The purpose of this session is to engage participants as learners in the process of making sense of a phenomenon through engaging in scientific practices. The modeled lesson provides attendees with a shared learning experience similar to that of a typical science classroom, seeded with instructional strategies designed to support their sensemaking before, during, and after an investigation. Attendees will be introduced to a phenomenon, provided materials to carry out an investigation, given a model scaffold to record their thinking, and a talk tool to support equitable idea sharing and listening. They will reflect on their experience as learners, debriefing sensemaking strategies, and using the four attributes of sensemaking (phenomena, science and engineering practices, student ideas, and science ideas) to reflect on the model lesson and their classrooms.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will walk away with a greater understanding of how key science practices work in tandem to support student sensemaking and will experience tools like model scaffolds, driving question boards, and talk tools designed to support learners in explaining phenomena.

SPEAKERS:
Alex Gerber (Instructional Specialist: University City, MO), Heather Milo (Washington University in St. Louis: St. Louis, MO)

Sponsoring Company: Lab-Aids

Students collect evidence which indicates that different colors of light carry different amounts of energy. Students analyze and interpret light transmission graphs for three different lenses. They determine which sunglass lens (structure) provides the best protection (function) for the eyes.

Sponsoring Company: Carolina Biological Supply Co.

Experience how science lessons can be structured using teacher instructional slides, where students work in groups, with specific roles, to develop claims [about how motion energy moves and changes] based on evidence observed through hands-on experiences. Leave with classroom resources.

SPEAKERS:
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: 3D Molecular Designs

Everything is dependent on water. Explore several properties of this remarkable compound with tried-and-true phenomena. Learn multiple ways to model those phenomena using the Water Kit©.

SPEAKERS:
Ruth Hutson (3D Molecular Designs: Milwaukee, WI)

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:
Kristin Hennessy-McDonald, PhD (miniPCR: Cambridge, MA)

Activating Students' Ideas! is a one-stop professional learning experience that will inspire you to reimagine how you teach. This session discusses how two popular teaching resources can be used in tandem: (1) Uncovering Student Ideas formative assessment probes and (2) Explore-before-explain teaching. We show how simple shifts in arranging and combining activities help students construct knowledge while allowing you to put the three dimensions of the K-12 Science Education Frameworks into practice. The session includes: (1) A concise review of research on why the order in which you structure your lessons is so critical; (2) The critical planning considerations for becoming an “explore-before-explain” teacher; (3) Ready-to-teach lessons that use science phenomena as a hook to provide an interdisciplinary learning experience; and (4) Reflection questions will spark thinking throughout the sequencing process and help you develop the knowledge to adapt these concepts to you

TAKEAWAYS:
Learn about a resource for formative assessment and explore-before-explain teaching.

SPEAKERS:
Patrick Brown (Fort Zumwalt School District R-II: O'Fallon, MO)

Sponsoring Company: PASCO

For students new to describing motion, graphs of position and velocity can be difficult to interpret. In this hands-on workshop, you will learn how to use sensors to create and discuss graphs of motion with your students.

Seaworthy STEM in a Box activities were developed through collaborative efforts between STEM education specialists at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock Division and master teachers participating in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Albert Einstein Distinguished Education Fellowship Program. Seaworthy STEM endeavors to inspire and prepare the next generation of STEM professionals by supporting teachers’ efforts to engage students – from early childhood through high school – in more hand-on science inquiry and engineering design. Activities are organized around grade bands with Naval-relevant themes and involve simple phenomena that support student sensemaking around key science and engineering concepts. Our workshop will allow teachers to practice several hands-on activities from the Seaworth STEM suite and will provide strategies for classroom integration, including content selection, standards alignment, materials acquisition, and tips for classroom implementation.

TAKEAWAYS:
In this hands-on workshop, teachers will explore several Seaworthy STEM in a Box activities and receive teacher background information on NGSS standards alignment, career connections, and relevant Naval and physical science concepts. Links to classroom-ready lesson materials will also be provided.

SPEAKERS:
Stephanie Klixbull (Penn State University: No City, No State), Tom Jenkins (Greenon Junior/Senior High School: Enon, OH), Melissa Thompson (Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellowship: No City, No State), Suzy Otto (University of Missouri)

“Rockets Away '' curriculum revealed that the predominantly female staff was uneasy and hesitant to use launching equipment. A “Science Squad” assisted the teachers with the physics knowledge, building, and launching of the rockets. Then the creation of videos to show the proper techniques for rocketry and voice overlay ppt to ensure the accuracy of the physics concepts. Teachers became certified in Rocketry. Many 3rd-grade teachers provided inquiry science in the form of dioramas for their life science unit. The introduction of “Chickquest” was essential to providing inquiry-based learning. Early on, a “Science Squad” dressed in white coats, funny chick glasses, and hats assisted the teachers in the classroom with setting-up incubators, candling eggs, and troubleshooting student questions to WebCams for students to witness the live hatching 24/7. These STEM activities evolved into humanity lessons such as students reading to the chicks and sharing their hatches with each other.

