Participants will use sensemaking and the engineering design process to solve a real world food production problem in a small scale format. This lesson introduces the Food Delivery Challenge, in which participants must design a gravity feeder to carry food (chicken feed) to twelve hungry chickens for over 24 hours. To accomplish the task students must design and build a model of an efficient gravity feeder using the materials available to them. The scenario presented to the class: One of the feeders in your uncle’s barn has broken down, and a new one will not arrive until next month. You must create a gravity feeder to satisfy 12 chickens for 24 hours consistently to ensure the health of your flock. Participants will research, design, build and test their design before presenting to the group for feedback, Participants will then use the feedback to redesign for an improved feeder.

TAKEAWAYS:
1. Use the engineering design process to collaborate, design and build a gravitational feeder system that will feed 10 pounds of feed over a 24 hour period. 2. Present your design plan, and final product to the class for feedback. 3. Provide feedback to the design team for design improvement.

SPEAKERS:
Leah LaCrosse (McCormick Junior High School: Huron, OH), Heather Bryan (Nourish the Future - Education Projects, LLC: Columbus, OH)

Participants will understand how to develop and effectively implement STEM curriculum units that include project based activities and performance based assessments. Participants will learn to help students answer complex questions and develop solutions for challenges and real-world problems. They will also assist students with extending and refining their acquired knowledge to routinely analyze and solve problems. By the end of this session: 1) Participants will gain a clear and coherent understanding of what a STEM PBL is and how it works. 2) Participants will be able to identify and create effective essential questions. 3) Participants will be able to identify and apply the components of a STEM PBL. 4) Understand how STEM PBL’s will impact instruction for participants and students. Agenda: What is PBL? Why is it important? How does a STEM PBL Work? How to effectively integrate journal reflections. Ways to Implement STEM PBL’s

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will learn how to effectively implement STEM PBL’s (Project Based Learning) by integrating the components of STEM and PBL in order to grow students' capacity for creativity, fun, and back-loaded learning in a STEM context.

SPEAKERS:
Adero Carter (Clayton County Public Schools: Jonesboro, GA)

We are naturally curious, prone to ask why? How? What? Unfortunately, somewhere along the way students lose the trust in their voices to ask questions of and from data. But data are what we use to do science and it permeates all aspects of society today. What should we do? Stop teaching the vocabulary of science and data first, and instead leverage classroom-ready strategies to empower students to lead with their innate curiosity to practice critical 21st century data literacy skills and master the science content. Join us to explore connections between our science content, inquiry-based activities, and data skills. We will experience research-based strategies and freely available resources for integrating phenomenon-based and local data into our science instruction to promote science literacy and student empowerment. We will participate in activities ourselves and reflect on approaches for how to bring these into our classrooms. Participants will leave more empowered to integrate data into their science content in purposeful ways to better help students do and communicate science. Working with and learning science from data fosters critical thinking skills, lifelong interests in science, and facilitates learners’ overall self-identity as a scientist. Let’s set all of our students up for success!

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will identify how data literacy is a critical aspect of science literacy in the 21st century, how students can do a lot more with data than we often think or presume from their science vocabulary alone, and how to leverage existing strategies to authentically integrate data into 6-12 science instruction to teach their science content and increase literacy simultaneously.

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

Participants experience three different digital design challenges using branching scenarios that provide student choice and data sets involving wind energy, electromagnetism, and the greenhouse effect.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will engage in three digital design challenges to test the efficiency of wind turbine blades, the strength of electromagnets, and the greenhouse effect on different land surfaces (polar region, water, and desert).

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

Learn how to overcome the apathy of teenagers, understand their motivations for not asking questions, and get them to be curious again!

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will take away multiple strategies to implement in their classroom to spark the curiosity of teens they teach.

