Take your students beyond your classroom walls through virtual speakers and field trips with those on the front lines of science, exploration, and conservation.

TAKEAWAYS:
1. Discover the benefits of bringing exciting scientists, explorers, and conservationists live into your classroom through virtual guest speakers and field trips; 2. Explore how easy it is to do with exciting resources like Exploring by the Seat of Your Pants, Explorer Classroom, Google, and more; and 3. What to do before, during, and afterwards so your students get the most from these experiences.

SPEAKERS:
Joe Grabowski (Exploring by the Seat of Your Pants: Elora, ON)

Use each stage of the Engineering Design Process to complete a team challenge of building and launching a satellite while making connections to NASA missions.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will learn about and use the engineering design process to build and perform a drop test of a satellite using NASA’s BEST activities. Educators will learn how to integrate the process skills of measuring, calculating, designing and evaluating while teaching the engineering design process. Make real-life connections to how NASA engineers use the engineering design process and work as teams to accomplish their mission goals.

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

Discover how to successfully launch and retrieve payloads engineered by your students into the stratosphere. In the 21st century, the sky is truly the limit!

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will learn how to design, predict and track stratospheric ballooning projects. Attendees will learn about the FAA guidelines and regulations associated with unmanned balloons. Attendees will learn about the challenges and pitfalls of gathering data from extreme environments up to 20 miles from the surface of the Earth.

SPEAKERS:
Robert Ferrell (St. Georges Technical High School: Middletown, DE), Michael Oberly (Springer Middle School: Wilmington, DE)

Participants will dissect completed three-dimensional lessons written to NGSS standards for grades 6–8 in order to identify and apply each of the dimensions.

TAKEAWAYS:
1. NGSS Performance Expectations can serve as a helpful guide and tool when developing 3D lessons 2. By exploring completed 3D lessons we can build competency in developing our own 3. Inquiry based learning is an excellent way to ensure we are utilizing NGSS 3D Standards

SPEAKERS:
Rebecca Ellis (Argyle Middle School: Silver Spring, MD), Amy Levine (Silver Spring International Middle School: Silver Spring, MD)

Looking for ways to connect what students learn at school with their home learning environment? This session will provide participants with many overarching hands-on science lessons that integrate the science and engineering practices and can easily be completed at home or school. Materials are cheap and easily accessible for parents/teachers.

TAKEAWAYS:
1. Overarching science concepts at each grade band; 2. Connecting hands-on science activities to at-home learning; and 3. Creating at-home lesson templates.

SPEAKERS:
Amber Cobb (Guy Fenter Education Service Cooperative: Branch, AR)

Are you interested in climate change lessons to engage students? Discover activity-filled lessons that explore natural cycles and what can be learned from proxies.

TAKEAWAYS:
1) Participants will engage in activities that involve natural cycles including sun cycle and the Carbon Cycle. 2) Participants will explore a variety of proxies and what information we can learn from them about Earth’s history. 3) Participants will explore Earth’s seasons and their effect on climate.

SPEAKERS:
Kathleen Brooks (CREC: No City, No State), Karin Jakubowski (eesmarts: No City, No State)

We are awash in assessment data, but often it’s overwhelming to make sense of it. Come 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, LLC)

Engage with Research Quest, free, online, NGSS-focused, phenomenon-based investigations that use authentic museum objects and research to build students' literacy, critical-thinking, collaboration, and communication skills.

TAKEAWAYS:
Teachers will: 1. experience an exemplar set of free resources that successfully integrate NGSS and ELA standards to provide students with meaningful, self-directed learning; 2. recognize that providing students with opportunities to research phenomenon-based problems professional scientists devote their careers to using the collections and data they build new knowledge from can empower students to better understand the enterprise of science, the natural world, and the natural history of our world—while building their literacy and critical-thinking skills; and 3. understand that creating opportunities to make critical thinking visible is an essential scaffold necessary to support student efficacy with problem-finding and problem-solving.

