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In partnership with individual Educational Service Districts, Washington Green Schools (WGS) is sparking climate science knowledge and action in diverse schools across the state.

Explore the parallel processes in science and literacy learning for young students that helps to build capacity for lifelong learning in both areas. Handouts.

Explore the role literacy plays in the IQWST classroom. Take part in a science lesson that demonstrates the integration of literacy strategies in the context of science. This includes the incorporation of academic language in written responses and oral discourse in conjunction with investigations using an interactive word wall. Reading and differentiation strategies highlighted.

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.

Find out how to blend career-connected learning with science learning using a suite of career awareness and exploration resources featuring diverse STEM professionals and STEM workplaces.

Students see themselves reflected in phenomena-based science curricula. Receive replicable units and guidelines for life science curriculum that centers students’ identity and investment.

Beyond posting pictures of classroom activities, how can you harness the power of social media to enhance your lessons for 21st-century science?

Journals, notebooks, and trade books are featured in outdoor science lessons—with indoor options. Use work samples and kids books to learn how. Free seeds.

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.

Port Townsend School District will share their process for building ocean acidification projects in collaboration with community partners, teachers, and students at multiple grade levels.

Shelton School District students participate in outdoor learning experiences every year. Find out how these experiences prepare grades 5–8 students for high school STEM pathways in the natural sciences.

Explore citizen-science projects that can engage diverse students, especially girls, in authentic data collection and inspire scientific investigations.

Learn how to access and explore NOAA’s data-rich resources, lesson plans, and visualization tools to help you build student proficiency in scientific data analysis.

Explore and discuss strategies for deepening the NGSS competencies of secondary science through ongoing PD with a focus on meeting teacher PD needs using data collection and learning progressions to shift teacher practice.

Teachers from Beijing middle and secondary STEM schools will demonstrate unique integrated projects and activities. Participants will be actively engaged in model lessons that authentically include all STEM components.

Find out how to develop escape room games in your classroom to engage your students!

Come engage in a quick engineering challenge that demonstrates how your students can define problems, create criteria and constraints, and engage in evidence-based engineering argumentation.

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

Join us to explore permeable and impermeable surfaces with a science and math integrated activity used to engage learners in locally relevant, watershed-based investigations.

Join us to learn how to anchor student learning in hyper-local and relevant phenomena using the anchoring phenomenon routine.

Explore the concepts of metabolic budgets and oxygen minimum zones and how human activities may be affecting organisms that live in these extreme environments.

In 2019, Achieve launched a network of districts in Tennessee with the goal of building their collective capacity to move toward their vision for science education for all students. Find out how the network used a collective need for better assessments as a key lever for change to simultaneously improve assessments, increase teacher capacity, and advance equity in science.

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.

Explore how to adapt a classic science activity, strawberry DNA extraction, to allow students agency in experimental design and emphasize the importance of collaborative argumentation.

Explore how students can participate in an NSF-funded project to isolate and identify new strains and species of nematode worms from the environment.

Ticket Price: $20 advance; $25 on-site

Add your tickets when you register online or via the Attendee Service Center if you’re already registered.

In this short course, discover how to use Arduinos to build a working Artificial Neural Network. ANNs are currently used in fields such as data mining, internet search engines, and machine vision applications (e.g., Google’s self-driving cars). ANNs differ from conventional computer programs in that they are designed to “learn” to accomplish a task based upon the principles that underlie learning in biological neural networks. Hands on with free student-tested curriculum available! Bring a laptop with Arduino software preloaded (www.arduino.cc/en/Main/Software). For more information, visit Center for Neurotechnology.

Ticket Price: $15 advance; $20 on-site

Add your tickets when you register online or via the Attendee Service Center if you’re already registered.

In this short course, we will explore the integration of engineering into science classrooms in ways that motivate deep learning of science and engineering via doable instructional shifts. This research-based and reality-driven approach is based on tested resources built on a research foundation for layering the NGSS engineering design process into elementary classrooms and secondary science courses.

Come learn about a partnership between the North Cascades Institute, Western Washington University, and Bellingham Public Schools to support students in learning about forest ecosystems. We’ll share lesson plans and lessons learned!

