This session will describe an NSF grant in progress to increase high school awareness of geoscience through field trips and activities. This grant was written by geoscience and education faculty. We will share some activities along with what we learned from the pre- and post- assessments.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will participate in hands-on activities that have been prepared by geoscience faculty at Missouri S&T. The teacher ed. faculty at Missouri S&T will share ideas on how to implement and assess these. Student learning is enhanced when students are engaged in hands-on, field based learning.

SPEAKERS:
Amanda Meek (Professor: Rolla, MO), Michelle Schwartze (Missouri S&T: Rolla, MO)

Explore the use of zebrafish (Danio rerio) a freshwater fish at the forefront of biomedical research and easily maintained in a classroom aquarium, to spark ALL students’ curiosity and scientific engagement with real-life science experiences through multiple-learning modalities.

TAKEAWAYS:
Learning how zebrafish and low-budget pet store supplies can be used to engage diverse learners in multimodal (visual, kinesthetic) real-life science learning experiences.

SPEAKERS:
Vinita Hajeri (The University of Texas at Dallas: Richardson, TX)

Who belongs in marine sciences? Why does it matter? Join the NMEA Equity & Belonging committee for an interactive session which aims to advance dialogue on social equity & justice in these spaces. This session is for educators who are passionate about integrating marine concepts in their practice.

TAKEAWAYS:
The personal and professional narratives shared by the presenters will highlight tools and strategies to shift the power dynamics in your science classroom. A curated collection of resources to support more just and equitable science teaching practices will be shared.

SPEAKERS:
Rae Quadara (The University of Southern Mississippi Marine Education Center: No City, No State), Janice Williams (Pinnacle Education Services /NMEA /COLC: No City, No State)

Come learn some fun hands on activities that you can use in your classroom and/or lab that don't cost an arm and a leg! We will focus on activities for Chemistry, Environmental Science, Forensic Science, and Physical Science. Everything from student made projects to instructor demos!

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees with leave with Low Cost Hands-On Activities.

SPEAKERS:
Andrea Knowles (Teacher), Rachel Kakesh (Bowdon High School: Bowdon, GA)

Did you know the ocean is a major influence on weather and climate? Apply Ocean Literacy - an understanding of the ocean’s influence on you and your influence on the ocean - in your learning environment! Explore the Ocean Literacy Framework, including alignment of ocean science concepts with NGSS.

TAKEAWAYS:
You can't be science literate without being ocean literate. While terrestrial examples dominate NGSS, Ocean Literacy is essential to understanding many DCIs, but the connection may not be obvious. Other DCIs do not mention the ocean but cannot be fully understood without the ocean component.

SPEAKERS:
David Christopher (Delaware Sea Grant Marine Advisory Service: Lewes, DE)

Want to make phenomena come alive for your students? Well use live animals for your phenomena! In this session, Samuel Pruitt will show how to use the Claim-Evidence-Reasoning (CER) teaching strategy and an array of live reptiles as phenomena to teach biology and environmental science.

TAKEAWAYS:
Using Claim-Evidence-Reasoning (CER) and live animals in biology and environmental science phenomena can provide critical to learning and can be motivational to students. This session will blend the CER teaching strategy with the interest that comes from using live reptiles in the classroom.

SPEAKERS:
Samuel Pruitt (Biology/Environmental Science Teacher: , GA)

Research suggests that a more diverse geoscience workforce that reflects our nation's demographics can better equip us to effectively meet our country’s future energy needs. Such a workforce can be cultivated by implementing key strategies for recruiting and educating future diverse STEM leaders.

TAKEAWAYS:
This session will discuss successful strategies to foster increased engagement of underrepresented groups in geoscience and related careers.

SPEAKERS:
Ashanti Johnson (STEM Human Resource Development: , OK)

This session will focus on sharing instructional modules that have been developed to facilitate relationships between herbaria and high school students to highlight the importance of plants and preserving botanical specimens.

TAKEAWAYS:
Many times, plants are overlooked and considered less significant than animals. This is known as Plant Awareness Disparity. Participants in this session will learn about free instructional modules that will help high school students connect with plants through exploring their own botanical history

SPEAKERS:
Rachel May (Graduate Student), Kelly Moore (Tennessee Tech: Cookeville, TN)

Learn about free STEM educational resources including virtual reality, themed resource collections and lesson plans to increase ocean and climate literacy with your students.

