Participants will learn strategies and receive numerous resources that increase students’ scientific literacy. The hands-on approach has participants engaged in the activities, games, and more.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will: 1. learn new strategies for incorporating scientific literacy into their lessons; and 2. receive numerous activities, templates, games, and other resources to help with doing this. These resources can be used “as is” or modified to allow for differentiation based on the needs of the learners. Strategies and resources will include ones effective with ELL and EC students.

SPEAKERS:
Iris Mudd (Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools: Winston Salem, NC)

Without out a doubt the recent pandemic has demonstrated that, the efforts in the science classroom towards scientific literacy are more relevant than ever. In this session participants will learn simple effective visual literacy tools and strategies that make learning science visible to all students, supporting diversity and reinforcing scientific literacy skills that help students make sense of the world. The strategies and tools used in this presentation will highlight the need to incorporate visual literacy as current brain research shows that around 60% of information we process every day comes in visual form. Sometimes chunking content to smaller learning bites can lower the understanding of concepts and ideas, especially if these concepts are abstract in nature; learning how to maximize the use of visuals both student and teacher made supports deeper understanding not just on a particular concept but of how they are connected making sense of the world. These strategies support cultural competency as they support learner diversity while working on scientific literacy skills such as use of evidence/data, pose questions, find answers. By having a common visual as point of reference along with strategy and tools not only closes the gap on background knowledge and makes accessible to all students but also helps student and teachers have meaningful discourse highlighting students strengths to solve real world problems.

TAKEAWAYS:
In this session participants will learn simple effective visual literacy tools and strategies that make learning science visible to all students, supporting diversity and reinforcing scientific literacy skills that help students make sense of the world.

SPEAKERS:
Marjorie Miles Dozier (Polk County Public Schools: Bartow, FL)

General-education science classes are often the last chance we have to empower students with the science literacy skills necessary to navigate today’s world. But what is science literacy? Memorizing facts and following recipe-like labs? Or is it understanding how the process of science learns about the world by testing explanations and critically scrutinizing the evidence? A good science education teaches students how, not what, to think. Science isn’t just what we know; it’s how we know. This presentation explores a novel course developed using a backward design approach designed to teach the essential skills of critical thinking, information literacy, and science literacy. By focusing on the process of science over content, students learn how to evaluate the evidence for claims to determine how we know something. Directly including pseudoscience (e.g. astrology, psychics, homeopathy, Bigfoot) and science denial (e.g. climate change, evolution, GMOs) increases engagement, addresses common misconceptions, and teaches students how to recognize the characteristics of good science. Assignments and activities in which students actively create misinformation inoculates them against the real thing. Finally, providing students with a structured toolkit to evaluate claims (with lots of opportunities to practice) helps students apply what they’re learning to the “real world.”

TAKEAWAYS:
The goal of general education science should not be memorizing facts, but learning the essential skills of critical thinking, information literacy, and science literacy.

SPEAKERS:
Melanie Trecek-King (Massasoit Community College)

The Half-Earth Project team-based Mapping Design Challenge engages students in authentic teamwork to use digital mapping to design their own biodiversity conservation choices.

TAKEAWAYS:
Digital mapping motivated by exploring charismatic species draws diverse students into the multidisciplinary science of conservation decision-making where species, human impacts, and stakeholders have to be considered.

SPEAKERS:
Dennis Liu (E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation: Durham, NC)

In this session, the co-editors of the recent NSTA Press book, Crosscutting Concepts: Strengthening Science and Engineering Learning, will take a deep dive into how crosscutting concepts can be more explicitly leveraged to strengthen science instruction. Presenters will illustrate how two instructional units—one elementary and one secondary—have developed CCCs as lenses on phenomena in order to better connect with students’ everyday experiences and to enhance students’ ability to meaningfully integrate SEPs, DCIs, and CCCs to make sense of authentic phenomena and problems.

TAKEAWAYS:
CCCs are: 1) lenses on phenomena and problems; 2) critical to sensemaking about phenomena and problems; and 3) most useful when meaningfully integrated with SEPs and DCIs.

