What if one carefully crafted question could transform engagement in your high school biology class, especially for multilingual Black and Brown learners? In this interactive session, participants explore the Cultural Bridges strategy: using a single, intentional question to connect learners’ lived experiences to NGSS biology phenomena without lowering rigor. We will examine provided biology lesson excerpts that include subtle deficit or paternalistic “savior” framings and practice rewriting them through Cultural Bridges questions that honor learners’ cultural and linguistic wealth. Educators will analyze sample questions, see how they shift discourse and sensemaking, and consider where this move fits naturally in upcoming units. No materials required—examples and templates are provided. Participants are welcome to bring their own for reference and crosswalking.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants leave with simple templates and sample Cultural Bridges questions for high school biology that they can adapt to connect learners’ lived experiences to NGSS phenomena while interrupting deficit and white savior framings.

SPEAKERS:
Almitra Berry

How can we design science learning that allows multilingual learners to shine? This session explores instructional approaches and teacher moves that create rich opportunities for students to use their full range of meaning-making resources. Through classroom examples—such as building consensus ideas or sharing noticings and wonderings about puzzling phenomena—we'll examine moments when students make their thinking public, collaborate, and grow as sensemakers. Drawing on BSCS Science Learning's research and curriculum development, this session offers concrete, classroom-tested strategies you can bring back immediately.

TAKEAWAYS:
Multilingual learners are brilliant and capable of engaging in rich and rigorous scientific sensemaking when classrooms make space for their ideas. Walk away with practical tools and routines that elevate student thinking and strengthen whole-class science sensemaking.

SPEAKERS:
Susan Gomez Zwiep

In this interactive session, participants will put on ‘student hats’ to experience beginning-of-year routines that launch themselves and their creativity into a science community. These community-building routines bring multilingual learners’ (MLs) identities into a science class, embed support for MLs within core science instruction, and invite curiosity in learning using crosscutting themes in science. Beginning the year intentionally is essential to cultivate a language-rich learning environment. Participants will engage in structured discussion, scaffolded writing, and identity-centered activities that position students’ linguistic resources as building blocks for learning. Teachers will analyze student work and instructional materials to see how these routines establish norms for collaboration and opportunities for assessment of executive functioning skills. Designed for typical secondary class periods, participants will leave with ready-to-use scaffolds and discussion structures.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will bring back multiple strategies for beginning-of-year activities that center student diversity into secondary science classrooms, and an overview of assessment opportunities, guiding teachers towards developing a welcoming, language-rich, and collaborative learning environment.

SPEAKERS:
Kirby Selle, Alexander Dafforn

Participation in science classroom discussions is often uneven, with multilingual learners (MLs) contributing less frequently despite having valuable ideas to share. Because scientific learning depends on engaging in practices such as argumentation from evidence and constructing explanations, limited participation can restrict opportunities for MLs to develop and demonstrate understanding. This presentation synthesizes research from science education, language development, and classroom discourse to examine factors that shape who participates in science discussions. Particular attention is given to how classroom norms, teacher responses, and interactional structures influence MLs’ opportunities to engage in evidence-based reasoning. Drawing on literature and classroom examples, the session highlights approaches that support more equitable participation and meaningful engagement in scientific discourse.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will examine how classroom structures shape participation in science discussions and how to make multilingual learners’ thinking visible in scientific discourse.

SPEAKERS:
Tina Ahmadi

We know that elementary students can make sense of phenomenon but often elementary curriculum materials do not give them to the opportunities to dig deeply and develop rich explanations. In this session, we will explore how we can have learners engage meaningfully with phenomenon, engage in wondering and create questions that inspire awe, design the investigations to answer their own questions, and explain phenomenon using multiple formats. Guided by the recommendations in the Brilliance and Strengths report of 2022, we will engage in advocacy to provide support for finding more time in the elementary day for science learning. We won't leave out literacy as part of the plan. We will share our broad view of literacy in science and examples of high-quality trade books!

TAKEAWAYS:
Educators will envision elementary learners' sense making as an asset we can build from to engage young learners in true science (interdisciplinary) learning experiences.

SPEAKERS:
Mary Starr

Multilingual learners often need targeted language support in the moment—without interrupting sensemaking or lowering cognitive demand. In this session, participants will explore just-in-time instructional strategies that support multilingual learners during science discussions, investigations, and explanation-building. Attendees will analyze classroom video to identify teacher moves that provide timely language scaffolds while keeping students engaged in authentic science and engineering practices. Participants will leave with concrete strategies they can immediately apply to support student talk, writing, and reasoning in science classrooms.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will learn how to use just-in-time language scaffolds to support multilingual learners’ talk, writing, and reasoning while maintaining high cognitive demand and authentic science sensemaking.