SPEAKERS:
Madlyn Larson (Natural History Museum of Utah: Salt Lake City, UT)

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:
• 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. • How to give students an opportunity to use their own ideas and ways of communicating to talk, read, and write in the service of sense-making • 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: Austin, TX)

This workshop focuses on how high-quality instructional materials designed for the NGSS provide for language skills to be developed by all students, including emerging multilingual students, by engaging in Science and Engineering Practices.

TAKEAWAYS:
(1) By engaging with content first before learning science-specific vocabulary, students of varying language proficiencies are provided with an opportunity to express their ideas using the language they have. (2) Implementing meaningful student discourse in the science classroom can shift the focus on science and engineering practices and away from academic vocabulary. (3) Strategies that support emerging multilingual learners actually support all learners in developing proficiency in the science and engineering practices.

SPEAKERS:
Neelo Soltanzadeh (WestEd: San Francisco, CA)

Explore IRIS’s new web-based interactive earthquake lab! Have your students learn and practice earthquake location and analysis techniques with real seismic data! Bring a laptop/tablet!

TAKEAWAYS:
1. Analyze and interpret data to help explain how patterns in seismic data allow earthquakes to be located; 2. Construct an explanation of how models of Earth structure are used in conjunction with recordings of seismic waves to calculate earthquake locations; and 3. Investigate how different methods can be applied to the same dataset to calculate earthquake locations using an online toolkit.

SPEAKERS:
John Taber (IRIS | Earthscope Consortium: Chevy Chase, MD), Wendy Bohon (IRIS | Earthscope Consortium: Washington, DC)

Discover ideas, curricula, and lessons/activities from the Space Station Explorers Program. They inspire curiosity, develop skills, and promote learning in scientific, mathematical, life science, and Earth science spheres by engaging students with the International Space Station.

TAKEAWAYS:
How to access the ideas, curriculum, and lessons/activities of the Space Station Explorers Program How the program integrates appropriately and easily into the classroom (physically or virtually) as well as activities for learning at home. How to become a Space Station Explorer Ambassador

SPEAKERS:
Melissa Pore (Bishop O'Connell High School: Arlington, VA)

Discover inquiry-based simulations and modeling activities that explore “Human Impacts” topics, including global land and water use, wildlife habitats, and interdependent relationships in ecosystems.

TAKEAWAYS:
1. Participants will learn ways to incorporate modeling and simulation activities into classroom instruction around the topic of interdependent relationships in ecosystems. 2. Participants will learn ways to incorporate modeling and simulation activities into classroom instruction around the topic of human-environmental interactions. 3. Participants will be able to identify how the presented hands-on activities use 3-D learning strategies for middle grades science and how the activities can be used to reach all kinds of learners in the middle school classroom.

SPEAKERS:
Melissa Holmes (Carl Sandburg Middle School: Alexandria, VA)

Explore how to take advantage of NSTA’s vast resources and pathways—including both asynchronous and synchronous options—to create personalized professional learning.

TAKEAWAYS:
1. Discover the value of being a School or District NSTA Partner; 2. Explore how to maximize online professional learning for all teachers; and 3. Discover how to utilize NSTA's online learning resources to support in-person professional learning.

SPEAKERS:
Tricia Shelton (NSTA: Arlington, VA), Flavio Mendez (NSTA: Arlington, VA)

Learn how to bring the Amazon to life in your classroom through learning from Indigenous community elders, entomologists, primatologists, ornithologists, other formal and informal educators.

TAKEAWAYS:
Educators will learn how to connect the Amazon to their classroom through engaging, thoughtful activities Develop an understanding of the Indigenous Tribe of the Maijuna people and how we can support them and their work Make connections with scientists in different fields of study to collaborate and engage students

SPEAKERS:
Kate Price (Moore Square Magnet Middle School: Raleigh, NC)

We’ll start with direct observation of the daytime Moon. Based on our findings, we’ll determine its direction of revolution, location in space, and phases…before building models.

TAKEAWAYS:
1. Learn how to do daytime observations of the Moon and use this data to determine how it moves in its orbit around Earth; 2. See, firsthand, how the geometry between the Sun, Earth, and Moon determines the Moon’s phases; and 3. Walk through multiple astronomy models that build on one another and are helpful for developing mental models that are so important to understanding scientific concepts.