Attention will be paid on identifying theories and specific STEM activities that may be applied within preschool classrooms to promote children’s development.

How might we engage students who seem uninterested in science? Join Nalini as she describes her approach of “tapestry thinking,” weaving the ecological values of the tropical rainforest trees she has studied for three decades with other societal values, such as sports, religion, the arts, and social justice. Her programs inspire a sense of wonder and stewardship for forests and nature in groups who do not or cannot gain access traditional venues for science education. She has engaged urban children, faith-based groups, policy-makers, incarcerated adults, and youth in custody by partnering with “ambassadors” of these groups and then bringing engagement events to the venues where they naturally gather. Similarly, formal science educators might find common ground with their unengaged students by recognizing and weaving their students’ passions with the scientific way of knowing to create an inclusive tapestry of understanding of our world.

NSTA wishes to thank National Geographic Learning | Cengage for sponsoring this speaker.

STEM learning requires integration! Powerful questions and coherent storylines help solve the integration challenge. PBIScience is built around interesting and meaningful Big Questions and Big Challenges, supporting the integration of science and engineering, engaging ALL students in high-quality STEM learning, and embracing the vision of the Framework and NGSS.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Explore the role literacy plays in the Science Companion Prime classroom. Participate in a lesson that demonstrates the integration of literacy strategies in the context of science. This includes the incorporation of academic language in written responses and oral discourse in conjunction with investigations using an interactive word wall. Reading and differentiation strategies highlighted.

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.

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.

With shows like CSI and NCIS, forensics is popular with students. Come experience some hands-on forensic activities that you can take back to your classroom. Don’t commit the crime of letting this workshop pass you by! Also, learn about the AEOP GEMS and UNITE programs that give students the chance to experience STEM enrichment over the summer!

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.

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.

By investigating and sharing solutions for coexisting with local carnivores, grade 6 students strengthen their ability to ask and answer their questions about the natural world.

Experience a novel approach to Earth science. This new pedagogy uses a “systems” approach for plate tectonics, astronomy, natural resources, geology, and paleoclimatology. There will be several take-home activities and ideas to implement or augment your existing Earth science curricula. This curricula is put together by AGI (American Geoscience Institute) out of Washington, DC.

Visualize the structure-function relationships of the cardiovascular system and its applications by building working models of the heart.

Explore the practice of modeling as a high-leverage strategy to engage students in questioning, discourse, scientific reasoning, and explanation of phenomena.

The Department of Homeland Security supports several cybersecurity and STEM education programs, including free K–12 cybersecurity curricula and cybersecurity degree programs at postsecondary institutions.

Construct different sized whirligigs (paper helicopters) and collect data on the flight of each. This is an introduction to the opportunity for independent student exploration.

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

Track an osprey’s migration from Massachusetts to South America using uploaded data from the osprey’s transmitter and explore the trade book written about the journey.

Hear about characteristics of quality STEM instruction through the use of an observation protocol designed to improve practice.

Participants of the Teacher Innovator Institute will share projects developed using resources from the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.

Hear about Northwest LASER Alliance’s multi-district process of transitioning our Science Materials Kit Cooperative toward materials that integrate the three dimensions of NGSS.

Ever wonder how to get more students interested in what you teach? Add some pop culture and a pop culture project to make the connection with the students. Info will be provided by dropbox.

Preview the latest book in the Uncovering Student Ideas in Science series—with a STEM focus on engineering and technology. Experience a variety of probes that can be used to inform STEM teaching and support student and teacher learning.

Explore modeling as a formative tool for responsive instruction by examining student artifacts before and after an instructional shift based on analysis of student understanding.

Wondering how to add literacy to your STEM lessons? Come learn about NSTA’s initiative “Best STEM Books” and how to identify and integrate the Best STEM Books.

Analyze and interpret ocean depths to plot sea surface height. Practice making two-dimensional data become three-dimensional; in turn, bolstering visual-spatial conception skills.

Let’s address our control and compliance issues to allow room for play. Play feeds curiosity and nurtures lifelong learners. Explore using LEGO® bricks for prototyping.

