2021 Los Angeles Area Conference - Sessions

Using Stop-Motion Animation to Model Chemical Reactions

Learn how to help students create stop-motion animated movies to model the atomic rearrangement that occurs during simple chemical reactions!

Takeaways: Attendees will learn: 1. basic techniques for planning and creating stop-motion animated films; 2. how to use this tool to model the atomic rearrangement that occurs during chemical reactions; and 3. how best to teach students how to use stop-motion to create their own animated movie models.

Speakers

Steven Gaskill (K.O. Knudson Middle School: Las Vegas, NV), Heather Rampton (K.O. Knudson Middle School: Las Vegas, NV)

Presenter Materials for this Session:
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Inspiring Literacy and Science Interest with Data

We use data to do science; data literacy is its own set of skills. Young learners benefit when we integrate data, literacy, and science together.

Takeaways: 1. Identify how data literacy is a critical aspect of literacy and science literacy in the 21st century; 2. Explore strategies and resources to use to authentically integrate data into K–5 science instruction; and 3. Develop a plan for next steps to elevate data as an aspect of meaningful connections between literacy and science.

Speakers

Kristin Hunter-Thomson (Dataspire Education & Evaluation, Rutgers University: Princeton, NJ)

Presenter Materials for this Session:
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Using CERs as Formative Assessment to Show Student Learning in Interactive Notebooks

In this session, attendees will learn how to get students to write a scientific argument using a CER tool. They will also learn about a self-evaluation tool students can use to critique their writing.

Takeaways: Attendees will learn: 1. how to use a CER writing tool to make sure students are writing high-level scientific arguments; 2. the importance of the self-evaluation tool when writing CERs; and 3. how to use student interactive notebooks as a tool if students are reaching the learning goal.

Speakers

Nikki Luckin (Fairmont Elementary School: Sanger, CA)

Presenter Materials for this Session:
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Taste Buds in Your Gut? Exploring Taste, Cell Communication, and Glucose Homeostasis

Experiment with the “sugar-blocking” tea Gymnema sylvestre and model cellular communication pathways in the tongue and the gut before evaluating possible mechanisms of action.

Takeaways: Participants will learn: 1. how to model the physiology of sweet taste perception; 2. how the systems that detect sugar can be disrupted; and 3. how to evaluate three proposed mechanisms of action.

Speakers

Joan Griswold (University of Washington: Seattle, WA)

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Chemistry of Copper: A Two-Part Inquiry

Learn about the chemical properties of copper using appropriate technology in this hands-on activity.

Takeaways: Participants will; 1. learn to research and design an inquiry experiment; 2. use technology to gather and analyze data from the inquiry; and 3. visualize what occurs on the submicroscopic level by employing particulate drawings.

Speakers

Gregory Dodd (Retired Chemistry Teacher: Pennsboro, WV)

Does Black English Stand Between Black Students and Success in Science?

Discussion centers on tools to properly analyze Black students’ scientific work to determine if the misconceptions and misunderstandings are a learning issue or language issue. This workshop focuses on the use of language to reduce the ethnic achievement gap in science.

Takeaways: 1. Analyzing students’ work from a linguistic lens; 2. Recognizing biases when it comes to student language; and 3. Pushing Black students academically forward without making them feel torn between two language worlds.

Speakers

Jonte' Lee (Calvin Coolidge Senior High School: Washington, DC)

NASA's Space Food and Nutrition

Explore caloric and nutritional values of NASA's space food. Discover a menu of inquiry activities/resources to integrate into the classroom to satisfy your STEM appetite.

Takeaways: 1. Explore NASA STEM activities that investigate space food and nutrition for astronauts living on the Space Station; 2. Construct sample space food menus to develop a better understanding of nutrition for human space exploration; and 3. Make connections between math, science, nutrition, and exercise while exploring the impact of living in space and in our gravity-filled environment here on Earth.

Speakers

Barbie Buckner (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center: Greenbelt, MD)

Presenter Materials for this Session:
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STEM Teaching Tools: Resources for Justice-Centered Science Instruction

Choose which of these free resources for equitable science instruction are most relevant to your work. Then read, discuss, and plan!

Takeaways: 1. Science learning is culturally rooted, and strong instruction should take an asset-based approach to young peoples’ ways of thinking and knowing; 2. Developing more inclusive classrooms is a constant process. There are always steps educators can take to support equity, no matter where they are in their journey; and 3. These resources offer tangible next steps educators can take toward equity in their classroom, from identifying meaningful anchor phenomena (stemteachingtools.org/brief/42) to teaching biology in more gender-inclusive ways (stemteachingtools.org/brief/76) to fostering more student talk (stemteachingtools.org/brief/35).