SPEAKERS:
Carolyn Balch (Teacher: Great Falls, VA)

We present the EQuIPD coaching model used in establishing collaborations between teachers and coaches in a professional development to improve teaching practices and student outcome.

TAKEAWAYS:
1. The attendees will learn how coaching can foster collaborations among teachers and coaches to effect improvement in teaching practices. 2. The attendees will reflect on their practices by engaging with a facilitative coaching method by EQuIPD experts. 3. The attendees will learn the critical features of the EQuIPD facilitative coaching model.

SPEAKERS:
Nancy Ruzycki (University of Florida: Gainesville, FL)

Sponsoring Company: Legends of Learning

From unplugged to plugged-in game design, explore how games create an authentic learning experience in which students collaborate, communicate, and have fun in the process!

TAKEAWAYS:
1. Use an innovative approach to game-based learning as a primary vehicle for science instruction; 2. Make lessons fun and accessible while encouraging students to take personal responsibility for their education; and 3. Create an equitable learning environment where students can progress at their own rate, allowing for differentiation based on student needs.

SPEAKERS:
Joselyn Whetzel (Legends of Learning: Laurel, MD), Joshua Goldberg (Legends of Learning: Laurel, MD)

Sponsoring Company: Beyond Labz

Built on a platform developed over 20 years, Beyond Labz creates an open-ended environment providing students the opportunity to experiment, practice, fail, discover, and learn.

TAKEAWAYS:
1. Beyond Labz simplifies and reduces the cost and expertise needed to provide crucial laboratory experiences and practice for Secondary and Higher Ed students; 2. Attendees will learn how the labs are used for pre- and post-lab experiences, credit recovery and lab make-up, student engagement in class, and meeting NGSS standards; and 3. Basic onboarding and start-up instructions will be provided for drop-in solutions, and instructions for using some of the more sophisticated features will also be described.

SPEAKERS:
Brian Woodfield (Brigham Young University: Provo, UT)

Connect your school with local colleges and STEM employers using relevant, standards-based, hands-on activities that spark interest in science and STEM careers. Sample activity included.

TAKEAWAYS:
How to identify and reach out to potential community and industry partners How to build a program or event that meets the needs of all stakeholders Developing authentic learning experiences to impact student perspectives of locally available STEM careers

SPEAKERS:
Bethany Kenyon (BioNetwork: Greenville, NC)

What is an effective and engaging way to get students to care about climate change and take action? This session will focus on how to help students teach the story of climate change through the creation of their podcast episodes and the publication of their class podcast series.

TAKEAWAYS:
1. Teach students how to create podcast episodes in partnerships and a podcast series as a class; 2. Integrate authentic assessments into a unit of study on climate change that will be incorporated into the climate change podcast series; and 3. Structure a unit of study on climate change into different parts with a logical sequence of NGSS work products leading to the creation of the class podcast series.

SPEAKERS:
Brian Gordon (NYU Steinhardt School of Education: New York, NY)

This workshop explores a myriad of simple ways science classroom teachers can differentiate their lessons/units/curricula to meet the needs of highly able learners.

TAKEAWAYS:
Highly able leaners often require differentiation to achieve their full educational potential. There are simple strategies that can be employed to enrich the education of high achieving students without adding hours to a teacher’s workload. Using a variety of strategies, teachers can adapt their lessons, units, and projects to meet the needs of highly able learners.

SPEAKERS:
Rebecca Ellis (Argyle Middle School: Silver Spring, MD), Alaina Piek (Oklahoma Road Middle School: Sykesville, MD)

Explore NSTA’s NEWProfessional Learning Units. Discover these bite-sized asynchronous professional learning experiences that support student sensemaking to earn credit to submit to your school or district.