Learn about Argument-Driven Inquiry and how it can help students learn how to use disciplinary core ideas, crosscutting concepts, and science and engineering practices to explain natural phenomena.

Using the LOC digitized primary sources, participants will create an activity that helps students engage in learning, develop critical thinking skills, and construct knowledge.

Participate in a teacher-directed and a student-designed model to experience the impact of developing and using models to teach depth, detail, and dynamics.

Watch out Darwin’s finches, a brighter bird is the new biology teacher in town! Learn to teach evolution and natural selection through the birds-of-paradise.

Join us in sharing your concerns and resources for enhancing equity and access in science education programs. Learn what NSTA, and others, are doing for STEM equity nationwide.

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.

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.

The NGSS recommend increasing the sophistication of student thinking through developmental learning progressions with limited core ideas and the integration of the science and engineering practices. Experience examples from the new Smithsonian Science for the Classroom and leave with workshop samples.

Students develop a model for an ecosystem and then introduce a new species to explain how this new component in the system affects the flow of energy and cycling of matter throughout the ecosystem. This activity provides an opportunity to assess student work related to MS-LS2-3.

Ticket Price: $33 advance; $38 on-site

Add your tickets when you register online or via the Attendee Service Center if you’re already registered.

Have you ever wondered how people can transform plain water and a few simple ingredients into the vast array of spirituous beverages enjoyed by people all over the world? For most of human history, fermentation has been an integral part of our culture. On this tour, you will explore the fascinating fermentation process of in-depth brewing. This expedition will take you to one of Seattle’s most iconic beverage production facilities, Hale’s Ales Brewery in the historic Ballard neighborhood. You will learn firsthand from master brewers how biology, chemistry, and physics converge in the different processes of brewing beer. You will dive into topics such as yeast microbiology, enzyme action, carbon dioxide production, and water chemistry. By the end of the tour, you will be a fermentation aficionado, having mastered the difference between lagers and ales, as well as how the treatment of the raw ingredients affect the final flavors. The tour will finish with a sensory analysis of products guided by trained olfactory experts and a tasting.

Note: Must be of legal drinking age, 21 or older. ID required to participate.

Meet your educational trip leader at the 9th Avenue and Pike Street entrance of the Washington State Convention Center at least 15 minutes before departure time.

Come learn about the journey of building an exciting summer school experience that reaches beyond the classroom where students are excited to attend. Get tips and tricks to make your students’ educational experience impactful and transformative.

Explore a professional learning experience for principal–teacher teams that supports equitable teaching practices for students underrepresented in STEM through shared learning and action planning.

Learn how to create a STEM Seminar where teachers explore how climate change impacts their local community and develop authentic climate science classroom learning opportunities.

Engage in a 3-D learning activity that highlights integral components of the NGSS: modeling, discourse, and supports for English language learners.

Designed for PD providers and educators, attention will be paid to protocols for writing three-dimensional NGSS-focused formative assessment items. Correlations will be made to Washington State’s summative assessment.

Discussion centers on the recently released report by NSF on Science and Engineering for Grades 6–12 focusing on the recommendations for how students engage with investigation and design as well as how teachers support this experience.

Explore instructional resources, collaboratively developed by NSTA and WIDA, to support multilingual learners’ (MLLs’) engagement in three-dimensional science, while seamlessly integrating language development.

We will share lessons we’ve learned in school-based makerspaces, the challenges of pushing students past tinkering, and practical strategies to engage them in engineering challenges.

The automobile is a high-tech rolling science and physics lab. This basic overview is designed for the nonautomotive science teacher to bring examples into the science classroom.

There is no such thing as a perfect curriculum! We will explore how engaging teachers in focused unit adaptation work is a pathway to strengthening teacher competencies around NGSS pedagogy and results in improved learning outcomes for students.

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.

Discussion centers on design-based biotechnology problem scenarios for designing and constructing biotechnical systems demonstrating how imposed cognitive demands promote critical thinking and understanding of STEM content/practice.

Calling all science education professors at the conference to discuss ways you can use NSTA digital resources and professional learning tools as your online textbook when teaching science preservice teachers. Professors will be present to answer questions.

