Sponsoring Company: Great Minds

In this workshop, participants dive into a 2nd grade module on Matter. Using the six steps of the Engineering Design Process, participants will ask, imagine, plan and test a solution to the real-world problem: How can you design and build a shelter that provides protection from rain?

Sponsoring Company: Vernier Science Education

Do your students struggle with the meaning of the slope of a graph? We'll demonstrate how to use all the sensors in a Go Direct® Sensor Cart to explore kinematics, force, and mass. These engaging, hands-on experiments will give your students multiple ways to practice working with these principles.

SPEAKERS:
Josh Ence (Vernier Science Education: Beaverton, OR), Frances Poodry (Vernier Science Education: Beaverton, OR)

Sponsoring Company: Simulation Curriculum

Experience Simulation Curriculum’s award-winning Starry Night Curriculum featuring classroom-ready, standards-based, interactive lesson plans. Covers grades K-4, 5-8 and 9-12 with engaging simulations, jaw-dropping interactions, activities and comprehensive teacher support resources!

Sponsoring Company: Savvas Learning Company

What's so phenomenal about phenomena? Join the Savvas science team for an engaging, hands-on workshop as we explore the purpose of phenomena, the power of using it to drive your instruction, and the way it will support your students as they bring their own life experiences into your classroom.

SPEAKERS:
Jessi Davis (Savvas Learning Co.: Paramus, NJ)

Sponsoring Company: Simulation Curriculum

Join us as we use Simulation Curriculum’s Layered Earth to investigate Geology including Plate Tectonics and Meteorology including Weather & Climate using our amazing interactive Earth simulator to engage and excite students!

Sponsoring Company: Edvotek

Explore the science of candy colors! We will extract food dyes from candy and separate them using agarose gel electrophoresis and paper chromatography. By separating the different colors, students learn about complicated mixtures, charges on molecules, and how science relates to everyday life.

Sponsoring Company: miniPCR bio

Link physical science concepts like circuits and charged particles to the essential biotech method gel electrophoresis. Build a reusable gel electrophoresis system with the Bandit STEM Electrophoresis Kit, and use it to separate colorful dyes. Also add the A to STEAM with creative pipetting art!

SPEAKERS:
Katy Martin (miniPCR: Cambridge, MA)

Sponsoring Company: EarthScope Consortium

Explore our new web-based interactive earthquake lab! Have your students learn and practice earthquake location and analysis techniques with real seismic data! Bring a laptop/ipad!

SPEAKERS:
Michael Hubenthal (IRIS | Earthscope Consortium: Washington, DC)

Sponsoring Company: Carolina Biological Supply Company

Students can drive their learning through hands-on activities integrated with digital and print resources. Learn how using Smithsonian Science for the Classroom engages students with science and engineering practices and promotes scientific literacy for all students. Take home materials available.

SPEAKERS:
Hoover Herrera (Carolina Biological Supply Co.: Burlington, NC), Melissa Rogers (Smithsonian Science Education Center: Washington, DC)

Sponsoring Company: PASCO Scientific

Give your students a real-world engineering challenge! Explore the relationship between momentum and impact forces with real-time measurement of collisions.

Sponsoring Company: Plasma Games

It's all fun and games but does it work? Take a deep dive into the difference between gamification and game based learning and how to incorporate both into your classroom for the best outcome. Bonus: Leave with an all inclusive access code to a 3D game based platform!

Sponsoring Company: UL Research Institutes Xplorlabs

Over 500 fires in the last 2 years are linked to thermal runaway, a phenomenon caused by short circuits in lithium-ion batteries. Participants will learn how Xplorlabs' free online pathway supports student understanding of energy transformations and culminates with an engineering design challenge.

SPEAKERS:
Jessica Sparacino (Senior Education Specialist), Katey Shirey (edukatey: Washington, DC), Amy Gilbert (Griffin Middle School: Smyrna, GA), Megan O'Keeffe (senior content specialist: canton, GA)

Sponsoring Company: Vernier Science Education

Keep your students engaged by giving them opportunities to move and interact in class. Explore limb position and grip strength, balance, and EKG and EMG experiments designed to encourage students to think about the physiology of various human organ systems. Come ready to participate!