TAKEAWAYS:
1. Discover how NSTA can provide asynchronous and bite-sized continuing education credit options (2 hours per PLU); 2. Explore how each PLU contains reflections or tasks connected to the classroom that are submitted to NSTA for review or feedback; and 3. Explore how we can support professional learning for individuals or schools/districts, including the flexible options available for Professional Learning Unit topics, and how these fit into our Professional Learning pathways.

SPEAKERS:
Michelle Phillips (NSTA: Arlington, VA), Elizabeth Allan (University of Central Oklahoma: Edmond, OK), Tricia Shelton (NSTA: Arlington, VA)

Let’s make a pocket solar system scroll. Come learn how to apply ratios to create a scale model of the planets based on your height.

TAKEAWAYS:
With a properly scaled solar system scroll, participants will identify inner and out planets and readily SEE why they are named as such (ESS1, ESS2). Understanding the concept of rations and fractions, part-to-whole, participants will leave being able to create a proportional solar system in their classroom, on a football field, or across their state. This activity takes unique NASA content, places it in context within the curriculum, and makes applications beyond the solar system that include scientific inquiry and scientific discovery while using mathematics to show proportions and relate to the overall structure of our solar system (ETS2)

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

Scientists are interested in the land cover (water area) where mosquito larvae are found, so they can automate image classification using Artificial Intelligence (AI). Connect yourself and your students with an active citizen science program and contribute to science!

TAKEAWAYS:
Your phone is a powerful data collection tool. NASA satellite data can be connected to the data you collect on mosquito habitats and landcover. You can make observations, Ask questions, Construct explanations, and collect and analyze data using the GLOBE Observer app and the Mosquito Habitat Mapper and Land Cover tool.

SPEAKERS:
Cassie Soeffing (Institute for Global Environmental Strategies: Arlington, VA)

Join us as we explore how NSTA’s three-dimensional resources can be utilized to enhance your teaching. Walk away with effective strategies for science teaching and learning and hear from educators as they provide tips for using these resources.

TAKEAWAYS:
1. Hear from classroom teachers about how they are using NSTA Press publications; and 2. Leave with top-notch teaching tips and innovative lesson plan ideas that promote imaginative learning and student engagement.

SPEAKERS:
Tricia Shelton (NSTA: Arlington, VA), Wendy Binder (Program Director, STEM Professional Learning: Arlington, VA)

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

TAKEAWAYS:
Explore NASA STEM activities that investigate space food and nutrition for astronauts living on the Space Station. Construct sample space food menus to develop a better understanding of nutrition for human space exploration. 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)

Integrating literacy into science classrooms increases both literacy and STEM skills. Come see how NASA resources and easily implemented tools and techniques can transform any STEM learning environment.

TAKEAWAYS:
1. Learn about and practice implementing literacy techniques into hands-on STEM activities 2. Be introduced to free existing NASA materials that focus on and support STEM and literacy 3. Examine ways literacy in a STEM classroom enhances NGSS Science and Engineering Practices skills

SPEAKERS:
April Lanotte (NASA Headquarters: Washington, DC), Rachel Stagner (Templeton Academy: Washington, DC)

Explore innovative approaches to incorporating vocabulary and text in the science classroom using strategies encouraging reflection, critical thinking, communication, and consistent connection to content.

TAKEAWAYS:
1) Immediately applicable, engaging activities that can be used at any grade level 2)How to help students connect what they are doing in science to themselves, their world or the world around them 3) How to create a space in your classroom for weekly vocabulary in order to ensure all students have the same base of information for classroom discussions, activities and content instruction

SPEAKERS:
Kate Price (Moore Square Magnet Middle School: Raleigh, NC), Kim Patterson (West Pine Middle School: West End, NC)

Share our Vermont middle school journey implementing project-based learning and the “ best of times, worst of times" in units involving podcasts, student science videos, and design challenges.

TAKEAWAYS:
What are the key design elements for technology-rich project based learning units? How can a project drive student learning and still keep content learning targets in the center? Is it possible video production, podcasting or engineering design challenges might enhance students’ proficiency based learning in my classroom - and if so, how?

