2023 Atlanta National Conference

March 22-25, 2023

All sessions added to My Agenda prior to this notice have been exported to the mobile app and will be visible in your account when the app launches. Any sessions added now, will also have to be added in the app.
Grade Level


Topics























Strands














Session Type














Pathway/Course

FILTERS APPLIED:PreK - 5, Hands-On Workshop, STEAM or STEM, Physical Science

 

Rooms and times subject to change.
15 results
Save up to 50 sessions in your agenda.

Using Science Investigation to Motivate Students to Read, Write, and Engage in Discourse

Thursday, March 23 • 9:45 AM - 10:45 AM

Georgia World Congress Center - B406a/b


STRAND: Research to Practice

Show Details

Engaging in scientific investigations can motivate students to read, write and participate in productive discourse. This session provides educators with lessons and resources to support teaching three-dimensional hands-on scientific investigation that motivates student learning.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants leave the session with insights into how to use engaging hands-on investigations to motivate students to read, write, and engage in discourse. They will receive a complete set of lesson plans for their NGSS state grade-level standards.

SPEAKERS:
Candace Penrod (Salt Lake City School District: Salt Lake City, UT), Brett Moulding (Partnership for Effective Science Teaching and Learning: Ogden, UT)

Why Does the Train Move Back and Forth?: Exploring Force at a Distance to Explain a Phenomenon

Thursday, March 23 • 9:45 AM - 10:45 AM

Georgia World Congress Center - C202



(Only registered attendees may view session materials. Please login with your NSTA account to view.)
The train phenomenon
Why does the train move back and forth?
Train Phenomenon Slide Deck

STRAND: Teaching Strategies and Classroom Practice

Show Details

Engage in the science practices of investigating, modeling, and arguing from evidence to make sense of why a toy train moves forward and backward without physical contact. Participants will explore gravity, static electricity, and magnetism to determine which most likely causes it to move.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants explore forces at a distance and make sense of how they might cause the phenomenon to occur by developing a model via a three-step sequence. Teachers examine sample student work to uncover ideas and determine that some ideas may make sense despite being inaccurate for the situation.

SPEAKERS:
Christi Pace (Augusta University: Augusta, GA), Jaclyn Murray (Mercer University: Macon, GA)

Investigating Light & Shadow With PK-2 Students

Thursday, March 23 • 2:20 PM - 3:20 PM

Georgia World Congress Center - C210


STRAND: Teaching Strategies and Classroom Practice

Show Details

Engage in teacher play with us and ponder how light sources and open-ended materials entice children to grow executive function skills as they construct systems that produce unique images.  

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will engage in teacher play as they handle light sources and open-ended materials and receive a handout to help them get started in preparing an environment for independent STEM experiences that can be offered daily in their PK-2 classroom.

SPEAKERS:
Beth Dykstra VanMeeteren (University of Northern Iowa: Cedar Falls, IA)

Navigating Nature of Science

Thursday, March 23 • 2:20 PM - 3:20 PM

Georgia World Congress Center - C201


STRAND: Curriculum and Assessment

Show Details

Attendees will participate in a guided walk through the process of developing inquiries to ensure students reach mastery of critical content. This will include analyzing standard(s), participating in hands on inquiry, and using a template to create inquiries for students.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will understand how to plan opportunities for students to demonstrate understanding of critical content using methods that allow educators to easily monitor student progress toward mastery.

SPEAKERS:
Ryan Carlson (Orange County Public Schools: Orlando, FL), Desiree Siegel (Program Specialist Elementary Science: Orlando, FL), Matthew Timm (Orange County Public Schools: Orlando, FL), Kimberly Seaver (Orange County Public Schools: Orlando, FL)

Free lesson plans in chemistry for grades K-5 from the American Chemical Society’s online resource inquiryinaction.org

Friday, March 24 • 8:00 AM - 9:00 AM

Georgia World Congress Center - A411


STRAND: No Strand

Show Details

Teachers participate in hands-on lessons for Kindergarten, 2nd Grade, and 5th Grade from the free online resource inquiryinaction.org. Teachers investigate the questions: What makes it rain, are M&Ms or Skittles better dissolvers, and does baking soda or baking powder bubble the most with vinegar.