TAKEAWAYS:
NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries offers lessons, videos and activities that can be used in K-12 classrooms to teach students about the ocean and Great Lakes with engaging real life examples of our nation's underwater parks.

SPEAKERS:
Tracy Hajduk (NOAA Office of National Marine Sanctuaries: Monterey, CA)

Equity-mindedness and meaningful inclusion is achieved with identification and belonging in the biology curriculum. This NSF-funded research project uses the lived experiences and narratives of Black heritage and Gullah-Geechee African Americans to facilitate the learning of biology concepts.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will learn about the connection between identification and belonging and equitable classroom practices and science content. The research literature is used to describe how the emergent themes from the free curriculum resources shared brings equity into the biology lesson.

SPEAKERS:
Catherine Quinlan (Howard University)

In the session, I will present information about how to make your own videos using PowerPoint, Canvas Studio, or EdPuzzle. In addition, I will discuss how you can use either embedded quiz questions or open-note quizzes in class to assess students' completion of the outside of class learning prior to participating in the in-class extension activities. I will show some of the videos that I have made and share how making this shift has improved my students' scores on the End of Course tests and AP Biology exam. I will also share an open-source paper from Harvard that shows how active learning improves student performance even though students express a preference for passive learning (lecture).

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will learn how to make their own videos or use existing videos to present the basic content to their students, leaving class time for the hands-on and group activities that achieve deeper understanding of the content.

SPEAKERS:
Amanda Dyer (Science Teacher: Canton, GA)

COVID, Monkeypox, and influenza didn’t appear out of nowhere. They were spawned by dynamic ecological and coevolutionary relationships between hosts and pathogens. These diseases demonstrate the value of evolutionary and ecological concepts in medical practice, public health, and students’ lives.

TAKEAWAYS:
Viruses, especially those that have alternate animal hosts, evolve in complex and unpredictable ways, interacting with all members of their infectious ecosystem in ways that constantly challenge medicine and public health.

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

This program aims to dramatically increase the exposure to and consumption of locally produced honey by developing a network of apiaries and supporting curriculum for preK–12.

TAKEAWAYS:
Teachers will learn about: 1. how educational apiaries can be used in an education setting; 2. the benefits of implementing curriculum related to honey production; and 3. strategies to engage migrant students in STEM education.

SPEAKERS:
Spencer Cody (Edmunds Central School District: Roscoe, SD)

PFAS are a harmful class of widely used chemicals that can be found in everything from drinking water and crops to cosmetics and food packaging. Secondary science teachers from North Carolina used design-based thinking to develop standards-aligned activities featuring the cutting-edge research taking place to understand exposure to PFAS and to describe the biological processes behind health outcomes, such as autoimmune disease or cancer. This session will showcase how teachers adapted published scientific data for use with diverse learners to address life science standards while conveying important environmental health concepts and promoting biomedical research careers. Teachers also will receive an array of curated media resources to help them incorporate this nationally relevant topic into their instruction.

TAKEAWAYS:
Humans are exposed to PFAS before birth, and exposure continues throughout life due to the prevalence of these chemicals in our environment. Attendees will learn about the biomedical research taking place to understand the biology underpinning health effects and receive standards-aligned activities.

SPEAKERS:
Andromeda Crowell (Orange High School: Hillsborough, NC), Clare Matusevich (Chapel Hill High School: Chapel Hill, NC)

In this multidisciplinary 5E lesson plan, students will dive deep into many aspects of aquatic pollution through a wide variety of lab experiences and project based learning activities. This 5E unit plan is aligned to AP Environmental Science and NGSS standards.

TAKEAWAYS:
A full 5E multidisciplinary lesson plan about aquatic pollution that can be incorporated in full or in parts within the classroom.