SPEAKERS:
Jamye Carr (Cedar Ridge High School: Hillsborough, NC)

This session is intended to discuss the importance of formative assessment as a tool for guiding students and helping all students to make progress. A variety of formative assessment tools will be explored. Most importantly, the use of individual feedback on formative assessments will be demonstrated and we will discuss how this leads to improved metacognition and critical thinking skills for students. Attendees will see sample student work on formative assessments and accompanying sample teacher feedback. They will practice making comments of there own, in addition to discussing logistical concerns with the practice of individualized feedback.

TAKEAWAYS:
This session is intended to discuss the importance of formative assessment as a tool for guiding students and helping all students to make progress.

SPEAKERS:
Jennifer Maguire (Virginia Tech: Blacksburg, VA)

Inspiration to Fruition provides any educator with a game plan on how to take an idea and available resources and create a project that enhances the student experience and skills.

TAKEAWAYS:
1. A template for designing a grassroots STEM or PBL project; 2. Top 10 tips on how to make managing the project actually manageable; and 3. Proof that trusting one's intuition to build a project based on an inspirational event can bring to fruition an amazing experience for students.

SPEAKERS:
Kelly Hartings (Indian Hill Middle School: Cincinnati, OH), Jessica Brown (Teacher: cincinnati, OH)

Computer science CAN be integrated into high school science classes. Here are some ideas from the STEMcoding Project!

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will work on three "STEMcoding" activities on: 1. climate change with connection to spreadsheets; 2. orbital motion for Earth science; and 3. the first of the "physics of video games" activities.

SPEAKERS:
Chris Orban (The Ohio State University at Marion: Marion, OH)

Middle schoolers haven’t grown up yet so trot out the toys and the science parodies…the best way to their brains!

TAKEAWAYS:
Science classes that are fun as well as challenging will be the ones that educate.

SPEAKERS:
Jen Taylor (Lakeview Academy: Saratoga Springs, UT)

This hands-on workshop will excite and engage teachers of STEM disciplines using integration and inquiry to promote every student's confidence in the ability to challenge themselves in each discipline.

TAKEAWAYS:
What does true STEM integration look like in an inclusive classroom?

SPEAKERS:
Bridget Pugh (Putnam County School System: Cookeville, TN)

This session will lead participants through a discussion on why and how to use drone technology in the classroom. It will showcase a problem based learning activity in which drones are used in a surveying simulation.

TAKEAWAYS:
How and why using drones can enhance the curriculum.

SPEAKERS:
Jane Hunt (Nourish the Future - Education Projects, LLC: Columbus, OH)

Student understanding of how science and STEM ideas and concepts are applied within their chosen career pathway is a critical component of many Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs, but for a variety of reasons these connections are often overlooked. Some states even provide CTE courses and Career Pathway standards that seem to go against the three-dimensional and student-centered learning grain. Yet, to truly meet the vision of the K-12 Framework, students in CTE and Vocational Education pathways should also be provided opportunities to engage in three-dimensional sensemaking in the context of their CTE course. In this session, we explore explicit connections between three-dimensional science learning and Agricultural, Food and Natural Resources as just one example of how three-dimensional student learning and sensemaking can be incorporated into CTE. We then explore how similar strategies can be utilized in other pathways with the goal of bridging the gap between science learning and practical application for students in CTE.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will learn strategies for integrating scientific sensemaking into CTE courses to support their students' mastery of the scientific concepts they will apply in those fields.

SPEAKERS:
Bridina Lemmer (Illinois Science Teaching Association: Jacksonville, IL), Chris Embry Mohr (Olympia High School: Stanford, IL)

Come learn how you can make your STEM lessons more accessible for all students by making a few simple changes to your instructional sequence. During this session you will experience an engaging hands-on lesson that models what this structure can look like in a real classroom. We will also discuss the research behind allowing students to experience concepts before introducing students to new vocabulary terms and how this can give all students an entry point into learning STEM content.

TAKEAWAYS:
Sequence matters! When we allow students to experience concepts before we introduce scientific and academic vocabulary, we give all students an entry point into STEM content.