TAKEAWAYS:
Teachers will practice using grade-appropriate explanations of atoms and molecules to help students better understand the causes of the phenomena they observe.

SPEAKERS:
James Kessler (American Chemical Society: Washington, DC)

Science + Engineering + Math = Parachute STEM Activity

Friday, March 24 • 10:40 AM - 11:40 AM

Georgia World Congress Center - A411


STRAND: No Strand

Show Details

This STEM activity includes reading a book and involves one-hour lessons over seven days. Student groups design, build, test, and analyze parachute models.

TAKEAWAYS:
Student groups learn that the engineering design process and the scientific method are circular processes as they design, build, test, and evaluate a parachute model then improve it.

SPEAKERS:
Suzanne Cunningham (Purdue University: West Lafayette, IN)

Doing Science and Learning Language Together; Supporting Teacher Facilitation of Integrated Curriculum with a Focus on Multilingual Learners

Friday, March 24 • 10:40 AM - 11:40 AM

Georgia World Congress Center - A405



(Only registered attendees may view session materials. Please login with your NSTA account to view.)
Doing Science and Language_NSTA23.pdf
Doing Science and Language_NSTA23.pptx

STRAND: Student Learning and Inclusion

Show Details

We will explore the what, why, and how of integrated science and language teaching. We will describe, illustrate, and model research-based strategies, tools, and resources teachers can use to support inquiry, sense-making, and language development with their young multilingual learners (MLs)

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will leave with some research-based strategies, tools, and resources to support planning and facilitation of language-enriched and inclusive science experiences that leverage science as a context for language and for building skills across the developmental domains with a focus on MLs

SPEAKERS:
Mandell Academy (Connecticut Science Center: Hartford, CT), Rachel Shurick (Connecticut Science Center: Hartford, CT), Becky Fahey (Connecticut Science Center: Hartford, CT), Cindy Hoisington (Education Development Center, Inc.: Holbrook, MA)

Doing it all – inquiry, engagement, process, content, standards

Friday, March 24 • 1:20 PM - 2:20 PM

Georgia World Congress Center - A407


STRAND: No Strand

Show Details

Teachers can engage their students, teach content areas and process skills, and address standards using a specific inquiry-based format. The format incorporates a two-setup discrepant event, one forming an expectation and the other resulting in unexpected outcome and thus a problem to be solved.

TAKEAWAYS:
A specific inquiry-based format allows teachers to engage students, teach content areas and science process skills, and address standards. This discrepant-event method is easy for teachers and students to learn and gives students skills needed to feel comfortable and competent when doing science.

SPEAKERS:
Mary Jean Lynch (North Central College: Naperville, IL), John Zenchak (North Central College: Naperville, IL)

STEM Learning and Identity Through Informal Science Workshops

Friday, March 24 • 1:20 PM - 2:20 PM

Georgia World Congress Center - A405


STRAND: Student Learning and Inclusion

Show Details

Inclusive Community Science Workshops in schools, libraries, and communities fosters STEM learning, creativity, innovation, and identity through play, making, and positive social interactions.

TAKEAWAYS:
Learn about instructional innovations, resources, and ideas for enhancing STEM learning and teaching.

SPEAKERS:
Jerry Valadez (Fresno State and SAM Academy CSW)

Exploring the Unseen - SEPs in Action

Friday, March 24 • 2:40 PM - 3:40 PM

Georgia World Congress Center - A411


STRAND: Research to Practice

Show Details

How do scientists study dark matter in a world where we only see matter? How do they study neutrinos, a subatomic particle with almost no mass, no charge, that travels near the speed of light and is constantly shifting? At the Sanford Underground Research Facility, scientists are doing just that!

