Use innovative video-assisted STEM activities, demonstrations, award-winning videos, and behind-the-crash-tests tours to teach the science of car crashes. Visit classroom.iihs.org for more information.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants learn how to incorporate culminating STEM design challenges (Project Pedestrian Sensors and Egg-Carrying Paper Car Crash) into their curriculum to promote student awareness and understanding of how engineering and technology are used to build safer vehicles.

SPEAKERS:
Griff Jones (University of Florida: No City, No State), Pini Kalnite (Insurance Institute for Highway Safety Highway Loss Data Institute: Arlington, VA)

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)

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)

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)

Discover how citizen science and inquiry can shape the STEM leaders of our future! Participating in citizen science provides a unique and accessible way to facilitate student science investigations and STEM learning. Students engaged in the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's citizen-science projects have been asking and answering their own questions about birds for more than a decade, conducting original experiments and observational studies. Questions range from “why do the kinds of birds we see change during the year?” to “why aren’t we seeing more birds at our school and what can we do to get more to visit?” By engaging in citizen science and investigations, students become scientists and meet NGSS Standards while exercising social and emotional learning (SEL) skills. They make observations, generate their own questions, collect data, and get access to online datasets they can query. Along the way, they collaborate with peers, learn to communicate effectively, engage in arguments from evidence, and reflect on successes and challenges. These hands-on science experiences give all students authentic opportunities to build life-long skills while meeting science standards, especially those related to developing students’ science process skills.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will explore free resources to scaffold citizen-science-inspired inquiry projects and discover how outdoor learning and inquiry projects can support social and emotional learning.

SPEAKERS:
Kelly Schaeffer (The Cornell Lab of Ornithology: Ithaca, NY)

Butterfly Gardening Using Native Plants workshop is a very exciting educational experience! This session will guide participants through exposure to native North American plants that are host plants for butterfly caterpillars as well as nectar plants to attract adults. We will participate in an assortment of hands-on activities which include creating a "Life Cycle Plate" and singing the "Metamorphosis Song". A main focus of this session is to provide participants with strategies to enable them to create and sustain their own schoolyard habitat. A roadmap to success will be shared, along with a question and answer session for potential challenges! . Beyond the workshop, continued implementation support will be shared with a comprehensive digital data collection and email contact information provided to participants. They will also receive contact information for the North American Butterfly Association, and The Native Plant Society for their local area. Resources will be shared focusing on the importance of organic gardening in relationship to a successful butterfly garden. Finally, an assortment of grant opportunities will be shared in order to assist teachers in getting funding for their projects. Upon completion of this time together, butterfly enthusiasts will be dispatched throughout the country. Once implemented, students and parents will be captivated by the beauty of the garden, and will sustain life lessons on the vital connection we share with our environment.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participates will leave with the knowledge to go back to their schools/classroom equipped with the knowledge to set up an area to attract an assortment of native butterflies.

SPEAKERS:
Nancy Sale (Lillie C. Evans K-8 Center: Miami, FL)

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)

In this workshop, Field Museum educators and Chicago Public School teachers will share their experience using object-based learning in the classroom and how it sparks curiosity and language development in multilingual students. Field Museum educators will give an overview of the tenets of object-based inquiry and how it lends itself to giving equitable access to content for all students. Chicago Public School teachers will explain the practical application and benefits of using object-based learning in their multilingual classrooms and highlight how science ideas and language development occurs naturally through discussion, question-asking, and scientific drawing. During the hands-on workshop, participants will act as a learner in a guided object-based inquiry lesson that focuses on including everyday phenomena. Following the hands-on experience, they will have the opportunity to share how they would integrate object-based learning in their own curriculum. Participants will create their own collection of learning objects to use in their classroom.

TAKEAWAYS:
Educators will learn how to merge science ideas with student ideas in their classroom using object-based phenomena to deepen students' questioning and observation skills. Educators will learn how to use object-based learning in their ELL or bilingual classrooms to promote language and content acquisition. Educators will learn how to use objects as hands-on learning tools to provide equitable learning opportunities for all.

SPEAKERS:
Mireya Becker (The Field Museum: Chicago, IL), Damaris Cami (Dual Language Teacher: Chicago, IL), Eleanor Sweeney (Educator: Chicago, IL), Andrea McGehee (Educator: Chicago, IL)