SPEAKERS:
Feifei Liu (Ph.D. candidate: Atlanta, GA), Laura Rogers (Teacher)

Come learn from a fellow chemistry teacher how to incorporate history and culture using chapters from Napoleon's Buttons. We will focus on Birth Control Pill, Malaria Pill, and DDT by DuPont. Mini-lessons will be enacted and full lessons for chapters will be shared at the end of the semester.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will learn the history, chemistry, and cultural implications of the Birth Control Pill, Malaria medicines, and DDT. Real-world applications will be addressed and lessons will be shared that have been tested in high school chemistry classrooms.

SPEAKERS:
Julie Benkoski (Greene County High School: Greensboro, GA), Lacey Huffling (Georgia Southern University: Statesboro, GA)

We will discuss engineering design within the context of the NGSS. Focusing on the decline of pollinators, participants will develop prototypes of native bees and dry pollination techniques to demonstrate how to develop engineering lessons using problem-based phenomena and engineering design.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will have the opportunity to experience an engineering design lesson aligned to NGSS, develop and test prototypes of native bees, and engage in meaningful discussions of engineering design within the context of 3-dimensional science and engineering teaching.

SPEAKERS:
Rita Hagevik (The University of North Carolina at Pembroke: LAURINBURG, NC), Kathy Trundle (Utah STate University: No City, No State), Laura Wheeler (Assistant Professor: , UT)

Geoscience Teaching Outdoors in NC cultivates an active and equitable geo-STEM learning ecosystem. Gain activities and discuss best practices for phenomenon-based learning about earth systems using technology and citizen science to support a diverse future workforce and STEM-literate public.

TAKEAWAYS:
Supporting a geo-STEM learning ecosystem of teachers, informal science centers and geoscience researchers can lead to integration of field experiences focused on locally relevant climate change impacts and solutions into instruction, sparking diverse students’ interest in geoscience careers.

SPEAKERS:
Sarah Yelton (UNC Institute for the Environment: Chapel Hill, NC)

Set up a simple lab experiment and watch a cool demo for ways to talk about resources and the environment, using copper as a specific example.

TAKEAWAYS:
Great lab that can be used for many levels of understanding - geology, environmental science, chemistry – with a focus on environmental impact of resource acquisition. Resources to highlight for students the depth and complexity of these issues.

SPEAKERS:
Scott Spohler (Global Impact STEM Academy: Springfield, OH), Briana Richardson (Washington High School: Washington Court House, OH)

In this presentation you'll learn one way to meet the challenge of providing meaningful, growth-focused feedback on student lab work, while also conserving teacher time and energy. It can be used for courses from AP to on-level courses, and may streamline department-level alignment as well.

TAKEAWAYS:
Teachers will come away with reusable tools for implementing the method I have developed, as well as rationale, examples, and ideas for applying this approach to any set of instructional standards.

SPEAKERS:
Erin Miller (Visitation School: Mendota Heights, MN)

The Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS) conducts graduate field biology training. Their teaching model is a daily cycle of data collection, analysis, and reporting. The benefits for students 15-18 of a strong commitment to field science include better understanding of scientific arguments, increased confidence in research, communication, and team-building, and a sense of ownership. For high school classes, I stretched the timeline of each research cycle from one day to three weeks. Classes were divided into three-student teams with rotating roles (writing, editing, and presenting). Teams developed hypotheses, carried out field investigations, analyzed data, and shared their results on the final day of each cycle. These activities occupy about 40% of available class time. This adaptation of professional education to high school biology has had the effect of giving students a distinct advantage in experience and confidence as they have moved on to later research opportunities.

TAKEAWAYS:
A strong commitment to a field centered program is a leap, but the diversity of choices for possible research projects can integrate with many curriculum goals and contributes profoundly to students’ excitement, engagement, and analytical skills.

SPEAKERS:
Barry McPhail (Bayside Academy for Advanced World Studies: Mobile, AL)

Students are taught various scientific concepts that can be applied to a plethora of global phenomena. It is important to connect these concepts to local environments. Learn about a CER investigation that engaged students with thinking about mosquitos and global warming in their neighborhood.

TAKEAWAYS:
By the end of this session, attendees will have an example of a CER investigation that ties big picture concepts and phenomena to a student's local environment. This investigation can be seen as a framework and modified to fit different phenomena while still allowing students to think critically.

