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Make the conceptual leap from 2D to 3D and make teaching topography, topographic maps, and topographic profiles a concrete, engaging, hands-on learning experience.

De-tracking secondary science classes can be a benefit to all students. Come learn about the research and discuss differentiation tools to make de-tracking more successful in your school.

Demonstration lessons will be modeled to teach science simultaneously with reading, writing, speaking, and listening strategies,

Discussion centers on tools to properly analyze Black students’ scientific work to determine if the misconceptions and misunderstandings are a learning issue or language issue. This workshop focuses on the use of language to reduce the ethnic achievement gap in science.

What makes it rain? M&Ms versus Skittles? Baking soda versus baking powder? Free online lesson plans of hands-on activities and animations help your elementary students build foundational concepts in chemistry.

Discover resources designed to engage elementary students in hands-on STEM experiences programming drones and robots to model modern food production practices in high-tech agriculture.

Using a data-generating simulation for microevolution, learn how to lead students through an analysis of raw data to draw explanations supported by evidence.

Capitalize on natural human curiosity by presenting science lessons via captivating stories, mysterious demonstrations, and student-produced inventive models.

Feeling overwhelmed by all there is to see and do at an NSTA conference on science education? Join us for an interactive exploration through the program, the conference app, and NSTA’s social media. By the end of the session, you will know just how to get the most from your conference experience in addition to building new networks with science colleagues.

What does pH actually measure? In this investigation, you will measure pH indirectly using indicators and absorption using the Lab-Master. Using their data, participants generate a graph of absorbance versus pH. This graph can be used to determine the pH of solutions, within the measured pH range. Join us for this activity from The Natural Approach to Chemistry program.

Uncover students’ conceptual understanding of atoms, molecules, and compounds using NGSS science and engineering modeling practices. Explore chemistry topics in polarity, pH, density, solubility, bonding, and much more with three-dimensional teaching and learning manipulatives! Make learner thinking visible through student-centered simulations of dissociation and neutralization. Great formative assessment probes provided!

Integrating effective collaboration techniques promotes a teacher’s ability to hear student responses and assess student thought processes all while allowing students to learn from one another.

We distill water to purify it, or so we think. So why does the clear distillate from apple cider smell like apples? Join us and find out! Using a clever test-tube distillation apparatus, we will distill the essence of vanilla and the scent of mint…and even show you how to make brandy from wine! Distillation is a crucial process in chemical engineering and technology, yet few students ever get to explore the process.

Help! The principal has been murdered in the art room! Your students become crime scene investigators as they walk into a murder scene. Inspect the location of the murder using blood spatter analysis and then catch the criminal with DNA fingerprinting. This exciting workshop will include ways to incorporate biotechnology and gel electrophoresis into your classroom.

Looking for lab activities that work every time, not just periodically? Explore easy, engaging, and safer chemistry activities that will produce a reaction in your students. Whether you’re new to chemistry or feeling out of your element, you’ll learn new ways to create excitement with hands-on labs, demonstrations, and digital content.

Scientific argumentation is more than filling in boxes. Experience how students grapple authentically with competing claims, evaluate evidence quality, and are supported in the struggle to make their reasoning clear—all with examples from the newest curriculum from UC Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science, designed from the ground up for NGSS.

Learn how to encourage the development of your students’ skills in analyzing and interpreting authentic scientific data. Students can develop their scientific practice skills with free digital media tools and resources from PBS LearningMedia, produced by WGBH in collaboration with NASA and other partners. In addition to adapting videos, images, and interactives, the project features an innovative approach to incorporating data visualizations and computer simulations into instructional experiences.

Come see Simulation Curriculum’s award-winning Starry Night! Classroom-ready NGSS lessons for all grade levels engage students with interactive simulations, as well as current astronomical phenomena. Now running in the browser using all platforms, including Chromebooks.

Explore a new, atomically accurate model of double-helical DNA that can be untwisted into the familiar two-dimensional ladder and separated into two single strands to model the processes of replication and transcription! Engage students with manipulatives that allow them to convert deoxyribose to ribose sugars and generate the universal currency of energy, ATP.

A decomposing corpse is found in a field. Four possible missing persons fit the description. But who is it? Using clues near the scene will help determine identity. Forensic anthropologist Diane France helped to develop this free middle school and high school forensic science lesson.

Explore how instructional sequences designed around real-world problems can lead students to figure out phenomena using the three dimensions of science and engineering. Leaders from UC Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science will showcase an example from the Hall’s research-based pedagogy and curriculum.

Don’t think you have the nerves for physiology? Learn about easy, hands-on activities you can use to explore homeostasis, reflexes/ reactions, and responses to stimuli. The activities are suitable for all grade levels.

Neuroscience is one of the fastest growing science fields. Bring it to your classroom by making your students neuroscientists for the day! Explore the neurodegenerative disorders Huntington’s and Alzheimer’s. First, we’ll run a genetic analysis on a family who may carry the Huntington gene using PCR and gel electrophoresis. Then, we’ll run an ELISA to explore the biology behind Alzheimer’s disease.

Glowing cats? Personalized medicine? Designer babies! Empower and prepare your students to think critically as modern biology revolutionizes medicine, industry, and human lives. Learn from a leader in biotechnology education how to build your bioscience lab program step-by-step with equipment, supplies, and student credentials.