SPEAKERS:
Lee Jimenez (3rd Grade: , OH), Leslie Silbernagel (Northern Kentucky University: Highland Heights, KY)

Present culturally relevant inquiry-based teaching practices to engage all students in science learning. The interactive session will define what it means to be a culturally relevant practitioner, and how to use inquiry-based teaching practices in their science classroom. The participants will be engaged using scenarios and identification lessons that are culturally relevant inquiry-based.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will be able to define inquiry-based learning as culturally responsive/relevant teaching and identify characteristics of cultural competency in science teachers.

SPEAKERS:
Rochelle Darville (West St. John High School: Edgard, LA)

What first hooked you on STEM? Learn how regional and national partners are working to create “STAR” moments for students through inquiry-based PBL focused on space.

TAKEAWAYS:
Students can’t be what they can’t see. In addition to powerful inquiry-based learning experiences, deliberate, equity-focused STEM education and community reinforcement of STEM exploration are required to build the STEM ecosystem.

SPEAKERS:
Kristana Rogers (RTI International: Durham, NC), Todd Campbell (RTI International: Durham, NC), Lauren Milord (DreamUp, PBC: Washington, DC), Angela Adams (Cumberland County Schools: Fayetteville, NC)

This hands-on workshop will excite and engage teachers of STEM disciplines using integration and inquiry to promote every student's confidence in the ability to challenge themselves in each discipline.

TAKEAWAYS:
What does true STEM integration look like in an inclusive classroom?

SPEAKERS:
Bridget Pugh (Putnam County School System: Cookeville, TN)

Unpacking the 3-D NGSS while at the same time making science instruction engaging to students is a challenge faced by science teachers across the nation. With skillful use of phenomena-based instruction, science teachers engage students by converting what the teacher planned to teach into what the students want to learn. Culturally relevant, intellectually accessible and thought-provoking phenomena enable students to make engaging connections between the required curricula content and real-life scenarios and applications. Rather than recalling discrete facts, students apply new information and use transferable problem-solving skills to explain a natural or man-made phenomenon. Phenomenon-based science encourages students to ask questions, discover connections, and design models to make sense of what they observe. This session provides participating teachers opportunities to experience lessons in the same manner as students will. They examine a phenomenon and then ask questions, collaborate with partners and design models, and discuss digital tools that can be used to engage students in phenomenon-based learning. Teachers learn how to use questioning techniques and academic dialogue to spike discontent in the students' understanding of the phenomena, thereby, driving students to use science practices to further explore their curiosities

TAKEAWAYS:
Help teachers to develop and deploy thought-provoking phenomena that will promote student engagement, comprehension, and achievement in the sciences by transforming what the teacher planned to teach into what the students are eager to learn.

SPEAKERS:
Chidi Duru (Prince George's County Public Schools: Upper Marlboro, MD)

Learning through place-based, student-centered, teacher-facilitated STEM inquiry increases student engagement in and ownership of learning and promotes student growth in science and engineering practices, disciplinary core ideas, and crosscutting concepts. Using a unit plan I developed for exploring local microclimates, participants will engage in activities and discussion of techniques for cultivating students as collaborators in the learning process. The unit is designed to encourage growth in asking questions, designing and conducting investigations, collecting data, making sense of data, communicating findings, and identifying local problems and designing solutions to a student-identified problem. Participants will use NASA infrared images of surface temperatures captured during an ISS mission to observe the urban heat island phenomenon. They will explore Google Earth to spark questions about surface heating that can be answered through investigation of the local neighborhood or school campus. Given a list of equipment that students used during the unit, participants will collaboratively design an investigation to collect place-based data. Discussion includes extension activities that facilitate student understanding of surface heating and cooling. Discussion also includes how revision and reflection can be used to monitor individual student growth and promote ownership of learning by students. Emphasis is on facilitation techniques.

TAKEAWAYS:
Learning through place-based, student-centered, teacher-facilitated STEM inquiry increases student engagement in and ownership of learning and promotes student growth in science and engineering practices, disciplinary core ideas, and crosscutting concepts.

SPEAKERS:
Loris Chen (Science Education Consultant: Fair Lawn, NJ)