Join us to see how OpenSciEd’s materials can help build science learning experiences anchored in compelling phenomena and in important community and global problems. OpenSciEd high school uses a storyline approach that emphasizes coherence from the student perspective. Participants will explore the curricular routines, discourse strategies, and comprehensive assessment system that support equitable participation

TAKEAWAYS:
OpenSciEd HS's storyline approach, curricular routines, student discourse strategies, and assessment systems work together to help students build equitable science learning experiences.

SPEAKERS:
Zoe Buck Bracey (Senior Science Educator and Director of Design for Justice: Colorado Springs, CO), Michael Novak (Northwestern University: Evanston, IL), Kate Henson (University of Colorado Boulder: Boulder, CO)

This unit helps students develop an understanding of the elements of evolution by natural selection and learn to apply that understanding to protect populations endangered by urbanization. Students learn through modeling, reading and discussing adaptations of published scientific studies of nonhuman populations impacted by urbanization. They develop criteria for designing urban systems that protect populations from the harmful effects of fragmentation in urban systems and evaluate proposals for development in a real US city.

TAKEAWAYS:
Leave motivated to use OpenSciEd’s storyline to teach the elements of evolution by natural selection using real-world examples. Students will learn how their understanding of biological concepts can be used to design more sustainable systems that benefit the human and more-than human world.

SPEAKERS:
Sara Krauskopf (University of Colorado-Boulder: No City, No State), Wayne Wright (NSTA: Arlington, VA), Kate Henson (University of Colorado Boulder: Boulder, CO)

OpenSciEd Chemistry units use a justice-centered storyline approach to help students figure out answers to their questions. The central focus of the Oysters unit is food sovereignty engineering design: how can people reclaim important foods that they’ve lost due to colonization and ecosystem disruption? In this session, participants will experience portions of the unit’s anchor in “student hat” before reviewing the unit as a whole in teacher hat. Participants will see how students develop engineering design solutions using NGSS-aligned chemistry and Earth and space science models and practices including the carbon cycle, acid-base interactions, reversible reactions, and stoichiometry (scale, proportion, & quantity). These lessons include testing pH of various solutions and concentration; using mathematical thinking to inform design solutions; and identifying how humans have impacted the carbon cycle.

TAKEAWAYS:
This unit supports students as they figure out understandings of reversible reactions through explaining changes in ocean chemistry to engineer solutions to prevent oyster die offs. Participants will see how students build these ideas and develop mathematical thinking throughout the unit.

SPEAKERS:
Nicole Vick (Northwestern University), Kerri Wingert (Good Question Research: Boulder, CO)

OpenSciEd HS Physics units use a storyline approach to help students figure out answers to their questions in a three-dimensional, coherent, and equitable way. In this session, participants will experience that approach firsthand as they engage with the fifth unit’s anchor in ""student hat"", a unit anchored in the use of the microwave and its interactions with wireless devices. Participants will see how students develop and use different models to explore ideas about electromagnetic waves and their interactions with matter. They will also see some of the investigations students plan and carry out using different materials inside the microwave oven to explain energy transfer. Participants will also see how the unit supports students’ sensemaking to explain how different technologies apply these ideas to produce, transmit, and capture signals, and the potential risk associated with their uses.

TAKEAWAYS:
This unit is anchored in the use of the microwave and its interactions with wireless devices. Students figure out and use ideas about waves and their interactions with matter to explain how different technologies apply these ideas to transfer energy and to produce, transmit, and capture signals.

SPEAKERS:
Zoe Buck Bracey (Senior Science Educator and Director of Design for Justice: Colorado Springs, CO), Diego Rojas-Perilla (BSCS Science Learning: Colorado Springs, CO)

Explore the comprehensive assessment system that accompanies the OpenSciEd high school program. This comprehensive system includes opportunities for formative, summative, self, and peer assessment. The session will guide participants through the multiple assessment types and will explore in depth electronic exit tickets and transfer tasks. Electronic exit tickets give teachers an opportunity to formatively assess students' three dimensional thinking at key points in each unit. Transfer tasks are summative assessment opportunities that give students an opportunity to transfer what they have learned in the unit to a novel scenario. Both of these assessment opportunities include teacher and student routines to support student thinking and instructional action.

TAKEAWAYS:
In OpenSciEd HS, the assessment system is structured to support teachers in assessing all three dimensions of the NGSS through formative, summative, peer, and self assessment opportunities.

SPEAKERS:
Zoe Buck Bracey (Senior Science Educator and Director of Design for Justice: Colorado Springs, CO), Michael Novak (Northwestern University: Evanston, IL), Kate Henson (University of Colorado Boulder: Boulder, CO)

OpenSciEd Biology Units incorporate frameworks such as 5 Dimensions of Reasoning About Complex Socio-Ecological Systems developed by Learning in Places to support multiple Ways of Knowing and interacting with phenomena. These frameworks bring conversations about power and historicity into the classroom and help students consider multiple points of view when making decisions involving science. The Nature-Culture Relations framework helps students and educators identify the positionality of interest holders to explain different perspectives. Learn how these frameworks are incorporated into biology units.