What is the difference between subscripts and coefficients? What does “balancing” a chemical equation mean? Many students have trouble with these fundamental concepts in chemistry. If a student does not fully understand the chemical formula, then moles, reactions, and stoichiometry are hopelessly confusing. Join us for some elegant, intuitive, and well-differentiated lessons that allow students of all levels to master the chemical formula and thereby move confidently into a deeper understanding of chemistry.

Transforming bacteria with plasmids that express brightly colored or fluorescent proteins is an unforgettable way to teach the central dogma of molecular biology. Why not take it a step further and see the art your students can create using their transformed bacteria? Join us for tips and tricks to maximize classroom success and to dust off your painting skills! Artistic? Our favorite designs will win a free kit.

Experience how students use models, analyze data, and gather evidence from text to figure out ideas about structure, function, and adaptive traits, to inspire their biomimicry designs. Join a hands-on dive into Amplify Science for Grades K–5, a new NGSS-designed curriculum from UC Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science.

The NGSS have raised the bar for scientific rigor and thinking. In grades 3–5, students define problems using criteria for success and constraints or limits of possible solutions. Learn how Building Blocks of Science 3D helps students use criteria and constraints to solve real-world problems. Take home lesson and workshop materials.

Evolution is all around us! Use a current example of speciation in the historic Galápagos Islands to engage your students and pique their curiosity.

Engage your students in a citizen science project on pollinator decline while addressing biology standards on hypothesis testing, data analysis, and modeling natural phenomena.

Discover how your text selections can strengthen pathways of access for students to see themselves in the science classroom and the discipline.

STEM picture books/tradebooks are different from other picture books. They incorporate divergent thinking and problem-solving skills, which expand student understanding of content and process.

What is epistemic inquiry? Engage in direct instruction and active group work strategies to make the message and the methodology of epistemic inquiry consistent.

The fictional events highlighting adventures of Harry Potter in J. K. Rowling’s children’s literature series can serve as enticing entrees into science and engineering activities.

Learn with and from the members of the NSTA Professional Development committee in a collaborative conversation about supporting three-dimensional professional learning.

Hands-on activities, animations, and software are used to demonstrate important seismic wave characteristics, wave propagation, wave types, the elastic rebound, earthquake location, and earthquake damage.

Enhance and deepen science and math concepts taught in traditionally “fun” polymer labs. NGSS correlations  Add more scientific processes to make them inquiry based.

Support three-dimensional learning with materials that engage your students in an exploration of the unique chemical and physical properties of water and the phospholipid bilayer that separates cells from their surrounding environment. Construct a model to explain diffusion, osmosis, active and passive transport across cell membranes.

Having students create a (YouTube) video lab conclusion is a powerful assessment tool that can improve an instructor’s assessment of student understanding.

Review findings from research that suggests a significant positive relationship between female students attending a selective high school with a challenging curriculum and then graduating from an honors college with a STEM degree.

Can we use media to convey key weather and climate concepts and enhance curriculum? What does effective media allow you and students to do, see, or explore? Explore digital resources and strategies for engaging students with media about weather and climate concepts for grades 6–12. Plenty of time for hands-on exploration of our resources on PBS LearningMedia.

Be part of a zombie apocalypse! Learn about disease-spread modeling using simulations and fun storylines about a zombie outbreak. Applicable for middle school and high school, this workshop is sure to scare you and your little zombies with its exciting Hollywood themes used to engage students in learning science!

We will examine sample student responses to explore how to design cognitive assessments of 3-D learning and engage in sensemaking to interpret student responses. Participants will work together to define options for next steps of instruction based on their understanding of student thinking of sample student responses. Issues of equitable assessment will be discussed, including addressing linguistic diversity, cultural assessments of student and community interests and funds of knowledge, and ways that assessments intersect with students’ identity development.

Are you a K–12 science teacher in need of a science lab makeover? Attend this Shell Science Lab presentation and learn how you can apply to win the Shell Science Lab Regional Challenge! You will have an opportunity to actually begin to complete the application and have your questions answered.

Model stellar evolution processes using NASA images, plot H-R diagram transitions, and determine the chemistry and physics of supernovas using NASA STEM image analysis tools.

Emphasis will be placed on five-minute daily strategies that will get students to become fluent in scientific vocabulary.

The idea of entropy rears its head in many applications from heat and temperature to chemical reactions and image reconstruction. A fun and easy activity shows the way to an interesting introduction to this important idea.

Life science activities designed to address the newly accepted NSTA/ASTE 2020 Science Standards for Teacher Preparation and increase the pedagogical content knowledge of elementary preservice and inservice teachers will be presented.

Ideas, lessons, and STEM Days are all included. Get motivated with project ideas, complete a hands-on activity that you can do in your classroom right away, and walk away with several 5E lesson plans, schoolwide monthly activities, and tips on how to make room for science  in your weekly schedule. Extra Bonus: Come share your PBL ideas at our end-of-class STEM smash!

Learn the key strategies to writing a fundable proposal and the available ACS grant opportunities for high school chemistry teachers and students.

Meet with an NSTA journal editor to learn how to successfully prepare and submit a manuscript for publication.