What would it look like if we designed all aspects of the assessment system to prioritize impact on instruction and students? Traditional ideas about assessment systems describe assessment systems in the ideal world, where state summative assessments have the smallest footprint, and meaningful classroom assessments are the most important component. However, in practice, we know this is not always the case–because of the stakes and funding attached to large scale testing (both perceived and real), assessments that are not meant to inform instruction end up shaping a lot of the decisions educators make about student learning. In this session, we will discuss how we rectify this in assessment system design, including examples and implications for state, district, and classroom assessments. The session will include opportunities for participants to inform the development of policy documents to inform assessment system development.

TAKEAWAYS:
Systems of assessment can center students and instruction, and simultaneously surface trustworthy information for decision-making – if they are intentionally designed to do so.

SPEAKERS:
Sara Cooper (Contextus), Kelley Turner (Winchester Public Schools: Winchester, VA)

Presenters will discuss how a partnership with the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) and the SIU STEM Education Research Center @ Carbondale, IL built a 100% IL-developed Science Assessment. There was a concerted effort by SIU to include willing and qualified IL educators to score constructed responses and item development. It proved to be a powerful professional learning experience. Participants improved their understanding of NGSS (Illinois Learning Standards in Science (ILS-S/NGSS) and classroom practices. Participants report this experience was rewarding personally and professionally, and their classroom instruction benefited students. We will present participant survey data and testimonials to support our claims. Teachers often say there is a lack of meaningful and rewarding NGSS/science professional learning opportunities. We found the Illinois Science Assessment Project is one of the few. We suggest other states, agencies consider the same.

TAKEAWAYS:
Meaningfully including in-service educators in developing your state assessment will transform the black box of large-scale summative assessment to a joint endeavor that will see teacher buy-in and professional development increase, and student learning and scores go up.

SPEAKERS:
Harvey Henson (Southern Illinois University Carbondale: Carbondale, IL), Kristin Rademaker (NSTA: Arlington, VA)

Too often teachers spend valuable time creating performance tasks in science to encourage sensemaking in their students and to make student thinking more visible. This session will highlight available OER resources that have been compiled across multiple sites. Using these tasks as a starting point, participants will explore ways to adapt these tasks to meet the needs of their classroom. Participants will learn strategies for increasing rigor, providing different levels of support, and providing opportunities to increase student engagement through student voice and choice.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants in this session will leave with an understanding of the OER tasks available for classroom use and strategies to adapt these tasks for their classroom. Strategies will include examples of support for scaffolding, giving meaningful feedback, and increasing student voice and choice.

SPEAKERS:
Kelley Turner (Winchester Public Schools: Winchester, VA)

Using the Disciplinary Core Ideas and a research-based “citizen science” approach, science educators contributed their own test items, and also helped to revise existing test items in order to address crucial issues such as difficulty, gender, and racial/ethnic bias that were present in the item analysis characteristics. We share the analysis and results of these efforts so that educators can assess their own test items to be more inclusive of all students understandings in one of the dimensions of the 3-D approach to learning. Learn what changes contributed to improvement of the item as well as what types of changes or revisions made the item worse than before. We also share results of field testing of these items in student classrooms and discuss the importance of incorporating students’ misconceptions into the response choices to capture their true understanding of science concepts as outlined in the DCIs.

TAKEAWAYS:
Learn to evaluate assessment questions that you use to assess students’ sensemaking of elements outlined in the NGSS DCIs. Are the questions free of bias, not too difficult, indicative of overall student performance? Do they include common misconceptions that students hold? Access a free resource.

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

In this session, participants will consider three alternatives to traditional multiple-choice pre-assessments: modeling, self-documentation, and class discussions. We will discuss the purpose of pre-assessments as a critical data point for instructional planning, especially with many schools moving towards PLC structures around data cycles. We will see examples of these three alternative strategies for pre-assessment (which can also be used as formative assessment structures). For each assessment structure, we will discuss how to collect and use data. Authentic examples will be provided from the presenter’s middle school and high school classrooms.The session will synthesize and apply ideas from the following ACESSE Stem Teaching Tools: Modeling #8 / self-documentation #31 / class discussions #6, #35 / using pre-assessments #15, #18, #25, #34, #37. These STEM teaching tools will be shared with participants to continue their learning beyond the 60-minute session.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will learn how to use different assessment formats to collect data without relying on multiple-choice questions. The assessment formats allow students to use knowledge & experiences of a phenomenon or science idea while providing meaningful information to guide instructional choices.

SPEAKERS:
Stephanie Alderman-Oler (Washington High School: Kansas City, KS)

Educators have struggled with maintaining student engagement in science, especially as students transition from primary to middle school and upper grades (Vedder-Weiss & Fortus, 2012). With the adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards, teachers are looking for curricula to support its implementation. Two curricula, mySci 5E and OpenSciEd storylines, were compared in terms of student academic achievement and attitudes toward science. The research questions were: (1) To what extent is there a difference between achievement in science by eighth grade students experiencing the OpenSciEd storyline science curriculum and those experiencing MySci 5E as measured by end of unit assessment scores? (2) To what extent is the difference between attitudes towards science by eighth grade students experiencing the OpenSciEd storyline science curriculum and those experiencing MySci 5E as measured by My Attitudes Toward Science (MATS) surveys (Hillman et al., 2016)?

