This presentation focuses on student use of AI, with an emphasis on how their motivation can help build a classroom of Sensemakers. Participants will engage with several AI tools and applications commonly used by high school students and evaluate how these tools can be leveraged to support Sensemaking. A strong emphasis will be placed on classroom assessment examples, particularly those involving the critique of AI-generated responses to traditional open-ended student questions. Additionally, survey data from current high school physics students will be shared to help examine student voice regarding the use and leverage of AI implemented instructional strategies. Attendees will leave with adaptable tools and clear next steps to immediately implement routines and activities that foster a community of Sensemakers who also use AI in their learning environments.

TAKEAWAYS:
Instead of fighting AI, flip the script in your high school classroom. This session will explore multiple AI tools, but more importantly, how to leverage those tools to build a community of Sensemakers that critically analyze AI-generated content. Special emphasis will be placed on assessment use.

SPEAKERS:
Matthew Bulman

A hallmark of three-dimensional assessment is making student thinking about a DCI, a CC, and an SEP visible at the same time. In this interactive session, you'll step into the role of a student to experience a model Phenomenon-Driven Task and see how it brings sensemaking to life. Together we will unpack what makes a PDT useful, identify the key features that distinguish it from traditional science assessments, and practice analyzing student responses to reveal patterns in learning. The agenda includes: • What is a PDT and Why Does It Matter? (10 min): Key features of 3D assessment. • Hands-On PDT Experience (30 min): Complete a model task as a learner. • Analyzing Student Responses (10 min): Surface patterns in student thinking. • Design Your Own (5 min): Begin sketching a PDT for your classroom. • Q&A and Next Steps (5 min): Resources and support. You'll leave with strategies for designing meaningful assessments that surface student thinking and inform next steps in instruction.

TAKEAWAYS:
Phenomenon-Driven Tasks mirror three-dimensional instruction and can be used to make students' thinking about and with DCIs, CCs, and SEPs visible at the same time.

SPEAKERS:
Victor Sampson

How do we move beyond traditional assessments to truly measure three-dimensional learning? This poster session explores the differences and connections between Transfer Tasks and Case Studies as high-quality NGSS-aligned assessment strategies. Using agriculture-based phenomena, participants will examine how each approach supports sensemaking, increases cognitive demand, and provides meaningful opportunities for students to apply scientific understanding in real-world contexts.

TAKEAWAYS:
Clear comparison of two high-impact assessment strategies Ready-to-use examples grounded in real-world agricultural contexts

SPEAKERS:
Angela Gulotta, Hannah Wedger

This session explores the practical and ethical implementation of AI-driven "Study Bots" to enhance student mastery in high school chemistry. We will demonstrate how to shift AI from a potential source of academic dishonesty to a powerful formative tool that delivers on-demand, targeted practice for complex topics such as stoichiometry and exam preparation. Participants will see concrete examples of how bots can be trained on specific classroom materials—such as unit tests and lab manuals—to provide personalized feedback, guide students through multi-step calculations, and help them develop strategic study plans. The session will also outline a practical rollout strategy, including student verification checklists and clear ethical guardrails, to ensure technology use remains safe, equitable, and focused on original student thinking.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will leave with copy-ready AI prompts and a student verification protocol they can immediately use to create custom, content-specific study bots. These tools streamline instructional planning and feedback while building the durable data-literacy skills students need for future STEM care

SPEAKERS:
Diane Vrobel

This research was intended to evaluate the effectiveness of a designing and facilitating hands-on activities for K-12 students in engaging undergraduate  students to develop a deeper understanding of course learning objectives. Students in various undergraduate biology courses (BIOL-104, 202, 204, 422) participated in a once-a-semester community outreach day at the North Manchester Public Library. Prior to this event, MU students designed a 5-10-minute hands-on activity, translating their didactic material from the classroom into a level that was accessible to the general public. At the event, the MU students facilitated their activities for upwards of 45 local K-12 home school students. Following completion of their outreach project, students in this study were be given a follow-up survey to evaluate their perspectives on whether the task of conveying their didactic material to the public enhanced their understanding of course learning objectives.