TAKEAWAYS:
Recognize your own positionality in nature-culture relations and think about how to bring this framework to your students.

SPEAKERS:
Sara Krauskopf (University of Colorado-Boulder: No City, No State), DeAnna Lee Rivers (University of Colorado Boulder: No City, No State)

Building classroom culture is essential for students to collectively make sense of phenomena. Students need to buy into the idea that each of their ideas is crucial for pushing the class forward. In this session, we highlight strategies for co-creating community agreements. We also report on challenges we have encountered in our classrooms, which strategies we have found to be successful, and which tend to turn students off. We highlight how, as culture challenges arise throughout the year, we can return to these community agreements to reground our classroom. The facilitator will begin the session with a brief overview of OpenSciEd’s view of the teacher's role in instruction and community-building, which will then be followed with a guided panel featuring experienced teachers in using storylines, and finally open Q&A.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will understand how community agreements and other strategies are used in OpenSciEd and other high school classrooms to support collective and equitable sensemaking.

SPEAKERS:
Dan Voss (Northwestern University: Evanston, IL), Kerri Wingert (Good Question Research: Boulder, CO), Rachel Patton (Denver Public Schools), Nina Blanton (Educator: , MO), Calvin Atkins (Bellingham High School: Bellingham, WA), Sarah Evans (Olathe South High School: Olathe, KS)

"Designing for justice means centering inquiry on phenomena that cross the artificial boundary between human and natural systems. The result is instruction that not only teaches students to understand the natural world, but broadens their perspectives on how humans fit into natural systems, what constitutes science, and what they can accomplish using science. In high school, some of the design problems that students are noticing in the world may feel overwhelming, but breaking them down using the ideas and practices of science and providing social emotional supports can help students find hope and resilience. For example in OpenSciEd High School Physics, students ask: What can we do to make driving safer for everyone? Consider how instruction can support students in making positive changes in their communities while attending to students social and emotional needs. "

TAKEAWAYS:
In OpenSciEd HS Physics, students use science ideas and practices to make sense of design problems that emerge from complex systems at the nature-human divide with attention to students’ social and emotional needs.

SPEAKERS:
Whitney Mills (BSCS Science Learning: Colorado Springs, CO), Laura Zeller (BSCS Science Learning: Colorado Springs, CO)

OpenSciEd Biology units use a storyline approach to help students figure out answers to their questions in a three-dimensional, coherent, and equitable way. In this session, participants will experience that approach firsthand as they engage with the unit’s anchor in "student hat", experiencing the content as students do in the classroom. Participants will also explore ways to use strategic questioning and the development and use of different models for complex phenomena to encourage students to discuss and advance their understanding about concepts of energy and matter, at different levels of systems. Participants will also see how students develop understanding of the changes in matter and energy in these systems through a coherent series of investigations. These investigations include taking measurements when burning peat and other fuels to build understanding of matter and energy capacities, carbon dioxide production rates for yeast at different temperatures to understand a mechani

TAKEAWAYS:
Complex anchoring and investigative phenomena rooted in cause-and-effect thinking can deeply engage students in disciplinary core ideas and crosscutting concepts related to energy and matter that span across the disciplines of earth and life science, in systems.

SPEAKERS:
Jamie Noll (BSCS Science Learning: Colorado Springs, CO), Sara Krauskopf (University of Colorado-Boulder: No City, No State), DeAnna Lee Rivers (University of Colorado Boulder: No City, No State)

OpenSciEd Chemistry units use a storyline approach to help students figure out answers to their questions in a three-dimensional, coherent, and equitable way. In this session, participants will experience that approach firsthand as they engage with the unit’s anchor in "student hat", experiencing the content as students do in the classroom. Participants will also see how students develop understanding of atomic structure and electrostatic forces through a coherent series of investigations. These investigations include using a Kelvin water dropper and everyday items to reason about static electricity; using simulations and physical models to build understanding of atomic structure and charge transfer; measuring forces of attraction and repulsion to derive Coulomb's Law; and measuring electric current in solutions of different salinity to determine how salts are able to conduct electricity in aqueous solution.

TAKEAWAYS:
This unit supports students as they figure out understandings of atomic structure, charge, and the role of matter, forces, and energy in lightning. Participants will see how students build these ideas through a series of investigations.

SPEAKERS:
Dan Voss (Northwestern University: Evanston, IL), Kerri Wingert (Good Question Research: Boulder, CO), Rachel Patton (Denver Public Schools)

The HS-level NGSS practices of Analyzing Data (SEP 4) and Using Mathematical and Computational thinking (SEP 5) present a quandary: most HS-level curricula separate math into a rote set of instructional materials like the “stoichiometry unit” or the “forces calculations.” We illustrate a different approach, using OpenSciEd Biology, Chemistry, and Physics units to show how to meet the 3D vision of NGSS and not artificially separating content from mathematical modeling or calculations. By leveraging mathematical thinking contextually and just-in-time, students engage with these practices as sensemaking tools, deepening student understanding of the science and fluency in employing math in novel ways. We explore how complex engagement with these practices is supported in high school courses and discuss how to meet the demands of mathematical thinking in various contexts.

