Interactive Lessons engage students in a curricular topic using digital media while supporting literacy strategies. Lessons include video, short readings, writing prompts and assessment. Students practice close reading, learn vocabulary and synthesize data. We'll introduce the lessons and discuss various ways to implement them.
The CDSM is a collaborative of 100+ educators from 30 districts who have used the UbD framework to create curriculum aligned to the 2016 Massachusetts STE Frameworks. Come learn about our process and explore our units which have embedded open-source materials to allow for universal usage of our work.
Mrs. Nic's STEAMLab will demonstrate how your students and colleagues can design, test, and use new polymer materials that are revolutionizing bio-inspired devices for medicine and industry. DYI projects will include: 1) a soft robotics gripper for prosthetic hand, 2) a light-weight aerogel for airplane fuselages, 3) biodegradable sutures for surgery, and 4) laser activated glue for hole-in-the-heart children. ---- Mrs. Nic's mentor, Jeffrey M. Karp, and his lab: www.karplab
Explaining observed phenomenon in a scientific way, making observations and analyzing data are connected to understanding science. This instructional strategy is changing how labs are conducted and making science investigations meaningful for students. ELD strategies will be shared and modeled for an equitable learning environment.
Let STEMPilot show you how using Aviation and Simulation as a project based learning tool in the classroom to teach STEM, gives students and teachers a fun and engaging way to learn while virtually eliminating fragmentation between the classes.
This workshop engages middle school educators in an integrated STEM lesson that focuses on designing a vehicle that wins it all! Using only recyclable boxes and lids, participants will create a vehicle and use it to unpack concepts of energy, friction, and gravity while practicing the process of problem-solving.
Participants will experience the real-world of science through the eyes of National Geographic Explorers, reading and science materials. The presenter will show how to enhance the learning of the practices of science using fiction and nonfiction texts. Leave with some great take-aways!
This session presents initial findings of a review of best practices for K-12 STEM learning spaces commissioned by the Massachusetts School Building Authority. The review includes elementary classrooms, science labs, and makerspaces to provide recommendations for the sizing, configuration, outfitting, management, maintenance, and use of STEM learning spaces.
This workshop will introduce techniques on establishing a learning environment that values and demonstrates the benefits of diversity, confronts bias and bigotry, and expands students’ access to STEM education so they can grow, learn, and to be challenged and reach their full potential.
Come learn how to create standards-based Claim, Evidence, and Reasoning assignments with your students! See how crafting CERs parallels literacy standards and fosters opportunities for cross-curricular planning. We will share strategies for student success, as well as student-created exemplars and rubrics.
Learn how National Geographic’s Geo-Inquiry process can further your student's understanding of the world and empower them to generate solutions that to make a difference. In this interactive session, educators will learn new strategies to help students develop the critical thinking skills to ask geographic questions, collect information, use GIS to visualize data, create a compelling story, and ultimately become advocates for change in their community.
The 5E's - Engage, Explore, Explain, Extend, Evaluate - facilitate conceptual development while providing many opportunities for formative assessment during the lesson. Participants will experience the 5E’s while investigating the speed of marbles at the bottom of a ramp. Teachers will see the 5E's in action and learn how to bring the 5E’s into their own classroom.
We will explore a unit that teaches how communication systems use waves to transfer information via digital signals, encoding information ranging from a simple text message to an image from the Hubble Space Telescope. Participants will explore hands-on activities that introduce signals, binary, ASCII, and basic properties of waves.
Participants will take part in hands-on activities to investigate the phenomena of colliding objects. The activites from the k-5 FOSS NextGen science curriculum will be focusing on Energy and Energy Transfer and constructuing explanations and using evidence to support explanations. Participants will receive assoaciated reading materials.
Find out how this K-5 science program takes the stress out of teaching Engineering Design while adhering to the MA STE Standards. The problem-solving approach teaches students the skills needed to systemically plan and design solutions to real-world problems such as how to provide freshwater to those in need,
Interactive Lessons engage students in a curricular topic using digital media while supporting literacy strategies. Lessons include video, short readings, writing prompts and assessment. Students practice close reading, learn vocabulary and synthesize data. We'll introduce the lessons and discuss various ways to implement them.