SPEAKERS:
Damon Tighe (Bio-Rad Laboratories: Hercules, CA)

The Atlas is a set of 62 maps of the elements of the core ideas, practices, crosscutting concepts, connections to nature of science, connections to engineering, and performance expectations described in NGSS and other standards based on the Framework for K–12 Science Education. See how elements of the dimensions relate to and build on each other. Come learn how to use this powerful tool for interpreting standards to support work in curriculum, instruction, and assessment.

TAKEAWAYS:
How to read, analyze, and interpret an Atlas map How to use the maps and other resources in the Atlas to unpack, clarify, and interpret an element of the three dimensions How to use the maps and other resources in the Atlas to help with decision about sequencing of instruction

SPEAKERS:
Ted Willard (Discovery Education: Silver Spring, MD)

Participants will identify and interpret crosscutting concepts used in a variety of activities and apply each to their own science curriculum.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will understand the importance of crosscutting concepts in scientific inquiry. Participants will practice language shifts towards Science and Engineering Practices and Crosscutting Concepts. Participants will apply Crosscutting Concepts in daily lessons to develop student scientific universal language for expressing scientific concepts.

SPEAKERS:
Rebecca Ellis (Argyle Middle School: Silver Spring, MD), Amy Levine (Silver Spring International Middle School: Silver Spring, MD)

Experience three different digital design challenges using branching scenarios that provide student choice and data sets. Each challenge is presented on a different digital platform.

TAKEAWAYS:
1. Participants will engage in a digital design challenge to test efficiency of wind turbine blades. 2. Participants will engage in a digital design challenge to test the strength of electromagnets. 3. Participants will engage in a digital design challenge to test the greenhouse effect in an area of a specific land surface (polar region, water, desert).

SPEAKERS:
Kathleen Brooks (CREC: No City, No State), Rebecca Tonkinson (eesmarts: Hartford, CT), Sharyon Holness (eesmarts: No City, No State)

This session engages participants in the exploration of middle school–oriented, classroom-ready, interactive, online, data-driven, three-dimensional activities and visualizations that present how sea level rise is caused by climate change, how NOAA monitors and measures these changes, how U.S. coastal regions are dangerously impacted by it, and how teachers can get up to $5000 for their school to mitigate its impacts.

TAKEAWAYS:
1. Educators will explore a middle school oriented classroom-ready multimedia module, and use data-driven NOAA websites which explain and visualize how climate change is causing sea levels to rise globally, impacting all U.S. coastal areas, and straining community resiliency. 2. Educators will explore NOAA’s classroom-ready, Data in the Classroom modules: Investigating Sea Level Using Real Data, and learn how their students can use data from NOAA’s satellites and coastal stations, to do the analysis to see sea level changing, to understand the impacts on communities, and to learn how they can integrate its inquiry based resources into their classrooms today. 3. Educators will learn about NOAA Planet Stewards, a Federal program which offers educators up to $5000 to engage in hands-on stewardship activities to mitigate climate change and its impacts in their communities.

SPEAKERS:
Bruce Moravchik (NOAA National Ocean Service: Silver Spring, MD)

Educators who specialize in the teaching of students with dyslexia describe vocabulary modifications, schema development, kinesthetic activities, and methods to modify science content for students with language-based learning differences.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will learn how to: 1. craft well written vocabulary definitions; 2. use kinesthetic activities to help students gain understanding of vocabulary and complex science concepts; and 3. create a structured word wall that supports students.

SPEAKERS:
Christine Zito (Miller School of Albemarle: Charlottesville, VA), Clinton Kittrell (The Summit School: Edgewater, MD)

Find out why by studying the phenomenon of the urban heat islands using the GLOBE Urban Protocol Bundle and My NASA Data. Training and ongoing support offered virtually.

TAKEAWAYS:
1. Science content on heat islands, cloud formation, Earth’s energy budget, and NASA satellites collecting this data; 2. Face-to-Face interactions in collecting data (clouds and air and surface temperature) using the GLOBE Observer App; and 3. Instructional materials from GLOBE and NASA to teach the science content and protocols aligned to NGSS.

SPEAKERS:
Janet Struble (: Toledo, OH)