Speakers

Deb Morrison (University of Washington: Seattle, WA), Abby Rhinehart (University of Washington: Seattle, WA)

Polishing Students’ Argumentation Skills: Using Discussion Diamonds to Support Discourse and Evidence-Based Writing

Experience how the discussion diamond protocol can help support students’ argumentation skills and Claim-Evidence-Reasoning writing through peer discourse.

Takeaways: 1. Student discourse can be used to support the development of students’ argumentation skills; 2. The discussion diamond protocol provides students with a structure to build scientific arguments based on evidence and reasoning in collaboration with their peers; and 3. The discussion diamond protocol is a versatile tool that can be adapted for students at different skill levels and in various subjects.

Speakers

Nicole Ciccarello (Beverly Hills High School: Beverly Hills, CA)

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What Do I Do with This? Making Sense of Your Assessment Data

We are awash in assessment data, but often it’s overwhelming to make sense of it. Join us to learn tips and strategies for wrangling data.

Takeaways: 1. Explore new ways to organize data collection and raw data to aid in exploring the data for stories after it is collected; 2. Acquire skills in tying questions, data types, and data visualizations to enhance your ability to make sense of the assessment data; and 3. Identify next steps to better utilize and leverage your assessment data to help you measure students’ success and know what steps to consider next.

Speakers

Kristin Hunter-Thomson (Dataspire Education & Evaluation, Rutgers University: Princeton, NJ)

Presenter Materials for this Session:
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Getting Students to Read in Science

Reading should not be limited to English courses. Leave with strategies on how to motivate students to explore science through scientific novels. Review three years of qualitative data on how novels increased  literacy, scientific fluency, scientific connectivity, and college preparation in a marine biology course.

Takeaways: Teahers will: 1. learn how to use articles to make their content more applicable to the lives of the students; 2. receive strategies on how to get students to read more scientific articles; and 3. receive resources on selecting grade-appropriate scientific articles.

Speakers

Jonte' Lee (Calvin Coolidge Senior High School: Washington, DC)

NSTA Press Session: Argument-Driven Inquiry as a Way to Bring Three-Dimensional Instruction to Your Classroom

Argument-Driven Inquiry is an instructional model that gives students an opportunity to learn how to use DCIs, CCs, and SEPs to explain natural phenomena and creates a learning environment where students are able to talk, read, and write in the service of sensemaking.

Takeaways: 1. How to use this instructional model, or way of teaching, to give students an opportunity to learn how to use the DCIs, CCs, and SEPs to make sense of natural phenomena; 2. How to give students an opportunity to use their own ideas and ways of communicating to talk, read, and write in the service of sensemaking; and 3. How to give students more opportunities to decide what counts as valid and acceptable and develop new criteria for what counts evidence in science.

Speakers

Todd Hutner (The University of Alabama: Tuscaloosa, AL)

Making Science Inquiry Work for Emergent Bilinguals

Learn how the structure of your inquiry activities can produce roadblocks for emergent bilinguals, and how shifts based on student strengths increase engagement and success.

Takeaways: 1. Good science modeling uses words and picture to make meaning. Working through multiple representations of phenomena shares similarities to translanguaging among bilinguals, resulting in a resource as opposed to a deficit approach to learning; 2. Student collaborations centered around representations, as opposed to language, are more inclusive and improve understanding for all students; and 3. Generative frameworks through chunking steps and heuristics allow for organization of understanding and context transfer.

Speakers

Christopher Moore (University of Nebraska Omaha: Omaha, NE)

Science—It's LIT!

Discover best practices for incorporating ELA and technology—they're easy to implement in your classroom! Grab your device and let's talk all things science…it's LIT fam!

Takeaways: 1. Examples of activities and assignments will be shared that can be incorporated in a variety of classroom science activities; 2. Attendees will create a foldable that can be used for a variety of topics and see how it was used in the classroom; and 3. Attendees will participate in a digital activity that can be manipulated to fit their content.

Speakers

Andrea Starks (Houston Middle School: Germantown, TN)

Presenter Materials for this Session:
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Leading Conversations Around Identity, Race, Belonging, and Bias in STEM Spaces

Join the UCLA Science Project as we explore structures and formats for science leaders looking to engage teachers around social justice in STEM classrooms.

Takeaways: 1. Co-construct a learning experience centered around inclusion and belonging within school site meetings; 2. Recognize how our identities and lived experiences impact our approaches to science education and leadership; and 3. Establish space and culture that sustains conversations around equity issues.