Join in to discover methods to overcome common student misconceptions and participate in a “hands on” activity involving a chemical equilibrium having a large K value.

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.

Tap into the powerful potential of integrating content areas by experiencing science and engineering learning launched with an interactive read-aloud and enhanced with mathematical reasoning.

Explore exemplary, open-source science materials grounded in research regarding what motivates student learning. These materials engage students in authentic, relevant, three-dimensional learning of scientific phenomenon.

We will share educational resources for connecting research vessels to ocean sciences, demonstrate exemplar activities, and present strategies using real-time data with students.

Forget the textbook-defined sequence for teaching biology. Learn how to use the five criteria for life as a vehicle for introducing biology concepts.

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

Using the work of Zaretta Hammond in Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, participants will explore the concepts of cultural inclusivity and how strategic selection of anchoring events and phenomenon can reach diverse learners.

As one of the science practices embedded in the NGSS, asking questions and defining problems provides students with an authentic and meaningful entry point into science and engineering. Taken from “Investigating and Questioning our World through Science and Technology” (IQWST), participants will experience a puzzling chemistry phenomenon and learn how to elicit, organize, and revisit students questions so that students feel ownership over their own learning.

The economy and culture of the 21st century has a tremendous need for creative talent. Whether one works in manufacturing, government, education, or the service industry, there is always a shortage of creatively talented people. In addition, the ability to exercise one’s creativity is often identified as an important factor for happiness and well-being. Research on creativity, especially on how to foster and assess it, has grown tremendously over the past 30 years, and during this talk, we will review these recent developments and identify key strategies for enhancing scientific creativity in both students and adults.

Breathing Easier is a place-based science curriculum that engages grade 3 students in learning about and taking action on local air quality issues.

Students apply their understanding of the concepts of energy transfer and transformation to compare the efficiencies of two different types of light bulbs. They do so by measuring the amount of thermal energy produced by the two bulbs, applying the law of conservation of energy, and calculating how much of the electrical energy supplied was converted into light energy.

With the transition to three-dimensional learning and NGSS, is there still a place for dissections in the classroom? The answer is yes! As you dissect a Carolina’s Perfect Solution® frog, we will demonstrate how to integrate the three dimensions of learning, highlighting adaptations and the relationship between structure and function.

Emphasis will be placed on illustrating the science and engineering practices described in the Framework and NGSS through the engaging pGLO Bacterial Transformation activity.

We will bring science and coding together as participants learn to do some basic coding (no experience necessary) while developing a mood ring! The science of color mixing is explored while determining the right body temperature thresholds. Is fuchsia flirty? Should green be groovy? It’s up to you!

CRISPR-based genome editing is revolutionizing the biomolecular sciences! Join us in a hands-on/minds-on exploration of how you can model this exciting new technology to engage your students in understanding the foundational concepts of molecular biology and biotechnology through two-dimensional and three-dimensional representations of the CRISPR/Cas9 protein.

This lab is based on a real case of post-conviction DNA testing, which connects to topics of population genetics, criminal justice, and mass incarceration.

Design thinking is a process designers have used for years to bring a product to the marketplace. Now this process is recognized in the classroom as a great tool to solve problems using four basic steps—Ideate, Prototype, Evaluate, and Build.

Receive an overview of a professional learning experience incorporating local contexts, experiential learning, and research-based materials as a model for developing STEM experiences for students.

Partnerships with Public Works Departments support teaching claims and evidence, integral parts of NGSS practices. Explore how to use storm drains to teach scientific argumentation.

Integrating interactive video lectures can promote student understanding and help increase assessment scores. Join in for lessons learned as well as challenges associated with implementing interactive video lectures.

Discover how to tailor anchor phenomenon to capture the attention of diverse learners.

Find out how students’ everyday practices and activities, such as play, gaming, learning from failure, and solving problems provide a strong foundation for learning science through engineering design.

Hear how National Science Olympiad competitions including events and supporting resources are easily incorporated into existing curricula to actively engage students with STEM activities and projects.

We will share our collaborative process designing a program that teaches academic content, hard skills, and social-emotional skills. Leave with project examples and more.