TAKEAWAYS:
How to leverage technology & personnel for elementary teachers to engage students in authentic science and engineering concepts.

SPEAKERS:
Johnna O'Neal (Instructional Specialist: No City, No State), Katrina Halasa (Akron Public Schools: Akron, OH)

Sponsoring Company: Great Minds

In this workshop, participants undergo a challenging student experience as they work through a complex investigation. Throughout the course of the session, participants discover the importance of fostering an environment that encourages challenges where students can struggle in a safe space.

SPEAKERS:
Sally Robichaux (Great Minds: Washington, DC)

Sponsoring Company: Carolina Biological Supply Co.

Apply creative problem-solving skills and engineering practices to chemistry and physical science challenges. Experience how Carolina makes it easy to incorporate STEM into your classroom. Launch a chemical reaction rocket and race a car powered by a balloon.

SPEAKERS:
Patricia Kopkau

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:
David Carter (Vernier Science Education: Beaverton, OR)

Sponsoring Company: Carolina Biological Supply Co.

Take a deeper dive into understanding the importance of learning progressions in 3-dimensional learning using STC Middle School. Experience the importance of a coherent story line in student understanding. Leave with classroom resources.

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

Sponsoring Company: PASCO

Give your students a real-world engineering challenge! Explore the relationship between momentum and impact forces by designing and testing crash barriers with live collision data.

Sponsoring Company: Vernier Science Education

TI graphing calculators now work with Vernier’s Go Direct sensors, wirelessly, with the TI-Bluetooth Adapter! Students can code their own data collection programs using Python to ensure their experiments are customized to their specific needs. Or they can use pre-existing programs from the TI web site to quickly start collecting data. Once the data is on the calculator, students can use one of many applications to better visualize, analyze, and understand the data they’ve collected.

SPEAKERS:
Gregory Dodd (Retired Chemistry Teacher: Pennsboro, WV)

Sponsoring Company: PASCO

Experience the best way to teach basic circuits! Learn how to build circuits with modular components that look identical to schematic drawings. We'll show you how to skip the tangled wires that confuse students and focus on the physics.

Sponsoring Company: Lab-Aids

This interactive workshop uses a model cart system with ramps to help students learn to measure speed and rate. They also match segments of a distance-vs-time graph to portions of a narrative to help conceptualize the meaning behind slopes on motion graphs.

Sponsoring Company: Carolina Biological Supply Co.

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 and demonstrations.

SPEAKERS:
Laurie Nixon (Watauga High School: Boone, NC)

Sponsoring Company: Savvas Learning Company

Techniques such as CRISPR, mitochondrial transfer, and mRNA therapeutics have opened new possibilities for genetic manipulation, bringing with them new opportunities to energize the biology curriculum.

SPEAKERS:
Kenneth Miller (Brown University: Providence, RI)

In this poster session, we highlight how two 5th-grade teachers of linguistically diverse students strategically used the Science and Engineering Practice of Developing and Using Models over the course of a physical science unit to increase opportunities for sensemaking with all students. First, we show sample models from multilingual learners across three time points in the unit: initial, revised, and final model. At each time point, we highlight what the teachers did to elicit and interpret student thinking. In particular, we share how “final models” can serve as a more authentic end-of-unit task when an iterative modeling process has been enacted. We describe how the teachers’ own perceptions of modeling changed over the course of the unit. As a result of heightened student sensemaking with the more iterative modeling process, the teachers shifted away from positioning models as products and toward positioning models as evidence of current and evolving sensemaking.

TAKEAWAYS:
By strategically allowing all students, particularly multilingual learners, to develop and use increasingly sophisticated models over time, teachers shifted away from “models as products” and toward “models as evidence of sensemaking.”

SPEAKERS:
Iovanna Williams (Science Teacher: , NY), Adriana Romanzo (Elementary Science Teacher: New York, NY), Abigail Schwenger (Research Associate)

In Wisconsin, 5th-grade students develop models to explain how Earth's systems interact. 10 Milwaukee Public Schools are engaged in Project {FUTURE}; a DOA research and outreach grant as partners with Marquette and Sacred Heart Universities to bring Computer Science into elementary classrooms. A group of these Project {FUTURE} teachers are members of a collaborative cohort developing integrated computer science units. These units embed and bridge Computer Science content, such as algorithms and programming, into other content areas. The highlighted "novel" integrated unit connects the science topic of Earth's systems to the beginning computer programming language of Blockly to create interactive models using CODE.org's Sprite Lab. The culminating project requires students to incorporate research and data gathered on two or more of Earth's systems, and create an interactive app using sprites, variables, and simulations within CODE.org Computer Science Fundamental Course F.

TAKEAWAYS:
The poster session will outline the collaborative process experienced by a cohort of teachers in designing integrated computer science units. The featured Earth's System unit embeds computer science components of programming and algorithms with the WI and NGSS grade 5 standards for physical science.