TAKEAWAYS:
This session will evaluate the effectiveness of a designing and facilitating hands-on activities for K-12 students in engaging undergraduate students to develop a deeper understanding of course learning objectives.

SPEAKERS:
Cassandra Gohn

This presentation explores the integration of three-dimensional thinking into science curriculum and assessment, emphasizing a deeper understanding of scientific concepts and practices. Attendees will discover practical strategies to design curricula that foster critical thinking, inquiry, and real-world application. The session will also highlight effective assessment techniques aligned with three-dimensional learning, ensuring that student evaluations reflect their conceptual knowledge, scientific practices, and crosscutting concepts. Ideal for educators seeking to enhance science instruction and improve student engagement, this presentation offers insights to transform traditional teaching approaches into dynamic, interconnected learning experiences that prepare students for future scientific challenges.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will learn how to effectively incorporate three-dimensional thinking into science curriculum and assessments, enhancing student engagement and understanding by connecting core concepts, scientific practices, and crosscutting themes for deeper, real-world learning experiences.

SPEAKERS:
Treshana Weise

How do we transform standard instructional materials into powerful showcases of three-dimensional learning without increasing teacher workload? This workshop aligns with the Three-Dimensional Teaching, Curriculum, and Assessment strand, demonstrating how to adapt OpenSciEd and ClassCrunchLabs units into authentic transfer tasks. Participants step into the student hat to experience a mini design challenge modeled after Shark Tank and ExploraVision formats. We connect to NGSS goals like MS-PS2 magnetic fields and engineering design. To ensure Science for All, we provide multiple equity examples, including accessible scaffolding templates for diverse learners and inclusive team structures. Shifting to the teacher hat, participants will analyze student-facing pitch templates and use a provided crosswalk tool. You will map these formative and summative assessment strategies directly to your local Portrait of a Graduate competencies, leaving with classroom-ready diagnostic rubrics.

TAKEAWAYS:
Stop rewriting curriculum from scratch. Transform OpenSciEd or ClassCrunchLabs units into thrilling Shark Tank or ExploraVision style transfer tasks. Gain inclusive strategies to make three-dimensional thinking visible and incorporate your school's Portrait of a Graduate durable skills.

SPEAKERS:
Kathleen Boucher-Lavigne

Tornado Alley is shifting - can your students explain why? Step into the role of a learner and tackle this real-world phenomenon by analyzing data, spotting patterns, and building an evidence-based explanation. Then switch to a teacher lens to uncover what three-dimensional learning actually looks like in practice and how to assess it. You’ll dig into student responses, identify evidence of real thinking, and turn traditional questions into meaningful 3D assessment tasks. Walk away with ready-to-use strategies, templates, and tools that make student thinking visible, without adding to your workload.

TAKEAWAYS:
Design and use three-dimensional assessments that turn real-world phenomena into opportunities to make student thinking visible, revealing what students truly understand, not just what they can recall.

SPEAKERS:
Shelby Irvin

This session highlights practical, classroom-ready strategies for strengthening three-dimensional sensemaking in high school science courses, with an intentional focus on courses with heavy content standards (e.g. honors and AP classes). Participants will engage with coherent lesson sequences that intentionally integrate DCI's, SEP's and CCC's through anchoring phenomena and the use of student voice. Concrete examples of instructional routines, assessment tasks and student work samples will demonstrate how to make student thinking visible and actionable. Emphasis will be placed on designing and using assessments that capture evidence of reasoning, model development and evidence-based explanation, while informing real-time instructional decisions. Attendees will explore adaptable templates, scoring tools, and planning protocols aligned to typical classroom constraints, ensuring feasibility without increasing workload.

TAKEAWAYS:
Explore instructional shifts that can be implemented immediately in your high school classroom. Participants will leave with small, practical adjustments to lesson planning that allow student voice to drive instruction while still addressing rigorous, content-heavy standards.