Discover how we adapted our chemistry curriculum to reach diverse learners using budget-friendly manipulatives. Participants will try out many of the techniques shared.

Digital media provides unique accessibility opportunities, especially when enhanced with supports for diverse learners. We will present Earth and space science digital resources and highlight the accessibility features that are built in.

The Big Three acronyms for science and math teachers are STEM, NGSS, and CCSS. Come see how these three can and should be BFFs.

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.

Explore how to use student-centered learning such as engineering challenges to empower students and foster a love of science in a Title I middle school.

Experience multi-modal 5Es brain-based vocabulary strategies designed to empower all learners by using their own experiences to define core concepts through inquiry and discussions.

Hear about the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Project-Based Science framework for inspiring the conservation of the ocean through developing a sense of agency in local environmental action projects.

Become ocean explorers, learn how we study where we cannot see. The curriculum integrates STEAM to increase a sense of discovery that promotes deep learning.

Data Nuggets are free resources designed to guide students through the process of science. They can be used to improve students’ scientific and quantitative skills.

One of the authors of the Picture-Perfect STEM series will share lessons that integrate STEM and literacy through engaging STEM-related picture books.

Join us to learn how to put together a successful periodic table unit using lessons, activities, labs, videos, animation, and simulations from the AACT’s website.

Hear about the benefits and limitations of using serious educational games and hands-on guided inquiry science activities in the classroom. Practitioners will use a game designed for the classroom and will be provided access to the game and the hands-on science activities for use in their own classroom.

Discussion centers on the historic and strategic trajectory of STEM education with the specific task of identifying and reinforcing key design principles.

Learn effective techniques including Claims-Evidence-Reasoning to help students navigate media filled with fictional information promoted as fact and cherry-picked data offered as evidence.

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

Add action and excitement to your science class with live organisms! Discover fun, simple hands-on three-dimensional activities with a variety of insects and arthropods you can use in your labs. Learn about care and handling, as well as easy ways to introduce phenomena. Additional resources available online for your classroom.

Incorporate NGSS science and engineering practices into your biology class by engaging students to define the problem of world hunger. Considering constraints, students will design a treatment plan (solution) for protein-energy malnutrition in the form of an evidence-based argument.

Students look at historical data spanning the past 100 years to try to understand the causes of current global warming. They ask questions related to the data to figure out what the evidence indicates and to better understand how human activities relate to global warming.

What are middle school students trying to tell us about the interactions they know they must take to keep balance with dynamic ecosystems in constant change?

Incorporate STEM into your classroom by adding a makerspace. Increase engineering, inquiry-based learning, metal elasticity, and creativity! It’s easy and fun!

The emergence of advanced technology in the field of education, especially science, comes with both advantages and disadvantages. How do we limit the disadvantages?

Having students create a (YouTube) video lab conclusion is a powerful assessment tool that can improve an instructor’s assessment of student understanding. Discussion centers on the benefits associated with integrating student video conclusion into lab reports, the value of requiring students to actively engage with the lab objective and its analysis, and the additional time required to grade the videos.

Want to get your students outside enjoying nature and taking an active interest in improving the world around us, but don’t know where to start and how to sustain it? Join in for strategies to encourage critical thinking about environmental issues, methods to help students gain awareness of everyday resources and uses, budgeting and funding procedures, and ways to meet multiple subject areas. Empower your students to become part of the solution!

Experience a high school curriculum that is three-dimensional and centered around phenomena. This important work is shared as an Open Education Resource (OER) so all districts can benefit.

We will explore how to help students connect amino acid sequence to protein structure and function, and try out some of the modeling activities. Resources used will be shared.

Learn more about native bees and how your students can help bees from the author of the NSTA Press book, Next Time You See a Bee.

Instill student passion in science through Problem-Based Enhanced Language Learning. Come experience PBELL as a way to become a learning facilitator and engage even the most reluctant science student! Help students discover their passion for science by taking charge of their own learning.

Using the Design Thinking process, students investigate a local environmental problem, develop empathy for those affected, and create prototypes to work toward a possible solution.

Use simple programming and electronics with cardboard constructions to create interactive creatures (for example, inchworm, whale, or dog) that move and respond to their environment.