SPEAKERS:
Colleen McDaniel (Vernier Science Education: Beaverton, OR)

Sponsoring Company: PASCO Scientific

Join us for a hands-on workshop where we will use PASCO’s latest innovations to perform experiments on rotation, torque, optics, and even Lenz’s law!

Sponsoring Company: ExploreLearning

This interactive session will explore a digital interface that develops models to capture students' thinking when designing and testing solutions to real-world problems. We will immerse ourselves in solving a puzzling STEM Case to develop a model and use it to optimize a solution.

SPEAKERS:
Lauren Chiota (Learning Designer), Jared Jackson (Director of Production: Decatur, GA)

We are sending them into their own classrooms, but do they know their science? Are emerging science teachers aware of their students’ ideas and misconceptions?

TAKEAWAYS:
Characteristics of pre-service science teachers and their content knowledge and knowledge of students' misconceptions.

SPEAKERS:
Cynthia Crockett (Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian: Cambridge, MA)

Sponsoring Company: School Specialty - FOSS

Engage in activities using lasers and optical fibers and concepts of refraction and reflection in the FOSS Next Generation Waves Course for middle school. Explore the phenomena that allow information transfer by fiber optic technology, and identify connections to the three dimensions of NGSS.

SPEAKERS:
Jessica Penchos (The Lawrence Hall of Science: Berkeley, CA), FOSS Project Staff (The Lawrence Hall of Science: Berkeley, CA)

Sponsoring Company: Vernier Science Education

Get ready to exercise more than just the muscle between your ears when you use the Vernier Video Analysis app to investigate the physics of a bench press and bicep curls. You'll walk away with experiment best practices, lesson suggestions, and tips on successful video collection.

SPEAKERS:
Josh Ence (Vernier Science Education: Beaverton, OR), Frances Poodry (Vernier Science Education: Beaverton, OR)

Sponsoring Company: Simulation Curriculum

Experience Simulation Curriculum's newest addition - Interactive Anatomy & Physiology - for grades 9-12. See the jaw-dropping interactive anatomy simulator with its 40+ lesson plans, simulations and images along with complete teacher resources.

Sponsoring Company: Plasma Games

Let's expose students to the diversity in STEM careers x3! Explore how to inspire the next generation of STEM experts by showing them STEM experts who are diverse in how they look, diverse in what they do, but most importantly diverse in how they got there.

Sponsoring Company: Flinn Scientific

Turn the traditional prescriptive lab on its head, adapting the learning style to meet your students as they explore and do science around real-world phenomena. See how you can combine videos, simulations, VR experiences, flexible assessments, and editable labs to create hands-on curriculum.

Sponsoring Company: Discovery Education - Pivot Interactives

As teachers, if we limit science practices to ‘lab days’ are we missing opportunities? Find new ways to effortlessly integrate the science practices, like asking questions, using models to generate data, carrying out investigations, and analyzing data, into all parts of the instructional cycle.

Join these middle school educators as they share strategies to support students in modeling their ideas in the classroom.

Model Your Anchor Phenomenon Early and Often: A Strategy for Sensemaking
1. Have students make an initial model based on prior knowledge and assumptions about the natural world. *Predict. Wonder. Be wrong!* 2. Dedicate time for students to continually revise their models as they acquire more evidence and content understanding. 3. Watch the lightbulb turn on!

Read Alouds: Developing Literacy and Thinking Skills in Science
Read-alouds are a valuable strategy for introducing nonfiction text, articles, and current events to students that can also promote deeper understanding, higher-level thinking, and increased engagement. Learn how to prepare and implement read-alouds in your science class.

Flippity: A go to versatile tool to increase engagement
Flippity can "easily turn Google™ spreadsheets into flashcards and other cool stuff." This session will highlight three go to interactives to increase student engagement with one another and with content. Consider bringing a device to practice creating one or two of these cool things. Hacking the Secret Garden with 3D eLearning Experiences Elementary preservice teachers and students hack the science of school gardens and digitally present details of garden-based phenomena that meets NGSS 3D learning.

