This hands-on workshop will showcase the transformational coaching method in order to shift science instructional practice by addressing the following questions: - What challenges do science teachers face when implementing NGSS? - How can we coach for change? - What tools do we use when coaching? - What does this look like in a coaching conversation? In this session, we will discuss common challenges faced by teachers when implementing NGSS and we will introduce Elena Aguilar’s transformational coaching model of coaching around teaching beliefs as a means to surface and address these challenges. Participants will learn about and discuss both coaching and NGSS tools that support the coaching process. Participants will then view a recording of a coaching session with a science teacher. While watching the video, they will use the tools discussed earlier in the session to determine how the coach surfaced the challenge and what tools were used to move the teacher toward successful practice. Then participants will have the opportunity to practice coaching each other in coaching triads using scenarios of NGSS implementation challenges. Lastly, participants will have an opportunity to reflect and debrief on the successes and difficulties they experienced in their coaching triads.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will walk away with specific strategies and tools on how to move science teachers forward on the NGSS three-dimensional continuum through transformational coaching.

SPEAKERS:
Anna Kraftson (Naperville North High School: Naperville, IL)

Connect the human impact of trash pollution to engineering design. Get your students thinking critically and creatively as they collaborate in real-world problem-solving. The global real-world issue of human-generated trash polluting local bodies of water is the main focus of this hands-on session. Using our partnership with the Howard County Conservancy, our students learn about their local watersheds and contribute to a Watershed Report Card. Students see how trash that is often found on our local schoolyards can affect our watershed, and they design a working model for trash removal in a local tributary. Basic coding will be used to design programs that will control sensors and motors through a microcontroller, thus removing the trash from the water source. The model will utilize solar and water power to move the trash into a separate receptacle. Various sensors will also be used to monitor water levels and determine the outcome of the program. This session will allow participants to find ways to increase the environmental stewardship of their students while incorporating engineering design into the science classroom. This project allows authentic integration of technology, mathematics, crosscutting concepts, science practices, and easy implementation of the Next Generation Science Standards.

TAKEAWAYS:
Design a project that enhances STEM skills in students such as collaboration, curiosity and creative problem solving.

SPEAKERS:
Jessica Kohout (Educational Consultant: Ellicott City, MD), Stacy Thibodeaux (Southside High School: Youngsville, LA)

The main goal of this presentation is to help teachers enhance curriculum choices that enrich students lives by integrating the visual arts with environmental science and conservation concerns that allow students to make real world global connections. Leonardo DiVinici is best know for painting the Mona Lisa, but did you know that he also kept nearly 13,000 pages of notes that fuse together art, nature and the physical universe? This professional development session will be centered around how you can incroporate conservation education practices as well as different art techniques into your science lessons that will engage all students.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will take away easy art techniques that can be incorporated in science lessons as well has how to add conservation education into their curriculum.

SPEAKERS:
Jackie Halsey (Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium: Omaha, NE)

This session introduces a way to create learning experiences that are meaningful, rigorous, and equitable for students. Participate in the same sort of rich and meaningful learning experiences that are called for by the NGSS.

TAKEAWAYS:
The characteristics of learning experiences that are meaningful, relevant, and equitable for students and how to give students an opportunity to use their own ideas along with the DCIs, CCs, and SEPs in the service of sensemaking during these experiences.

SPEAKERS:
Todd Hutner (The University of Alabama: Del Valle, TX)

Participants should come to this session with some ideas/dreams in mind of how they would like their classroom to look. Discussion will get the program rolling. A presentation will be given with some ideas as to a starting point to flipping the classroom as well as some key ideas to making the class time meaningful. Simply taking lecture out of the classroom and inserting worksheets will NOT make flipping a worthwhile experience. Having more time to get students to participate in meaningful learning experiences will make the effort worth it. Plus, it involves less instructor effort in the long run as students are doing most of the work. Participants will be given time to work independently or in groups to come up with ideas as to how to modify historically "typical" science lessons into ones that are more engaging, meet students where they are at, and increase student understanding of key science principles. Presenter will give feedback on ideas. Question and answer time will be provided as well. Sometimes, all it takes is a starting point in order to reinvent one's teaching style and reinvigorate one's passion for teaching.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants who have been wanting to flip their classroom, but don't know where to start will learn basic strategies to incorporate into their classroom to get students doing meaningful learning activities.

SPEAKERS:
Meredith Diehl (Northview High School: Sylvania, OH)

Participants will design and test a vessel that will land an egg dropped from a substantial heights without breaking the egg. Participants will use a variety of materials to provide the softest landing possible. Participants will employ technology to assist them in designing their vessels and shape their final methods.

TAKEAWAYS:
Design and test an egg vessel with real time data. Analyze live data to better design a successful egg drop vessel. Experience the engineering design process. - Using technology to test prototypes. -employing the engineering design process. -applying modern technology to past challenges.

SPEAKERS:
Brad Posnanski (Comsewogue High School: Port Jefferson Station, NY), Todd Graba (Crystal Lake South High School: Crystal Lake, IL)

Three-dimensional learning, as outlined by NGSS, allows students to view science as an interrelated world of inquiry. Today’s environmental challenges require a 3-D approach to understand the phenomena and data and how our landscapes and ecosystems have changed as human population has doubled in the past 50 years. In this hands-on session, the presenter will lead participants in hands-on activities (problem-solving challenges, simulations and modeling) that use real-world data sets and 3-D learning in a variety of formats to analyze and think critically about some of the key ecological topics in Biology and Environmental Science courses (including AP) – population trends, climate change, land use, biodiversity, and ecosystem health. Presented activities emphasize students’ ability to collect, analyze and interpret data as central to developing and using models, identifying patterns and designing solutions. The presenter will also share interactive digital tools for engaging students remotely. The presenter will discuss how to implement these activities as part of broadening students’ understanding of the NGSS topics “Human Sustainability” and “Interdependent Relationships in Ecosystems. Participants will receive lesson plans (including assessment ideas) and background materials in an electronic format.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will come away with cross-disciplinary ideas to incorporate 3-D learning strategies into hands-on activities around the NGSS topic of Human Sustainability.