SPEAKERS:
Jeff Nordine (The University of Iowa: Iowa City, IA), Okhee Lee (New York University: New York, NY)

Come join us as we participate in a Darwinian speculation reimagined as a Thought Experiment. This is a classic STEAM approach.

TAKEAWAYS:
See how to integrate the arts into STEM = STEAM.

SPEAKERS:
Christina Derusha (Science Teacher: , IL), Vito Dipinto (National Louis University at Wheeling: Wheeling, IL)

This session focuses on improved outcomes for students’ written science explanations when including data description prompts and instructional facilitation to adapt the CER framework.

TAKEAWAYS:
Learn about the importance of a preliminary step of incorporating data descriptions when utilizing the CER framework to guide students’ written explanations and reasoning of data visualization.

SPEAKERS:
Andrea Drewes (Rider University: Lawrenceville, NJ)

Marine debris is a widespread pollution problem in our ocean and waterways. It can harm wildlife, habitats, and our economy. This issue is human-caused, but it also has human solutions. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Marine Debris Program is dedicated to better understanding and preventing marine debris and its impacts on our environment. One of the best tools we have to combat marine debris is understanding the distribution, abundance, and types of debris in the marine environment. The Marine Debris Monitoring & Assessment Project (MDMAP) is a NOAA citizen science initiative to survey and record marine debris on shorelines. By participating in the MDMAP, students can generate critical data on marine debris for use by community organizations, policymakers, researchers, and NOAA. MDMAP data can also support student-generated action projects, providing opportunities to plan and implement authentic changemaking efforts. The NOAA Marine Debris Program plans to demonstrate and solicit feedback on an updated tool to support implementation of the MDMAP protocols with students: The MDMAP Educators’ Guide (Guide). We will introduce the updated protocols, provide a demonstration of activities in the Guide, and engage in a discussion with educators about implementation, suggested extensions (including action projects), and feedback.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees at this session will learn about the updated Marine Debris Monitoring & Assessment Project Educators’ Guide: a refreshed citizen science tool for monitoring shoreline marine debris available from the NOAA Marine Debris Program, including planning and conducting protocols with students, working with survey data, and creating authentic, meaningful action projects for students based on their experiences.

SPEAKERS:
Alexandria Brake (NOAA Office of Education: Silver Spring, MD), Tanya Kea-Marie Torres (California Sea Grant Marine Debris Extension Fellow: , CA)

Teacher describes installation of two solar arrays, and how students use the arrays to investigate alternative energy and effect of array angle on electricity production.

TAKEAWAYS:
Solar arrays allow students to interact with a real world technology changing sunlight into usable electricity. Two solar arrays that tilt independently allow students to evaluate data from a controlled experiment. Solar energy is part of response our society needs to respond to the challenge of global warming and our need for energy.

SPEAKERS:
Bruce Rose (Greenbrier East High School: Lewisburg, WV)

Science denial, anti-intellectualism, and conspiracy theories have long, sordid histories. Today, rampant science denialism threatens personal and public health, economic sustainability, and prosperity. Globally, it poses existential threats to humanity. How has the situation deteriorated so far? How can so many people deny, not only the reality of climate change - a slow-moving and invisible enemy - but also the reality of a global pandemic and the effectiveness of simple protective/preventive strategies? The explanation is straightforward. Widespread scientific illiteracy enables moneyed and/or politically powerful interests to manipulate a credulous public in ways that undermine understanding of science and generate distrust of the scientific community. Campaigns often waged on unregulated social media are disturbingly effective. When disinformation, willful ignorance, and belligerence strike, who's on call? Right now, almost nobody ... and that's a problem for all of us who, as science educators, understand and value the role of science in general, and STEM topics and approaches more specifically. We will then explore a variety of online resources and discuss individualized teaching strategies that educators can deploy to overcome these challenges in our classrooms.