SPEAKERS:
Renee Scianni (Milwaukee Public Schools: Milwaukee, WI)

Sponsoring Company: PASCO

Rediscover the most versatile tool in your physics lab: the meter stick! Learn how to facilitate investigations of rotation, torque, optics, and even Lenz's law using the PASCO Aluminum Meter Stick and accessories.

STEM learning activities have been shown to increase student engagement (Fredricks et al., 2003) and learning (English, 2016). Because we are currently experiencing huge growth in STEM fields, we need to grow student interest in future STEM careers. STEM careers, which combine aspects of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, are growing exponentially (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2021; Ramaley et al., 2005; Scott-Parker & Barone-Nuget, 2019). To be globally competitive in a technologically diverse society, educators and policymakers aim to build scientific and mathematically literate students who are prepared for integrated STEM career fields. Employers not only need future employees to be literate in math and science, but they also need students to develop creativity and critical thinking skills; these are skills that cannot be replaced with computer or robotic technology. Development of student interest in STEM is critical for future generations.

TAKEAWAYS:
Teachers and administrators will see how the incorporation of STEM activities can be used to increase student engagement and excitement in the classroom. Lesson plans and connections to science and math standards are included.

SPEAKERS:
Leslie Sauder (Northern State University)

A collaborative team of teachers and researchers share findings from a research project aimed at integrating science and language with fifth-grade multilingual learners (MLs). First, we describe three language instructional shifts: modalities, registers, and interactions. Then, we share how two teachers enacted these shifts over the course of a physical science unit and present classroom examples of how they (a) used nonlinguistic modalities (e.g., models) as an essential way to engage all students in the Science and Engineering Practices, (b) treated specialized language (i.e., a more formal register) as a product of learning science rather than a prerequisite, and (c) leveraged the affordances of different registers (i.e., everyday, specialized) based on the different communicative demands across different types of interactions. Finally, we provide suggestions for enacting these language instructional shifts with MLs across a range of classroom contexts.

TAKEAWAYS:
As all students, and especially multilingual learners, make sense of phenomena and problems, they use multiple modalities (both linguistic and visual) and a range of registers (from everyday to specialized) across different types of interactions to engage in communication of science ideas.

SPEAKERS:
Iovanna Williams (Science Teacher: , NY), Adriana Romanzo (Elementary Science Teacher: New York, NY), Abigail Schwenger (Research Associate)

Universal Design for Learning Science: Reframing Elementary Instruction in Physical Science (NSTA Press, 2020) -- With this practical book, teachers can learn from experienced elementary school educators about how to make physical science both challenging and accessible for a diverse range of students. In our session, authors will be sharing examples and experiences with using the 5E instructional framework and principles of Universal Design for Learning to transform their science instruction. Participants will learn how to identify barriers to students' learning within their curriculum/lessons and develop solutions for their specific students using the 3 principles of UDL. Participants will also use a storyline lens to examine the conceptual coherence of their lessons. We'll use a combination of personal testimonials, small group discussion, and team "teaching tasks" to prepare attendees to create more inclusive science learning. Attendees do not need copies of the book to participate.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will learn how to use Universal Design for Learning and the 5E Learning Cycle to create learning experiences that are accessible for all students, especially students with disabilities, and that support student sensemaking through coherent conceptual storylines.

SPEAKERS:
Debi Hanuscin (Western Washington University: Bellingham, WA)

Sponsoring Company: Anatomy in Clay

They will acquire the knowledge to engage science students with immediate, hands-on learning using a proven method that is nationally recognized to increase student retention and test scores. Come build the rotator cuff with us!

SPEAKERS:
Chuck Roney (ANATOMY IN CLAY Learning Systems: Loveland, CO), John-Paul Theriault (ANATOMY IN CLAY Learning Systems: Loveland, CO)

Sponsoring Company: Texas Instruments

Graphs are great ways to illustrate patterns/trends in data, but many students do not understand how to use them. By using a motion detector and calculator, students are challenged to "Match a Graph" by changing their position and speed. Come give it a try!

Sponsoring Company: Savvas Learning Company

Questions are an important aspect of effective science teaching. This session will arm you with questioning strategies including SHARE (Wilcox et al., 2021) that use students’ responses to drive the conversation forward, in addition to convergent/divergent questions.

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

Sponsoring Company: Plasma Games

It's all fun and games but does it work? Dive into the difference between gamification and game-based learning to innovate your classroom, and engage and excite students to learn Chemistry. Bonus: Leave with an all-inclusive access code to a 3-D game-based platform.

SPEAKERS:
Alison Baker (Lead Curriculum Specialist: Raleigh, NC)

Sponsoring Company: Plasma Games

It's all fun and games but does it work? Dive into the difference between gamification and game-based learning to innovate your classroom, and engage and excite students to learn Chemistry. Bonus: Leave with an all-inclusive access code to a 3-D game-based platform.

Even though children interact with the natural and designed worlds daily, they don’t often think and act like scientists and engineers-- who often use computational thinking. Come see how to embed computational thinking into an elementary lesson on light!

TAKEAWAYS:
Learn how to incorporate computational thinking into science lessons!

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