SPEAKERS:
Stephanie Ruder (J.I. Case High School: Racine, WI)

Each attendee will receive materials and instructions to construct a Higgs Boson. Dice and investigative procedure are included to determine the mass of six quarks.

TAKEAWAYS:
1. How to take an abstract concept and create concrete hands-on investigations; 2. Suggestions to go from teacher-centered to a student centered-curriculum; and 3. The importance of looking for trends, patterns, and regularities for modeling.

SPEAKERS:
Gary Schiltz (Retired Chemistry Teacher: Naperville, IL)

Investigate the spread of tick-borne diseases in humans and animals. Experience hands-on/minds-on NGSS-focused lessons related to One Health, the connections between human, animal, and environmental health.

TAKEAWAYS:
Learn about hands-on/minds-on NGSS-focused lessons related to One Health and engage in three-dimensional activities that focus on the science practices of analyzing data and constructing explanations.

SPEAKERS:
Lisa Brosnick (SUNY Buffalo State College: Buffalo, NY), Dina Markowitz (University of Rochester: Rochester, NY)

The first 50 attendees will be be given the materials (circluar rings, rulers, and paper) to model the Doppler effect. Attendees will need a calculator for the quantitative portion of the workshop.

TAKEAWAYS:
1. How to take an abstract concept and create a concrete hands-on investigation; 2. Suggestions to go from teacher-centered to a student centered-curriculum; and 3. The importance of looking for trends, patterns, and regularities for modeling.

SPEAKERS:
Gary Schiltz (Retired Chemistry Teacher: Naperville, IL)

While the NGSS emphasizes the science and engineering practice of computational thinking, there is less familiarity and support for the implementation of this practice compared to other practices. In this session, high school biology teachers will learn how to recognize if a task requires computational thinking or not by analyzing a set of tasks. They will learn how to promote computational thinking in their classrooms by engaging with a newly developed computer simulation. This freely available simulation is based on a real-world phenomenon and designed to address specific performance expectations in biology. Teachers will explore the simulation as learners first, engaging with it as their students would. Then they will reflect on how they used computational thinking to explain the phenomenon. Teachers will leave the session with access to the simulation, suggestions for lesson plans, ideas for incorporating the activity into their curricula, and strategies for utilizing the simulation with all learners in their classrooms.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will learn how to promote the science and engineering practice of computational thinking in the high school biology classroom. Participants will be introduced to a freely accessible computer simulation (and suggested lesson plans) based on a real-world phenomenon designed to address performance expectations in biology.

SPEAKERS:
Wendy Jackson (The Lawrence Hall of Science: Berkeley, CA), Maia Binding (The Lawrence Hall of Science: Berkeley, CA), Ben Koo (The Lawrence Hall of Science: Berkeley, CA)

Students are generally intrigued by cosmology but it can be difficult for instructors to explain. For some scientists and teachers, the famous Hubble graph from which we obtain Hubble’s Law makes it obvious that the universe is expanding but for most students (and many of us teachers!) this is not the case: looking at the graph does not obviously imply an expanding universe. We will discuss standard candles and the redshifting of light, and how Hubble used these to measure the speeds and distances to galaxies. We will examine his data and graph and then we will work through an activity that will help students see why the 1929 graph implies an expanding universe. The simple activity uses elastic and rulers and provides a qualitative introduction to the Hubble redshift. Additionally, we will share other ideas and materials for teaching students about cosmology and the expansion of the universe.

TAKEAWAYS:
Students can produce a Hubble-like graph representing an expanding universe using elastic and a ruler.

SPEAKERS:
Todd Brown (University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg: Greensburg, PA)

This session will introduce participants to the Alexa for Astronauts: Using AI to Monitor Health lesson set. We will explore how the instructional sequence exposes high school students to ideas about artificial intelligence (AI) and computer programming, using Amazon Alexa and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) App Inventor, while applying previously built life science ideas to begin to address the problem of monitoring astronauts’ physical health. Participants will gain experience using the Alexa-MIT App Inventor to program custom Alexa skills and learn how to sign up for access to the instructional materials. No accounts needed; bring a laptop or device to access the Alexa-MIT App Inventor.

TAKEAWAYS:
The Alexa-MIT App Inventor platform and teacher supports found in the lesson plans make it possible to incorporate computer science and artificial intelligence ideas in Biology class.

SPEAKERS:
Patrice Scinta (NSTA: Arlington, VA), Michelle Phillips (NSTA: Arlington, VA), Kate Soriano (NSTA: Arlington, VA), Garrett Dorfman (Amazon Future Engineer: Nashville, TN), Kristin Rademaker (NSTA: Arlington, VA)

Turn any multiple-choice review into an exciting escape! Learn to create digital and in-person escapes to help keep students interested, engaged, and motivated.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will learn tips for designing escape boxes, plus how to add riddles, puzzles, games, and small prizes. The digital escape uses Google Forms, and the physical escape uses lockable boxes with resettable combination locks. Links to a customizable digital and physical escape will be available to attendees.

SPEAKERS:
Sharon Beck (Davidson County High School: Lexington, NC)