TAKEAWAYS:
This workshop will briefly review the history, driving forces behind, and current status of science denialism, to clarify what we are up against. We will then explore online resources and individualized teaching strategies that can overcome these challenges in our classrooms. No single "magic bullet" (or magic YouTube video) can rescue us. We need a full-court press by all of us in education, focusing on cultivating in our students a true understanding of the nature of science, appreciation for the value of expertise in STEM fields, and a willingness to engage on a personal level with disturbingly cult-like beliefs.

SPEAKERS:
Joseph Levine (Science Writer and Producer: Concord, MA)

We are living in an Age of Misinformation. Developing the capabilities to evaluate scientific information is a key goal of scientific literacy. Moreover, “obtaining, evaluating and communicating information” is a core practice of NGSS. The NGSS standards, however, were developed a decade ago before misinformation became so pervasive and were not developed to address this threat. Much of this misinformation is scientific. Therefore, this session will present a set of ideas and materials about how to address this challenge. These have emerged from a report developed at Stanford University drawing on the expertise of an international group of science educators, scientists and psychologists entitled “Science Education in an Age of Misinformation”. In this session, we will present the main arguments and recommendations of the report. Using a set of practical, web-based classroom examples, participants will work in small groups to trial and discuss the suggested teaching approaches and materials we have developed. Opportunities will be provided for feedback, questions and discussion in a final plenary. What we will present will empower teachers of science with ways they can support their students to avoid being misled by the purveyors of misinformation.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will learn what are the challenges posed by misinformation and what they can do to help science education address this challenge using practical examples of exercises and ionnovative teaching materials.

SPEAKERS:
Daniel Pimentel (Stanford University: Stanford, CA)

Unfortunately, the Las Vegas slogan “What Happens Here Stays Here” applies all too well to science classrooms. Science learning that takes place in the classroom often stays in the classroom and fails to transform students’ perceiving and experiencing of the world. This gap between school learning and everyday experience is one of the key barriers to developing active scientific literacy. This workshop on the Teaching for Transformative Experiences in Science (TTES) model will help teachers address this problem by enacting transformative teaching. The TTES model is a research-based pedagogy for fostering transformative experiences; that is, experiences in which students use science content to enrich and expand their everyday lives. The workshop will train teachers in the application of three core design principles: (a) artistic selection and crafting of content, (b) experiential apprenticeship, and (c) doing and undergoing. The workshop will be conducted by one of the pioneers and lead researchers of transformative experience theory. It will include authentic classroom vignettes illustrating the design principles in action, application templates and guidelines, and exercises that will help participants master the design principles. The workshop is appropriate for science educators at all levels as the design principles are adaptable to all ages.

TAKEAWAYS:
Workshop participants will receive hands-on training in research-based strategies effective at fostering transformative experiences; that is, experiences in which students use their in-school learning to enrich and expand their everyday, out-of-school lives.

SPEAKERS:
Kevin Pugh (University of Northern Colorado: Greeley, CO)

Advances in biotechnology, particularly DNA sequencing, has led to a surge in genetic data and large online databases. Interpreting these data, using the interdisciplinary field of bioinformatics, is in high demand because genome sequencing is becoming increasingly cheaper and faster. In science classrooms, there are many opportunities to incorporate bioinformatics, but this can be a daunting task for teachers who do not know where to begin. This hands-on activity starts by introducing participants to the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) website. Presenters will provide a brief overview of the database to guide participants on: 1) how to use the search functions of the database, 2) interpret information on sequence pages, and 3) how to download DNA, RNA or amino acid sequences. Following the guided tour, small groups will be provided discussion questions to discover potential areas within their curricula that could be reinforced or enhanced with a brief bioinformatics activity. Participants will be provided worksheets to help document relevant sequence information (accession numbers) for the biological phenomenon or topic that inspired the activity. The participants will leave with a basic understanding of sequence capture from NCBI and a rudimentary activity to expose students to sequence data analysis.