Discover how to elicit and explore students’ initial ideas and models of ionic and covalent compounds by engaging in a simple but effective phenomenon.

Storylines engage students in learning complex concepts. Participate in this interactive workshop to explore HHMI BioInteractive’s free new lesson planning tools to organize the resources you know and love while discovering how other teachers use similar resources to tell stories in their classrooms.

Hear about the goals and design principles of a engineering design challenge, based around creating a prosthetic hand using a variety of low-cost materials.

Learn how Capitol Land Trust and Shelton School District have partnered for three years to engage students in authentic problems related to habitat restoration and environmental stewardship.

We describe our development process, successes, and challenges in establishing a cross-curricular environmental program built by and for teachers and community partners.

Discover how to integrate engineering design challenges into an NGSS curriculum. Using the science and engineering practices, students engage in authentic problem solving.

From helping to determine the time of a victim’s death to analyzing DNA samples from crime suspects, this workshop has it all! Come get your hands wrapped around the STEM of crime solving!

See how engineering design and 3D printing of lab equipment help students explore and deepen physics relationships by using an iterative process to create the best solution.

Introduction to both the engineering design process and technology are incorporated to address the NGSS and CCSS Math within a STEM investigation.

There’s an E missing in STEM! Human beings are natural engineers who are constantly solving problems. Learn how to examine your curriculum—including literacy—to identify appropriate problems to solve and design and implement an engineering design challenge. Hands-on activities and sample projects provided.

Beyond motivation, music is a phenomenon that includes all the elements of STEM. Go beyond “good vibrations” to sampling, mixing, spectrograms, and musical problem-solving.

How do you teach your students to defend the claims they make? Engage them in challenges, competitions, and debates!

Join National Inventors Hall of Fame (NIHF) representatives as they introduce the invention process as the ultimate teaching and learning tool for all learners.

Our NSF-funded project helps non-programming teachers integrate Arduino and Raspberry Pi into their classes through problem-based challenges. Free resources, and BYOD for some programming fun.

Engage with Research Quest—free, online, NGSS-focused, phenomenon-based investigations using authentic museum objects and research to build students’ critical-thinking, collaboration and communication skills.

Students analyze and interpret skeletal and embryological images to identify patterns of similarities and differences across species that look very different as mature animals. Students identify patterns of similarities throughout developmental time to infer evolutionary relationships not obvious in the mature animals. This activity provides an opportunity to assess student work related to MS-LS4-3.

Gases exchanged during photosynthesis and respiration can be easily measured when using wireless sensors. With graphing software, students can view live results, plot data trends, and quickly develop ideas about the role of plants in the cycling of energy and matter. The use of sensor technology helps students understand how plants adjust the way they transform energy when light conditions change.

Collecting and analyzing experimental data has never been easier using Vernier technology in your lab. Bring your own device with our Graphical Analysis 4 app installed or use ours during the workshop. All activities are available as a free download for attendees.

Use algae beads in a colorimetric assay to study photosynthesis and cellular respiration. Learn how students can observe a phenomenon, ask meaningful questions, design and carry out their own experiments to understand how these processes are connected.

Rockets zoom and race cars zip through hands-on activities that engage your middle school and high school students. 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.

Come learn and get hands-on experience on how to teach gel electrophoresis and DNA fingerprinting in a single classroom session. You will pour, load, and run a gel, capture gel image, analyze the results, and deduce a probable conclusion for a whale of a forensic mystery.

The practices included in the NGSS are based on exploring and solving problems. The act of engaging students in this problem solving can often be a problem in itself. Join in to work on and solve some puzzles that you can take back to the classroom. Also find out how the online STEM competition, eCYBERMISSION, gives students a chance to explore and solve problems using science and engineering and how you and your students can participate at no cost.

Are you looking for a strategy to introduce an anchor phenomenon to your students? Join us as we model presenting an anchor phenomenon and creating a driving question board. Participants will be working in collaborative groups to identify anchoring, investigative, and everyday phenomena.

Ticket Price: $15 advance; $20 on-site

Add your tickets when you register online or via the Attendee Service Center if you’re already registered.