TAKEAWAYS:
Leveraging data analysis and mathematical thinking in the context of meaningful phenomena and problems like food sovereignty, rather than frontloading rote math “skills,” helps students engage with these practices as sensemaking tools, deepening student understanding of both science and math.

SPEAKERS:
Wayne Wright (NSTA: Arlington, VA), Nicole Vick (Northwestern University), Michael Novak (Northwestern University: Evanston, IL)

The Framework requires that students engage in three-dimensional sensemaking around phenomena. In OpenSciEd units, this begins with the anchor lesson, in which students engage with a phenomenon in supported ways before generating the questions that drive the unit. Many teachers wonder how we get students to ask questions that align with the learning goals of the unit. In this session, participants will see for themselves how crosscutting concepts can appear in student questions and how those questions are motivated in the lesson. The presenters will discuss the important role crosscutting concepts play in supporting students' question generation, and participants will have an opportunity to see how students' initial questions and key crosscutting concepts continue to play a prominent role in sensemaking later in the storyline.

TAKEAWAYS:
Instruction can be designed so that crosscutting concepts are both a tool for student sensemaking as well as a desirable outcome. In particular, crosscutting concepts can help students ask questions that will be productive throughout a storylines unit.

SPEAKERS:
Whitney Mills (BSCS Science Learning: Colorado Springs, CO), Jamie Noll (BSCS Science Learning: Colorado Springs, CO), Dan Voss (Northwestern University: Evanston, IL)

The Framework calls for students to engage in argumentation from evidence in a way that considers relevant social, ethical, and environmental tradeoffs that cannot be resolved without considering the values of interested parties. As educators, we need to honor students’ diverse experiences and value systems while also engaging students in the process of respectful scientific argumentation. OpenSciEd High School uses the Learning in Places Framework to inform the design of an argumentation tool for students to guide them through the process of weighing science ideas, societal and environmental impacts, and ethical considerations when evaluating potentially controversial arguments and design solutions. Join us to engage with an adapted version of this argumentation process. Participants will explore the Learning in Places Framework for Socio Ecological Decision Making and discuss use of the Learning in Places Framework within the classroom.

TAKEAWAYS:
The NGSS calls for students to weigh complex socioscientific tradeoffs, including social, cultural, and environmental impacts. The Learning in Places Framework can be used to help structure student engagement in argumentation that requires decision-making around these tradeoffs.

SPEAKERS:
Whitney Mills (BSCS Science Learning: Colorado Springs, CO), Laura Zeller (BSCS Science Learning: Colorado Springs, CO)

Over the past decade, researchers and practitioners have been calling for more attention to coherence from the student perspective as a key part of curriculum design. This type of coherence arises when students see what they do in the science classroom as productive for addressing meaningful questions and problems. A curriculum that is coherent from the student perspective provides opportunities for all students to contribute to class sensemaking. We will present co-design strategies used by OpenSciEd teams to develop high quality, NGSS-aligned instructional materials that are coherent from the student perspective. Participants will engage in a student hat experience to focus on how that lens can support student coherence in materials and instruction. Participants will explore a variety of co-design strategies for building coherence in developing and implementing instructional materials, with an emphasis on coherence from the student perspective through the use of student hat.

TAKEAWAYS:
When designing and revising NGSS-aligned high-quality instructional materials, co-design in student-hat is a powerful tool for weaving together coherence from the teacher’s perspective within science content, and from students’ perspective.

SPEAKERS:
Laura Zeller (BSCS Science Learning: Colorado Springs, CO), Diego Rojas-Perilla (BSCS Science Learning: Colorado Springs, CO)

Many students experience high school science without considering the interconnectedness of different domains. By leveraging the Energy and Matter crosscutting concept and uniting this lens with a forces perspective, we consider how a Matter-Energy-Forces (MEF) triangle can help students apply core principles of physical science across multiple domains. We explore the MEF triangle’s use in three different units that highlight Earth and Space Science alongside Biology, Physics or Chemistry to make explicit connections to the crosscutting concept of energy and matter and core life and physical science Disciplinary Core Ideas. Examples include fires, polar ice melt, tectonic plate motion, and meteors. We also consider how this tool could be useful for students over the course of many units and how it can increase access to more difficult life and physical science concepts through the use of this routine. Participants will practice applying the MEF triangle to phenomena in their contexts.

TAKEAWAYS:
The Framework calls for “a common use of language about energy and matter across the disciplines in science instruction.” The MEF triangle uses cues and prompts to draw attention to interactions between matter, energy, and forces to help students make sense of complex phenomena across domains.

SPEAKERS:
Whitney Mills (BSCS Science Learning: Colorado Springs, CO), Jamie Noll (BSCS Science Learning: Colorado Springs, CO), Dan Voss (Northwestern University: Evanston, IL), Diego Rojas-Perilla (BSCS Science Learning: Colorado Springs, CO)