SPEAKERS:
Matthew Bulman

Generative AI makes it easier for students to produce polished science responses without necessarily showing deep understanding. This session presents a research-informed approach for using conceptual modeling to make student thinking visible by revealing how learners represent components, relationships, processes, and change. Drawing on empirical work with undergraduate engineering students and broader research on systems thinking and modeling, the session shows how conceptual representations can expose gaps that fluent written answers may hide. Rather than using AI mainly to generate content, the session explores how AI-informed prompts can support questioning, reflection, revision, and formative assessment. Attendees will leave with practical ideas for prompts, feedback, and assessment that can be adapted for science settings in secondary, postsecondary, and teacher education.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will learn how conceptual modeling and AI-informed prompts can help reveal and support real student understanding, not just polished AI-assisted answers.

SPEAKERS:
Roee Peretz

This presentation will explore how Formative Instructional Practices (FIP) can transform classroom instruction. FIP is a research-based approach that emphasizes continuous feedback, student involvement, and clear learning goals to improve academic achievement. The goal of this session is to equip educators with practical strategies to implement FIP effectively, helping students take ownership of their learning while enabling teachers to make informed instructional decisions. FIPs are not new, but when used consistently, they can be a game-changer in classrooms. This presentation will begin by reviewing the core principles of FIP, including the importance of setting clear learning targets, using descriptive feedback, involving students in the learning process, and adjusting instruction based on evidence of student understanding. Participants will reflect on their current practices and identify opportunities to integrate FIP more deeply into their teaching routines.

TAKEAWAYS:
This session delivers formative instructional practices (FIPs) that are easy to implement, but will make a big difference. Participants will walk away with a cache of strategies that elevate student learning and engagement without adding extra work to their plates.

SPEAKERS:
Mesa Davis

This session focuses on building authentic assessments tied to agricultural phenomena. Teachers will role-play a condensed transfer task centering around a relevant agricultural phenomenon, analyze its components, and discuss the potential design of their own using a provided template. The session emphasizes how transfer tasks connect classroom learning to real-world challenges, encouraging students to apply science concepts meaningfully. Participants will leave with a blank and sample template to use in their own instructional setting.

TAKEAWAYS:
Agricultural transfer tasks give students authentic assessment opportunities where they can apply their science learning.

SPEAKERS:
Angela Gulotta, Hannah Wedger

Over six years, our science department transformed assessment from a traditional grading model to a skills-first competency-based system. Beginning with NGSS-inspired exploration and classroom pilots, we gradually developed shared competencies, common assessment practices, and department-wide expectations that emphasize scientific skills, feedback, and student growth. In this session, participants will explore the evolution of our framework, the challenges and successes of implementation, and the lessons learned from moving from isolated experiments to a fully integrated competency-based program. Through examples of assessments, rubrics, student reflections, and feedback systems, attendees will examine practical strategies for building competency-based assessment in their own classrooms and departments.

TAKEAWAYS:
Leave with a roadmap for implementing competency-based assessment in science, including competencies, rubrics, feedback systems, student reflection, and lessons learned from six years of implementation.

SPEAKERS:
Joseph Grissom

Science leaders from a large, urban, school district will describe and model a process they have developted to utilize generative AI tools for making their district-level science assessments better (psychometrically, linguistically, standards-alignement-wise, etc...).

TAKEAWAYS:
Generative AI tools can be used to help shape the development of resources in ways that account for context-specific requirements within a local education association.

SPEAKERS:
Kate Henson

This session will help secondary science educators design 3-dimensional transfer tasks for district summative assessments, like finals, that align with NGSS. Participants will explore what makes an assessment truly 3-dimensional and practice using a practical tool to unpack Performance Expectations (PEs), select focal Science and Engineering Practices (SEPs) and Crosscutting Concepts (CCCs), and design tasks that require students to apply knowledge in new contexts. Examples based on OpenSciEd High School Assessment System will be shared, along with strategies for scaling this work across classrooms and districts. Attendees will leave with a clear framework and sample tools to start developing their own transfer tasks.