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will hear about the results of the study and potential impacts of the perception of coherence on students’ academic achievements and attitudes toward science. Implications for future research will be discussed.

SPEAKERS:
Nina Blanton (Educator: , MO), Nicole Vick (Northwestern University)

The NSTA Atlas of the Three Dimensions maps out learning progressions based on the Framework for K–12 Science Education and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). The 62 maps in the Atlas organize all of the elements from standards on a particular topic (e.g., modeling, patterns, or definitions of energy) on a single page. The elements from grades K–2 are at the bottom of the page, and those from grades 9–12 are at the top. Arrows connect elements to indicate how ideas in a particular topic build on each other and how elements in different topics connect to one another. Studying the maps in the Atlas and the additional resources in the appendixes can provide educators with new insights about the standards. This session will provide an overview of how to read a map, the other features of the Atlas, and how educators can use this powerful navigational tool to develop and implement curriculum, instruction, and assessment.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will learn how to read the maps and use other tools in the Atlas to understand and interpret standards, and plan instructional sequences as part of their work in curriculum, instruction, and assessment.

SPEAKERS:
Ted Willard (Discovery Education: Silver Spring, MD)

Based on the work of Andrew Ho and Margaret Heritage, this session will outline the four major “quadrants” of the assessment matrix and review the nature and the stakeholders for each. We focus then on the process of moving from a structured Formative Assessment Process to an Invisible Formative Assessment Process, and benchmarks for delivering high-quality assessment alongside high-quality instruction.

Lastly, we will focus on the NGSS specific requirements for classroom-based assessment and align it to the Herron scale of inquiry to ensure that our assessment process is inclined in the same direction as our instruction.

TAKEAWAYS:
Implementation of inquiry-based standards and the shift to a more inquiry-based classroom requires a clear vision of the assessment opportunities and processes classroom teachers will need to engage in and administrators will need to support and review.

SPEAKERS:
John White (Breakthrough Technologies: , IL)

Develop your knowledge, skills, and confidence to lead your school or district toward successful NGSS assessment development. We will share one district’s journey to engage teachers in developing NGSS-aligned common assessments focused on SEPs, access, and equity.

TAKEAWAYS:
Develop your knowledge, skills, and confidence to lead your school or district toward successful NGSS assessment development with a focus on SEPs, access, and equity.

SPEAKERS:
Julia Smith (Riverside Unified School District: Riverside, CA)

Our students make sense of science and construct their ideas from many experiences, then use that “knowledge” as a foundation for their learning. However, it may not always be a solid foundation. We can help students develop their science knowledge through a deeper understanding of the misconceptions they hold, using phenomena, observation, sensemaking, and robust assessment. We can then assess students’ ideas and misconceptions in the sciences at various grade levels creating and using research-based assessments, understanding the importance of including their ideas in those assessments. When each item contains a choice between a scientifically correct answer and a common, widely-held, student misconception, we can more accurately evaluate our students’ true understanding of the DCI components of the NGSS.

TAKEAWAYS:
Educators will learn how to work with misconceptions that students hold in order to incorporate those into useful assessments. Use students’ sensemaking to discover ways to get at those ideas, and share your students’ misconceptions, hear others as well, and build research-based assessments.

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

Curriculum compacting replaces content that students already know with new content, enrichment options, or other activities. It can be effective for: students who have already mastered the material and those students that may learn material quickly. Research shows that students who received compacted curriculum scored significantly higher on achievement posttests than their peers who received "all of the work" with no compacting. On my team, we compacted curriculum for several units last year and our mastery scores drastically improved on STAAR from prior years. Compacted curriculum allowed our GT (and advanced) learners to have an opportunity for enrichment rather than learning things they already knew. Participants will be receiving resources and examples of curriculum compacting in science. They are encouraged to ask questions throughout. During the session, attendees can look at their own curriculum to determine where in their science units (and when) they could try compacting.

TAKEAWAYS:
1) Attendees will learn WHAT Curriculum Compacting is and WHY it is so important in the science classroom. 2) Attendees will be shown HOW to begin compacting in their classrooms. 3) Attendees will walk away with resources to help them begin compacting, and will be given opportunities to ask questions.

SPEAKERS:
Sandra Rodriguez (Katy ISD: Katy, TX)

Digital notebooking is a tool that can support both teaching and learning and can be utilized for a variety of purposes. The time during this 60 minute session will be split between the presenters sharing information including examples of various ways to implement digital notebooks that align with research-based best practices and participants having time to plan and prepare usage for their own setting. Teachers will leave with ready-to-use takeaways to assist them in empowering students to not only learn content more independently but also reflect on their learning path and level of understanding to gear up for future success. Teachers will also be able to explore how the notebooks provide quick access to each student's progress in learning and the ability to give feedback when and where it is needed.