Speakers

Leticia Perez (UCLA Science Project: Los Angeles, CA), Zachary Cue (UCLA Science Project: Los Angeles, CA)

Making Student Thinking Visible: Developing and Using Models in Instruction and Assessment

We will explore how students can use modeling and linked practices to engage with phenomena. Participants will take home a goody bag and lesson plans.

Takeaways: 1. We will demonstrate how students can use modeling, argumentative writing, and data analysis to explain different scientific phenomena throughout Earth and space sciences, life science, and physical sciences; 2. Participants will have the opportunity to build and revise three different kinds of models during the session as learners, and then reflect on how to use the same strategies with their students; and 3. Everyone will engage with different modeling scaffolds that increase inclusion and link the practice of modeling to others such as arguing from evidence, analyzing and interpreting data, and obtaining, evaluating and communicating information.

Speakers

James Clark (Director: Pleasanton, CA), Samantha Johnson (Arroyo High School: San Lorenzo, CA)

Presenter Materials for this Session:
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Infusing Your STEM Curriculum with Real-World Connections

Discover how students may use their mobile devices to document “science in action,” anytime, anywhere, in this unique intersection between socratic questioning and place-based learning.

Takeaways: How students may use their mobile devices: 1. to demonstrate their knowledge of scientific concepts in a real-world context; 2. connect this real-world context to crosscutting concepts; and 3. explore how this learning model may be used to support service learning in the science curriculum.

Speakers

Eric Walters (Marymount School of New York: New York, NY)

Presenter Materials for this Session:
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Creating and Maintaining an Equitable Science Classroom

STEM classrooms should establish a welcoming environment in which all individuals can use their cultural knowledge and practices to make sense of the world.

Takeaways: 1. A shared understanding of equity and social justice in science classrooms and STEM communities; 2. Approaches to identify and honor student-lived experiences and cultures; and 3. Challenge conventional notions of what counts as science.

Speakers

Jon Kovach (UCLA Science Project: Los Angeles, CA)

A Chemical Inquiry: Let’s Master Equilibrium!

Join this workshop and participate in a hands-on activity to help students overcome common chemical equilibrium misconceptions.

Takeaways: Participants will: 1. take part in a hands-on inquiry activity with a chemical equilibrium having a large K value; 2. learn ways to overcome student misconceptions about equilibrium; and 3. llearn to use appropriate technology to facilitate data collection and analysis for an inquiry lab.

Speakers

Gregory Dodd (Retired Chemistry Teacher: Pennsboro, WV)

Analysis of Supernova Remnants Using X-Ray Spectroscopy with Web-Based NASA Data and STEM Image Analysis Tools

Identify elements in the spectra of supernova remnants to determine the properties of collapsed and exploded stars using web-based NASA X-ray data and image analysis tools.

Takeaways: 1. Js9 web-based software can be used to analyze NASA data sets to determine the type of supernova; 2. Js9 provides students with real opportunities to do astronomical research; and 3. Energy spectra from NASA data are used to determine the elements in a supernova remnant.

Speakers

Donna Young (NASA/NSO/UoL Program Manager: Laughlin, NV)

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Historical Accounting of Oppression in STEM Spaces

Empowering students to make science-based decisions requires acknowledgment and dialogue around the injustices marginalized communities have endured within scientific fields.

Takeaways: 1. Develop empathy through the exploration of historical events that have accumulated generational mistrust of STEM communities; 2. Create opportunities to acknowledge and validate personal experience even when it might contradict our personal experience or larger data sets; and 3. Explore the impact of the objectivity myth perpetuated within STEM educational spaces.

Speakers

Justin Betzelberger (UCLA Science Project: Los Angeles, CA), Zachary Cue (UCLA Science Project: Los Angeles, CA)

Mathematics and Computational Thinking Using Authentic Data and Practices

Start highlighting the practice of mathematics and computational thinking! We’ll utilize resources that allow students to engage in traditional and less traditional ways.

Takeaways: 1. Participants will engage as learners in different levels of mathematical representations, all of which emphasize how to make the practice more inclusive of all students; 2. Everyone will leave being able to demonstrate at least three different ways to mathematically represent authentic data; and 3. Participants will look critically at how to scaffold different graphical texts for student analysis.

Speakers

James Clark (Director: Pleasanton, CA), Samantha Johnson (Arroyo High School: San Lorenzo, CA)

Presenter Materials for this Session:
(Please login with your NSTA account to view the materials)