SPEAKERS:
Allison Wise (American Community School of Abu Dhabi: Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates), Jeff Thomas (University of Southern Indiana: Evansville, IN)

Sponsoring Company: Vernier Science Education

Studying complex physics phenomena can be exciting for your students with photogates! Join us to explore strategies for engaging your students in learning about velocity vs. time graphs, acceleration, and kinematic equations. Demystify these helpful tools and bring hands-on learning to your class!

SPEAKERS:
Josh Ence (Vernier Science Education: Beaverton, OR), Frances Poodry (Vernier Science Education: Beaverton, OR)

Sponsoring Company: Carolina Biological Supply Company

Explore easy, engaging, and safe chemistry activities that guarantee a reaction in your students. Whether you’re new to chemistry or feeling out of your element, create excitement with hands-on labs, demonstrations, and Carolina’s digital content. These lab activities support 3-dimensional learning

SPEAKERS:
Laurie Nixon (Chemistry Teacher: Boone, NC)

Sponsoring Company: Texas Instruments

This session will challenge you to code a TI Rover to avoid hitting a dog! Using the relationship between distance, time, and speed, you will try to get rover as close to scruffy as possible without making contact. Students LOVE this activity! You can borrow TI gear for free to do this project!

Sponsoring Company: PASCO Scientific

Graphs of position and velocity often confuse students attempting to describe motion. In this hands-on workshop, we will create these graphs and discuss their meaning.

Sponsoring Company: Propello

Learn how to seamlessly embed scaffolds and supports to assist special populations (English learners, Special Education, Gifted/Talented) in NGSS phenomenon-based science lessons. Walk away with support ideas you can use in your classroom right away.

SPEAKERS:
Justice Ejike (Educator), Lisa Thayne (Lead Program Manager, Science: Murfreesboro, TN), Julie Waid (Propello: Austin, TX)

Sponsoring Company: Carolina Biological Supply Company

Experience the pedagogy of OpenSciEd for middle school by engaging in a model lesson from the new Carolina Certified Version. Teachers will experience the four elements of the anchoring phenomenon routine. Teachers will experience how the anchoring phenomenon routine motivates students.

SPEAKERS:
Cory Ort (Carolina Biological Supply Co.: Burlington, NC), Hoover Herrera (Carolina Biological Supply Co.: Burlington, NC)

Sponsoring Company: Lab-Aids

Learn about the intentional design of our units to embed equitable opportunities in phenomenon-based learning. This hands-on workshop uses a model activity showing how students use data to develop an evidence-based argument supporting the best way to recover copper from a waste solution.

Sponsoring Company: Savvas Learning Company

Good problem-solving in physics is more than algebraic manipulation. Students can learn and you can assess problem-solving through multiple avenues, including graphs, representations, and more.

SPEAKERS:
Christopher Moore (University of Nebraska Omaha: Omaha, NE)

Sponsoring Company: Propello

Teachers will learn practical ways to take baby steps or giant leaps towards a student-centered, inquiry-style classroom while guiding effective, engaging learning.

SPEAKERS:
Justice Ejike (Educator), Lisa Thayne (Lead Program Manager, Science: Murfreesboro, TN), Julie Waid (Propello: Austin, TX)

Sponsoring Company: Discovery Education - Pivot Interactives

Teachers know that students are engaged by active learning, but creating active learning environments and opportunities take time, expertise, equipment, and supplies. Let’s explore interesting ways to engage students with MORE active learning and “doing science” throughout the learning cycle!

Sponsoring Company: Plasma Games

Scientific literacy goes beyond understanding and requires students to make a claim that is supported with fact and reasoning. By incorporating comics, anchoring phenomenon, and repetition, we are taking these CER charts to the next level! Bonus: Leave with an all inclusive access code to a 3D game

Sponsoring Company: 3D Molecular Designs

Explore how physical models foster an understanding of the structure of water and how their interactions explain the properties of water observed on the bulk scale.

SPEAKERS:
Ruth Hutson (Blue Valley High/Middle School: Randolph, KS)