TAKEAWAYS:
Teachers will leave this session with a digital notebook template and the knowledge and resources to create and implement one successfully, as well as a framework that coicides with the use of a digital notebook and fits any curriculum to allow for students to have influence on their learning.

SPEAKERS:
Vera Hayslip (7th grade Science: Cincinnati, OH), Kelly Hartings (Indian Hill Middle School: CINCINNATI, OH)

In 2019, The Louisiana Department of Education was awarded an Education, Innovation, and Research(EIR) grant titled “Improving Pre-Engineering and Computer Science Education through Micro-Credentials”. As one of very few EIR grants awarded to a state education agency, we have had the opportunity to blend both research and practice through multiple lenses as we engage teachers and students across our state. The project has served as a mechanism for the research team to examine how job embedded professional development impacts the practices of our teachers, the content delivery in our classrooms, and its effects on student learning. We plan to share key take aways, including insights into the writing and revision process, how the series took shape over time, and preliminary outcomes from the qualitative measures utilized. This may be of interest to participants considering portfolio based assessments as a means of improving professional learning within their own context.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will gain insight from the perspective of a state agency into the process and key learnings from a four-year project focused on portfolio-based assessments in STEM.

SPEAKERS:
John Underwood (Louisiana Department of Education: No City, No State)

Teachers and students are still adjusting to life in a post-pandemic classroom. There were many educational impacts in the wake of school closings during the pandemic. One of these was a dependence on technology that still lingers in the classroom today. While technology is important, it cannot replace the impact of a classroom environment that supports collaborative, student-centered, personalized learning. Teachers and students need to refresh themselves on how to engage in experiential learning again and how setting the right tone in your classroom can develop a supportive classroom environment. In this session, we will discuss different strategies and activities to build relationships with our students, how to incorporate student-centered learning, and how student engagement leads to motivation.

TAKEAWAYS:
The main takeaway from this session is a collection of engagement strategies and best practices to use in a classroom setting to establish a classroom culture supportive of student-centered, personalized learning.

SPEAKERS:
Michelle Norwood (Sangaree Middle School: Ladson, SC)

Struggling with your PLC community? Going to Teacher Pay Teachers and spending your money to find lesson plans? We can find a better way to support teachers through an open resource PLC. Due to increasing teacher burnout, teacher shortages, and high teacher turnover our team felt inclined to find ways to better support teachers in the day-to-day classroom environment (new teachers, substitutes, long term absences). Our science PLC will present the strategies, resources, and digital tools we utilize to create a PLC that functions at a higher level. We will discuss strategies for reducing turnover, keeping up teacher morale, and implementing large projects for large groups.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will learn about our method for streamlining science planning within our PLC.

SPEAKERS:
Samantha Huber (Science Teacher: Topeka, KS), Kathryn Louderback (Washburn Rural Middle School: Topeka, KS), Mackenzie Casey (Science Teacher: Topeka, KS)

Student engagement is a vital element for effective science instruction (Heddy & Sinatra, 2013). However, students typically become less engaged in science as they advance in school years (Ofsted, 2015). Superheroes have been a mainstay in popular culture and multimedia for decades. Science teachers can harness this widespread interest to enhance lessons, broaden assessments, and increase student engagement. Participants will examine multiple superhero examples, each with applications to specific NGSS performance expectations. They will also consider research content from science journals and organizations (National Geographic, Scientific American, NASA, NOAA, WHO, etc.) to catalyze further exploration and extensions. In addition to specific activities, teachers will practice analyzing popular culture and research for wider engagement. They will also review important copyright parameters and “fair use” in the classroom, with an emphasis on appropriate implementation.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants in this interactive session will examine a variety of multimedia superhero examples, with a focus on immediate classroom implementation AND legal copyright “fair use.” In addition to specific lessons, teachers will practice analyzing and applying media and research to engage students.

SPEAKERS:
Daniel Bergman (Wichita State University: Wichita, KS)

How do you see what science knowledge your students bring to the units you are teaching in your classroom? This session will showcase a STEM Teaching Tool of Self-Documentation where students give you, the teacher, insight as to what knowledge they bring to your science unit along with their cultural stance. The presentation will show how self-documentation is used in a middle school science classroom. Teachers will also go through the steps of self-documentation themselves, as well as be presented information about what information students can share about what Science Sense they might have.

TAKEAWAYS:
1. This session will provide knowledge of how to use self-documentation in the classroom. 2. Teachers will understand the importance of gaining your students' perspective in what they bring to your classroom culturally. 3. Self-documentation gives teachers knowledge of student misconceptions.

SPEAKERS:
Betsy Lawrence (Summit Trail Middle School: Olathe, KS)