We will focus on systems thinking by creating games about topics in science. It will include an introduction to the unit on climate change, with a focus on systems thinking. Participants will take part in an activity that integrates systems thinking and game design using Scratch. BYOD
How can a Makerspace increase student achievement? How does a Makerspace address; diverse learners, increase student and teacher voice, professional development, and more? Learn how Concord Public Schools’ journey to designing a Makerspace opened the doors to creating opportunities that foster critical thinking, problem solving, and 21st century skills.
Learning science means challenging concepts, and volumes of vocabulary. Language learners in particular can struggle with inscrutable terms like endoplasmic reticulum. Help your students master science through total physical response, a teaching method based on the coordination of language and physical movement. This session will cover how to use chants, gestures, call-backs, and songs to improve mastery!
Attendees build a panel-type solar cooker for all-seasons, almost as cheap as the common pizza-box warmer, but much more effective. Associate STE with a quotidian activity like cooking for lifelong learning for all. Concepts: Radiation, absorption reflection & transmission, power, energy, temperature, E-M spectrum, insolation. Apply to borrow high-tech instruments.
Presenters will share new climate change education resources. Learn to navigate a hyperlinked climate change concept map. Bring a wifi-accessible tool to explore the map on the spot! Receive a Massachusetts weather-climate strand map, an annotated bibliography of climate change education resources, and opportunities for further professional development.
The presenters detail their work with Dr. Charles Camarda, a NASA astronaut, to engage students in design solutions for sustainable human colony on Mars. Key elements explained: “Epic” challenge, ICED methodology, importance of failure, Teamology, mentors, and low cost. They will provide specific example so you can emulate their efforts.
The local community, as well as your own school grounds, offer a range of natural phenomena that can provide K12 students authentic experiential learning opportunities. In this workshop, learn how to identify key field trip locales that promote NGSS 3-D learning. A framework for designing a field trip along with pre- and post-trip information and assessments will be provided.
Science test developers will present information about the new STE tests. Topics will include test designs and reporting categories for the new grades 5 & 8 and high school tests. Constructed responses will also be discussed, with an emphasis on constructing explanations using data.
" Beyond Benign has created a unique curriculum incorporating the principles of Green Chemistry. We will demonstrate how to grow your own packaging alternative to styrofoam using mushroom material. Learn how cutting edge green chemistry technologies are serving as tools to capture the imagination of the next generation of problem solvers. "
This session will help teachers and administrators develop their capacity to integrate the science and technology/engineering (STE) and ELA/Literacy standards. Participants will build a shared understanding of the complementary ELA/Literacy and STE standards by grade level and identify opportunities to integrate across content areas.
Shake lights are simply coils through which magnets are passed in order to generate electricity and light an LED. Working Model shake lights will be displayed and demonstrated. Methods for building and using as demonstrators will be discussed. Teaching and building materials and documentation will be provided.
Join this hands-on session to learn activities for students that better equip them to visualize climate as a system, how carbon cycles throughout the Earth’s systems, and how CO2 speeds up the transfer of thermal energy. Ideal for grades 6–8!
We constantly ask students to write in their own words, but do not teach them the skills they need to do this. This workshop will address misconceptions regarding what plagiarism is, as well as run through an exercise using a science current event article to show students how to avoid copying someone's work. The reading comprehension technique of reciprocal teaching will be used in this activity.
Participants will conduct a lab experience and then develop several foundational science practices such as measuring and recording experimental data, graphical analysis of class data, and using experimental evidence to develop and support a scientific model. Teachers will leave with curriculum materials they need to implement this lab in their own classrooms.
The development of brain-computer interface for accelerated adaptive learning is a groundbreaking idea for educational application of EEG headbands. The application of EEG data for accelerated identification of personal learning preference and neuro feedback will significantly improve the quality of the blended and online personalized education in schools.
When MA adopted new STE standards, the Shrewsbury middle schools took it one step further and adopted a new way of assessing student learning by the science practices. What does that mean in the classroom? To teachers, students, and families?
The session will introduce early childhood teachers and administrators who work with children ages 4-6 years to a new, developmentally appropriate, STEM curriculum. Participants will be introduced to Problem Panda, to the many problems he encounters during the 8 units of the curriculum, and engage in solving the habitat challenge.