The phenomenon of type 2 diabetes anchors core ideas about homeostasis, nutrition, population traits, gene-environment interactions, cell signaling, and more. In this short course, participants will experience three-dimensional designed lessons and activities from our diabetes collection, created for introductory and advanced biology classes. Included are four activities: the use of a glucose homeostasis model board; a population trait inheritance simulation using beans, including a discussion of the role of race in health outcomes; our Yeast Feast lab in which yeast are used as a bioassay for glucose; and a cell signaling lab in which participants experience the “glucose blocker” Gymnema herbal tea. For more information, visit Genome Sciences Education Outreach.

A thriving community of physics educators exists on social media, sharing ideas and giving support. Come find out the great people and ideas to follow!

Designing and using student voice surveys to inform teachers and change instruction to increase STEM career aspirations for students.

Experience strategies for engaging students in analyzing and interpreting data to discover the structural factors that affect the solubility and melting point of ionic compounds.

Get 30+ classroom-ready strategies, activities, and resources that will engage all learners, increase student achievement in STEM, and target areas of the 5Es model.

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

We will look at tools and scaffold to connect engineering design projects to NGSS learning goals in elementary and middle school classrooms.

From matter to energy, any course can integrate climate change successfully. Leave with free CLEAN lesson plans and other vetted materials to enhance your teaching. CLEAN stands for Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network.

Hear about professional recognition and development, connections and community with like-minded educators, and relationships, resources, and perks from the National Geographic Society.

Learn with and from the members of the NSTA Professional Learning 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.

Discussion centers on the benefits of teaching science as inquiry and how to create classroom environments that embrace inquiry. Attention will be paid to hands-on explorations, coupled with literacy and thinking skills, to advance learning, engagement, and the joys of achievement in science.

Use corrosion to teach practical applications of chemistry concepts. Make reactivity, oxidation/reduction, solution chemistry and corrosion engineering exciting and relevant.

Teams of students can build simulation models to study news topics. Topics must contain dynamic feedback between two interconnected concepts (forces/animals/enzymes/resources). Lesson sequence explained.

NSTA provides educators with thousands of free digital resources and opportunities—as well as a professional peer community—that support professional learning and classroom instruction. NSTA gift cards will be raffled!

Learn how to create multidimensional tasks that leverage diverse expertise—supporting all learners in STEM activities. Engage in a cafeteria redesign project that will make everyone an innovator!

Put the textbook away and get out an…antler! Pinecone! Rock! Explore how object-based inquiry can open up learning—and enjoyment—for all students.

Explore engineering with an underwater remote-operated vehicle (ROV) project. Witness collaboration between military/industry and school partnership to design, test, and use an ROV.

Explore a novel “Systems Medicine” curriculum to teach students how science and technology are integrated to optimize current health and future wellness.

How do we know which organisms and processes determine the organization of natural ecosystems? Discover an HHMI BioInteractive film and supporting activities on trophic cascades and the effects of keystone species. Free, NGSS-focused materials that translate the revolutionary work of scientists into classroom-ready resources will be highlighted.

Robert will share the promising career pathways work underway in such diverse places as New York City, California’s Central Valley, and the states of Arizona and Delaware. He will touch on the challenges inherent in engaging regional leaders from K–12 and postsecondary education, the workforce system, employer associations, and youthserving community organizations to work collaboratively to create the kind of opportunity structure for young people that can get them started on a successful career trajectory. Hear about the power of networks in advancing professional learning and building a new field of practice.

What strategies and supports engage English language learners in the authentic practices of science and engineering, and ensure equitable access to deep learning in science? Figure out the answer to this question as you experience an Amplify Science instructional sequence and analyze it through an ELL lens.

Join us as we use Simulation Curriculum’s The Layered Earth Geology & Meteorology to investigate plate tectonics, weather, and climate. Classroom-ready NGSS lessons engage students with interactive simulations and thought-provoking exercises using an interactive Earth model. Now running in the browser using all platforms, including Chromebooks.

Students get engaged with practical and inquiry-based engineering experiences by using the DIVE-in method. This program was developed in partnership with the New York Hall of Science. Transform your classroom into an authentic makerspace with the DIVE process. Learn how to facilitate and use the design process through consensus.