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will leave with ideas for classroom strategies that support introducing difficult and abstract topics. Leveraging the SEPs, teachers can help students use what they can see to figure out things they cannot.

SPEAKERS:
Ashley Armstrong (Sanford Underground Research Facility: Lead, SD)

Design, make and test your own electric racing car

Friday, March 24 • 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM

Georgia World Congress Center - B303


STRAND: Teaching Strategies and Classroom Practice

Show Details

Create an electric car and race it against other participants’ cars. These cars are made using cardboard strips, paper fasteners, wooden skewers, tape and plastic wheels, in addition to motors and AA batteries, whose total cost is about $1.50.

TAKEAWAYS:
A car consists of a base, wheels, a battery, a motor and a drive system. Only one drive wheel is needed to propel the car, and the simplest drive system has this wheel attached directly to the motor.

SPEAKERS:
Jazlyn Mena (Castle Bridge School: New York, NY), Jody Hilton (P.S. 44 Marcus Garvey Magnet School of Engineering and Design and The City College of New York), Lacey Samsoe (Teacher: Brooklyn, NY)

Teaching about balanced and unbalanced forces using engineering and Humpty Dumpty

Friday, March 24 • 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM

Georgia World Congress Center - A411


STRAND: Student Learning and Inclusion

Show Details

In this session, participants will work on hands-on activities and test a prototype to learn about forces using the engineering design model and translanguaging for elementary grades.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will learn how to teach about forces for elementary grade level using an engineering activity and translanguaging (English/Spanish).

SPEAKERS:
Brianna Ricker (Student: No City, No State), Max Vazquez Dominguez (University of North Georgia: Dahlonega, GA)

NGSS-Aligned Formative Elementary Assessments

Saturday, March 25 • 10:20 AM - 11:20 AM

Georgia World Congress Center - B303


STRAND: Curriculum and Assessment

Show Details

BYO Device to this hands-on workshop for the Next Generation Science Assessment (NGSA) project. Explore free, high-quality, multidimensional tasks, consider how to use them for formative assessment in your elementary classrooms, and view online resources in a virtual learning

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will learn to access and use two related, freely available online resources that support elementary teachers’ use of NGSS-aligned assessment and instruction: A site with tasks aligned with the performance expectations for Grades 3-5 and a virtual learning community for science teachers.

SPEAKERS:
Jeanne Di Domenico (The University of Chicago: Chicago, IL), Brian Gane (University of Kansas: No City, No State), Carla Strickland (UChicago STEM Education: No City, No State)

Engineering in Pre-K and K: Making Mechanisms and Structures

Saturday, March 25 • 1:20 PM - 2:20 PM

Georgia World Congress Center - A408


STRAND: Student Learning and Inclusion

Show Details

Learn to make cardboard mechanisms and structures, create a mechanism that looks like a letter, and mount it to make a structure. Students in pre-K classrooms in Brooklyn, NY have learned to identify mechanisms and structures by engaging in these activities.

TAKEAWAYS:
Mechanisms and structures are all around us! Mechanisms have independent moving parts, while structures do not. Increasing the number of fasteners can turn a mechanism into a structure while removing fasteners can turn it back into a mechanism.

SPEAKERS:
Jazlyn Mena (Castle Bridge School: New York, NY), Jody Hilton (P.S. 44 Marcus Garvey Magnet School of Engineering and Design and The City College of New York), Lacey Samsoe (Teacher: Brooklyn, NY)

Helping Elementary Students Understand What Scientists Do

Saturday, March 25 • 1:20 PM - 2:20 PM

Georgia World Congress Center - B210


STRAND: Teaching Strategies and Classroom Practice

Show Details

Come see how you can help your elementary students not only understand the science content but how the people behind the science do their work! This session will be hands-on and provide strategies, examples, and historical short stories to help students understand how science works.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will walk away with resources and examples to teach nature of science (what science is and how science works) they can use right away with their students.

SPEAKERS:
Jesse Wilcox (University of Northern Iowa: Cedar Falls, IA)

Back to Top