engage students in their local watershed.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will leave this session with a deep understanding of how the Watershed Game works, how it fosters STEM and encourages local watershed stewardship, and how to integrate it into science and interdisciplinary curricula for middle and high school students.

SPEAKERS:
Tina Miller-Way, Maggie Karschnia

Get ready to think outside the box! "Sim-MAKERS Playbook: Foster Innovation on a Budget" is a hands-on workshop that equips 6th–12th grade science teachers with creative strategies to bring simulation and STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Math) learning to life—without breaking the bank. In just 120 minutes, participants will learn to turn everyday items into powerful teaching tools, build low-cost models, and design engaging curriculum ideas. You'll leave with a DIY guide, ready-to-use activities, and the confidence to spark innovation and excitement in your classroom, no matter your budget!

TAKEAWAYS:
Teachers will learn how to turn everyday materials into powerful, low-cost simulation tools, helping them bring STEAM concepts to life and inspire innovation and creativity in their students—no expensive equipment required!

SPEAKERS:
Shannon Egli, Katherine Smith

Whether you're a novice or a seasoned pro, this session offers leadership skills that will empower you with the rationale and tangible, real-world examples to revamp your teaching.

TAKEAWAYS:
Discover how simple adjustments in activity order can supercharge your students' knowledge construction and seamlessly integrate the NGSS into your teaching.

SPEAKERS:
Patrick Brown