TAKEAWAYS:
Learn how to design 3-dimensional transfer tasks, based on OpenSciEd Assessment System, that assess students' ability to apply science ideas in new contexts, using a practical tool to unpack PEs, SEPs, and CCCs—perfect for creating common district summative assessments aligned with NGSS.

SPEAKERS:
Jacob Noll

One of the greatest challenges facing teachers as they adopt a science notebooking practice is assessment. Should notebooks be graded? What might formative and summative assessment look like in a science notebook? How can teachers balance providing meaningful, constructive feedback with the large volume of notebook entries? Building on Jessica Fries-Gaither’s NSTA Press publication, Science Notebooks in Student-Centered Classrooms, this workshop allows participants to explore, reflect, and discuss research about assessment and feedback as well as experience assessment and grading techniques from both a teacher and student perspective. This session will demonstrate how these techniques can increase student authentic use of the science and engineering practices, increase students’ independent use of practices, and ultimately, support student growth.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will leave the session with assessment techniques that increase student authentic use of the science and engineering practices, increase students’ independent use of practices, and ultimately, support student growth.

SPEAKERS:
Kristen Moorhead, Jessica Fries-Gaither

This roundtable discussion will use a collaborative approach to develop tips for facilitating teamwork in college classrooms. I have taught using a team-based approach in and out of the classroom, including asynchronous courses, with enrollments ranging from 15 to 180 students. Despite years of experience, I continue to learn more tips whenever I have conversations with my colleagues. Therefore, I am facilitating a round table discussion to promote these conversations with guided questions, such as “What are your ideas and/or experience in assigning roles to students who work in teams?” This conversation will be open to any attendees who teach or are interested in teaching in a college classroom, regardless of their experience implementing teamwork.

TAKEAWAYS:
Collaborate in small groups to discuss and develop tips on facilitating student teamwork in the college classroom, regardless of enrollment size or the level of experience, if any, implementing teamwork.

SPEAKERS:
Andrea Bierema

Come see how two master teachers use targeted, well-defined rubrics for select SEPs to support student goal-setting and year-long growth. Employing the best of NGSS pedagogy with standards-based grading philosophy, Robin and Jessica support students in developing the skills they need to succeed in writing CERs, Modeling, and Analyzing and Interpreting Data. Because these SEPs are woven throughout their curriculum, students are able to record their own growth across units and across the year. This approach allows for flexible and differentiated assessment, giving students multiple opportunities and modalities to demonstrate proficiency, and even opportunities to work beyond the middle school standards. There are no ceilings in this classroom and no one left behind. Attendees will leave with practical strategies, sample proficiency scales, and tools to implement SEP-based grading systems that increase student ownership, motivation, and equity in the classroom.

TAKEAWAYS:
Empower students to take ownership of their learning while employing standards based grading with the SEPs. Learn how two teachers help students set goals and track growth on three key SEPs over the course of a school year. Walk away with rubrics and a system you can use next week!

SPEAKERS:
Jessica Renfro, Robin Allen

OpenSciEd instructional materials embed formative assessment opportunities through strategic assessment callouts designed to capture student thinking during key moments of sensemaking. However, teachers often need practical systems to consistently use this information to inform instruction across classrooms. In this session, two middle school educators share how one PLC has developed a sustainable process for leveraging OpenSciEd assessment callouts to create common formative assessments, such as targeted exit slips aligned to lesson goals. Rather than adding additional assessments, the team identified meaningful moments within the existing curriculum to gather evidence of student thinking tied to science and engineering practices, disciplinary core ideas, and crosscutting concepts. These formative assessments are brought into PLC meetings, where teachers collaboratively analyze patterns in student responses, focusing on misconceptions and partial understandings rather than correctness

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will leave with a practical process for turning OpenSciEd assessment callouts into meaningful formative assessments, along with strategies for using student data and PLC conversations to identify misconceptions and plan targeted, responsive reteaching that supports student sensemaking.

SPEAKERS:
Kelly Bonifield, Tanya Mueller