Following an overview of immunology and antibody structure, an “influenza outbreak” prompts students to use ELISA, PCR and BLAST vaccine sequence analysis to determine which patients are infected with influenza.

Learn the basics of collecting and analyzing experimental data with a focus on biology. Bring your own device with our Graphical Analysis 4 app installed or use ours during the workshop. All activities are available as a free download for attendees.

Why does climate change matter? Find out which suspected microbes are associated with increased reports of infections and why they may be more common as the temperature on Earth increases.

Use a Wireless Pressure sensor and household products to help your students discover how well the enzyme catalase performs under various conditions. Design and conduct experiments to test the effect of varying enzyme or substrate concentration, temperature, or pH on enzyme reaction rate.

Hear about strategic activities that establish place-based relevance to local and global environmental issues by connecting students and communities through the use of technology. Building on students’ capacity for compassion, creativity, and current level of applied technological understanding, incorporating technology in environmental education supports the facilitation of project-based collaboration using an active, problem-centered approach.

Students take on the roles of civil engineers as they model the effect of ocean waves on a cliff. They then design, test, and redesign structures to prevent cliff erosion. They use their observations and understanding of erosion to compare the likely rate of erosion on a hillside and a shoreline cliff. This activity, from the new SEPUP Interactions middle level unit (NGSS middle level edition), addresses Earth’s systems and engineering design (MS-ESS2.C, MS-ETS1.A, and MS-ETS1.B).

Opioid abuse is prevalent in the United States. Students take on the role of researchers as they design an experiment using a fast electrophoresis protocol of pre-amplified DNA samples that predicts addiction risks for opioid abuse, treatment, and implications to precision medicine based on a patient’s genotype.

Learn the basics of collecting and analyzing experimental data with a focus on middle school. Bring your own device with our Graphical Analysis 4 app installed or use ours during the workshop. All activities are available as a free download for attendees.

How do teachers engage all students in science discourse and ensure success? Experience the importance of “science talk” to improve conceptual understanding. Leave with practical lessons from the Smithsonian STC Middle School program.

Use hands-on experience to solidify the theoretical teaching of Mendelian genetics and learn the basics of genotyping by doing electrophoresis. You will pour, load, and run a gel, capture gel image, analyze the results, and determine PTC taster genotypes for a family.

We will combine biology and coding to create an artificial heart! With some basic materials, you will construct a four-chambered heart and then innervate it with an artificial nervous system. From there, write some very simple code (no coding experience required) to bring the heart to life! If time permits, you will also create an AED! Appropriate for middle school and high school.

Reduce teacher talk and increase purposeful student talk as we model consensus building through argumentation around intriguing science phenomenon that matter. ELA skills and the 21st-century skills of communication and collaboration are a must in the STEM classroom.

Discover how engineering is seamlessly integrated into the Amplify Science curriculum across grades K–8. Join the curriculum designers from UC Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science to experience their cutting-edge approach to engineering and its connections to the NGSS.

Explore how to integrate conservation, ethics, and biotechnology into a biology classroom by using current research on African elephant conservation and a collaborative lab experience.

Looking to engage your students in citizen science? In the WildCam Gorongosa citizen science project, your classroom helps aid the incredible recovery and restoration efforts supporting Gorongosa National Park. Learn how to guide students through calculations of species diversity, richness, and evenness with the HHMI BioInteractive WildCam.

Join us as we explore AACT and ACS lab safety resources and how to use them in your middle school and high school science classrooms.

Elementary and middle school teachers will discuss what they learned from spending a summer with engineers and how they applied it to their classrooms.

Shelton School District students participate in outdoor learning experiences every year. Find out how grades K–4 students learn to love science through exciting standards-based field investigations.

NSTA’s Position Statement, “Teaching Climate Science,” guides professional learning for chemistry and physics teachers. Teachers study atmospheric science and public opinion to design learning.

Hear how six high school teachers created a required, project-based, NGSS-focused physics course using fun, hands-on vehicle and space exploration-themed projects to engage ALL learners.