TAKEAWAYS:
An understanding of the genetic code and basic internet browsing skills are all that are needed to explore bioinformatics and use them in the classroom.

SPEAKERS:
Zack Bateson (National Agricultural Genotyping Center: Fargo, ND), Jane Hunt (Nourish the Future - Education Projects, LLC: Columbus, OH)

Teacher describes installation of two solar arrays, and how students use the arrays to investigate alternative energy and effect of array angle on electricity production.

TAKEAWAYS:
Solar arrays allow students to interact with a real world technology changing sunlight into usable electricity. Two solar arrays that tilt independently allow students to evaluate data from a controlled experiment. Solar energy is part of response our society needs to respond to the challenge of global warming and our need for energy.

SPEAKERS:
Bruce Rose (Greenbrier East High School: Lewisburg, WV)

The GISP2 H-Core was collected in 1992 adjacent to the Greenland Ice Sheet Project Two (GISP2) drill site. The GISP2-H 125.6-meter firm and ice core is a record of 430 years of liquid electrical conductivity and nitrate concentrations. The liquid electrical conductivity sequence contains signals from a number of known volcanic eruptions that provide a dating system at specific locations along the core. The terrestrial and solar background nitrate records show seasonal and annual variations – as well as unique events. Several major nitrate anomalies within the record do not correspond to any known terrestrial or solar events, and there is compelling evidence that some nitrate anomalies within the GISP2 H-Core could possibly be a record of supernova events. This investigation provides participants with a better understanding of the scientific process of analyzing data and developing models to construct knowledge, and defending the results. Sometimes there is no answer key, only possible solutions from analyzing and constructing knowledge from multiple sources that cross traditional disciplines. The materials focus on NGSS scientific practices, crosscutting concepts and the Earth and space sciences core disciplinary ideas – including analyzing and interpreting data, patterns, cycles of energy and matter, Earth systems and Earth and human activity.

TAKEAWAYS:
In constructing new knowledge, sometimes there is no definitive answer, only plausible conclusions based on constructing, analyzing, and comparing data and research from multiple disciplines.

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

Our master teacher video case studies are used to facilitate discussion about the science practices of Asking Questions and Modeling with inservice and preservice teachers.

TAKEAWAYS:
1. Using classroom video as a focus of discussion can provide teachers with an avenue for substantive conversations about their teaching practice; 2. Our case studies present real classroom settings where the teachers are having their students work on the practice of questioning and/ or modeling; and 3. Participants will view the videos and reflect on how the teachers are facilitating the use of science practices in their classrooms.

SPEAKERS:
David Henry (SUNY Buffalo State College: Buffalo, NY), Alayla Ende (University at Buffalo, SUNY: Buffalo, NY), Lisa Brosnick (SUNY Buffalo State College: Buffalo, NY), Alan Baczkiewicz (Sweet Home Middle School: Amherst, NY)

Budburst is a national community science project that brings together researchers, educators, gardeners, and community scientists to make careful observations of the timing of plant life cycle events, or phenophases. Changes over time can be used to illustrate how plants and ecosystems are being affected by human impacts on the environment, especially climate change. By joining Budburst, students can connect to nature wherever they live while participating in an authentic scientific investigation with real-world impacts. In this session educators will learn how they can use Budburst to engage their students in collecting and using real scientific data to examine local plant phenomena and address the NGSS. They will learn about the resources freely available to educators on the Budburst website, including tools allowing them to (1) create their own virtual classroom and set up student accounts, (2) collect and submit data with students, and (3) access existing data to help students ask and analyze their own questions about plants, ecosystems, and climate change. Finally, participants will learn how other educators have implemented Budburst in their classrooms and explore how they can use this flexible platform to scaffold their students’ participation in different stages of the scientific process.

TAKEAWAYS:
Learn to engage students in local plant phenomena and real-world climate change science using Budburst resources.

SPEAKERS:
Sarah Jones (Chicago Botanic Garden: Glencoe, IL), Rebecca Ammann (Chicago Botanic Garden: Glencoe, IL)