SPEAKERS:
Brianna Reilly Oliveira

Current research around ML science focuses on creating a supportive environment, moving from traditional teaching methods like frontloading to integrating language with learning (Lee, 2021; Lee & Grapin, 2025). However, ML equity can be misunderstood, replicating deficit perspectives in the classrooms. Thus, we will dive into reframing linguistic justice by centering key attributes for a culturally sustaining space. Culturally rich classrooms strive to understand ML youth, ranging from those within language programs and students in ‘regular’ tracked courses. The diverse linguistic, academic, and cultural knowledge of students and their communities should be drawn from and developed. This can happen by creating a collective community, giving language space to flourish, centering social justice in planning, problematizing/humanizing the science and classroom. We will expand on these attributes, provide examples, reflect together to develop strategic plans for the coming school year.

TAKEAWAYS:
This interactive and reflective workshop centers multilingual youth to develop a culturally sustaining classroom for linguistic justice through key strategies. Participants will walk away with a toolbox and a structure to implement that supports ML student learning throughout the school year.

SPEAKERS:
Diana Bonilla, Jessica Garcia

A key part of learning science is developing language to talk about your ideas. Traditional methods of introducing a science lesson or unit with a vocabulary list and definitions don’t help students develop understanding of science ideas or hold onto the language. In this session, participants will explore instructional strategies for introducing and earning science vocabulary that support understanding for all learners, and especially multilingual learners. Attendees will analyze classroom video to identify teacher moves that embed vocabulary instruction within investigations and discussions. Participants will leave with practical strategies for helping students actively develop and use new science terminology in their sensemaking.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will learn how to embed science vocabulary development within investigations and discussions to strengthen student sensemaking and support all learners, especially multilingual students.

SPEAKERS:
Brianna Reilly Oliveira

In a Title I classroom where 99% of students qualify for free lunch, 5th graders matched the NC state science average despite serving a population that statewide scores 13 points lower. That gap does not close by accident. This workshop puts participants in the student seat. You will experience a full STEM Talk protocol, examine real student notebook entries across proficiency levels, and leave having looked at one lesson from your existing curriculum through both lenses. Grounded in NGSS Science and Engineering Practices, specifically argumentation from evidence and obtaining and communicating information, these structures meet the standards and the student simultaneously. The structures here were built for students who arrived writing random letters in English, for ELL students who had never argued a scientific claim out loud, and for EC students who had never been called on because someone believed they had something worth saying. They did. They do. So do yours.

TAKEAWAYS:
Three questions to hold against any lesson: How do I reach every student with this content? What does mastery look, sound, and feel like here? How do I keep every student thinking, talking, and valued? Applicable to any standard, any grade, any state.

SPEAKERS:
Jacqueline Cormier

Explore research-backed and interactive zines that help teachers shift their instructional practice to empower students as epistemic agents in the science classrooms. The zines support teachers in unpacking what it means to redistribute power and authority in the classroom through culture norms, curriculum materials, routines and classroom talk. Teachers can use the zines to support reflection, to prepare and adapt lessons, and as tool for developing professional learning communities.

TAKEAWAYS:
You'll take home zines and facilitator guides to can support your and your colleagues’ to make instructional and curricular decisions that shift power and authority in your classroom!

SPEAKERS:
Kate Henson

Multilingual learners bring diverse strengths, experiences, and language resources to the science classroom. Using a Universal Design for Learning (UDL) lens, this session explores how teachers can make intentional instructional choices to support meaningful participation for multilingual learners and benefit all students. Participants will analyze classroom video to identify how teachers proactively make choices that provide multiple ways for students to access ideas, engage in sensemaking, and communicate their thinking. Participants will leave with classroom-ready strategies for supporting multilingual learners.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will learn how to use a UDL-informed approach to design science instruction that leverages multilingual learners’ strengths and provides multiple pathways for all students to engage in sensemaking and communicate their thinking.

SPEAKERS:
Brianna Reilly Oliveira

The Educating for Environmental Change (EfEC) Galápagos Islands Collaborative Education Project is an international professional development initiative that connects K12 educators from Indiana with teachers, researchers, and community partners in the Galápagos Islands. This workshop will share the design, implementation, and early outcomes of this international collaboration. Participants will learn how the project leverages the Galápagos Islands—one of the world’s most significant ecological and evolutionary laboratories—as a context for teacher learning, place-based education, and global environmental literacy. Presenters will discuss strategies for building international partnerships and creating opportunities for teachers and students to engage with authentic environmental challenges. The session will examine how international partnerships can enrich teaching by helping educators connect global environmental issues to the communities where their students live.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will leave with practical ideas for integrating global environmental issues into STEM instruction and fostering meaningful cross-cultural learning experiences that promote environmental stewardship and scientific literacy.

SPEAKERS:
Ben Kravitz, Adam Scribner