SPEAKERS:
Alexander Eden (Florida International University: Miami, FL)

In The Story of Our Stuff, students choose an everyday object, trace its history backwards to its roots in natural resources, and its future all the way to the point when it returns to the earth. They represent the story in a creative way.

TAKEAWAYS:
Students make connections about mining and agriculture, consumerism and the value of everyday objects, transportation, energy, and the value of workers and artists.

SPEAKERS:
Erin Miller (Visitation School: Mendota Heights, MN)

Experience a lesson where students take on roles of stakeholders while engaging in guided research, discussion, and designing solutions to address algal blooms in Florida. Plans, protocols, and templates for student work and collaboration will be shared.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will learn a strategy for guiding students to research and generate solutions an environmental issue that impacts various stakeholders in different ways. I want attendees to see the need to teach skills related to research, discussion, and consensus building.

SPEAKERS:
Steve Kuninsky (Science Teacher/Instructional Coach: Lawrenceville, GA)

Our problem based learning project ‘Impacts to biodiversity on campus,’ merges scientific inquiry and hands-on, authentic experiences. We share our unit sequence, materials and methods, and finished products as well as the intangible benefits such as class camaraderie and appreciation for science.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will learn the unit sequence, materials and methods, and finished products of our problem based ecology unit, as well as intangibles such as class camaraderie, enthusiasm and appreciation for the challenges of science.

SPEAKERS:
Amy Jenkins (Rabun Gap Nacoochee School: Rabun Gap, GA)

Hear experiences of implementing a Project Based Learning approach, based upon the Sprocket AP Environmental Science Curriculum, to increase engagement for diverse learners.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will learn how to modify the Sprocket PBL curriculum to create culturally responsive teaching and learning experiences.

SPEAKERS:
Lisa Pavic (Glenbrook South High School: Glenview, IL)

Want to make phenomena come alive for your students? Well use live animals for your phenomena! In this session, Samuel Pruitt will show how to use the Claim-Evidence-Reasoning (CER) teaching strategy and an array of live reptiles as phenomena to teach biology and environmental science.

TAKEAWAYS:
Using Claim-Evidence-Reasoning (CER) and live animals in biology and environmental science phenomena can provide critical to learning and can be motivational to students. This session will blend the CER teaching strategy with the interest that comes from using live reptiles in the classroom.

SPEAKERS:
Samuel Pruitt (Biology/Environmental Science Teacher: , GA)

How do we prepare our youth of today to become tomorrow’s future leaders and decision makers? In this presentation, we will explore a Marine Science course designed to instruct students through experiential learning in our changing world.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will explore a Marine Science course designed to instruct students through experiential learning in our changing world.

SPEAKERS:
Molly Dushay (High School Science Teacher)

Join us on an exploration to see how teachers used citizen science web camera projects and ArcGIS Storymaps to engage their students in the question: How is Earth’s water like a community well? Lesson materials, resources, and assessments will be shared.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will learn how to engage their students in citizen science research and explore access to Earth’s water resources through ArGIS Storymaps.

SPEAKERS:
Heather Scott (Georgia Southern University: Statesboro, GA), Kelly Moore (Berrien High School: Nashville, GA), Miranda Simmons (Mary Persons High School: Forsyth, GA), Natalie Sumner (Secondary Science Teacher: Forsyth, GA), Lacey Huffling (Georgia Southern University: Statesboro, GA)

Learn how to access and explore NOAA’s data-rich resources, lesson plans, and visualization tools to build data literacy and proficiency in scientific data analysis.

TAKEAWAYS:
How to find and use NOAA data in your classroom.

SPEAKERS:
Denise Harrington (NOAA TASAA Fellow: Garibaldi, OR)

Join us as we explore how NOAA Teacher at Sea can bring stimulating ocean science content to the classroom through a wide range of technology and media applications.

TAKEAWAYS:
NOAA Teacher at Sea provides numerous cutting-edge strategies to make ocean science accessible to students such as Google Cardboard and various VR applications to utilizing NOAA Teacher at Sea’s rich ocean science resources.

SPEAKERS:
Spencer Cody (Edmunds Central School District: Roscoe, SD)