Courses & Pathways

Building Capacity for Adapting High-Quality Instructional Materials for Local Standards

Thursday, November 7 • 1:00-4:00pm

Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, Room 272

Many schools need high-quality units to meet their state standards, especially if they vary significantly from the NGSS. BSCS Science Learning has extensive experience with designing, and adapting Storylines units. Come to this session to apply a BSCS design tool that can be used for adaptation.

Presented By:

AI: K-8

This pathway features curated sessions on using AI to enhance science teaching in your K-8 classroom.

AI: High School

This pathway features curated sessions on using AI to enhance science teaching in your high school classroom.

Assessment strategies designed to support equitable sensemaking 

This conference pathway delves into the critical role of assessments in fostering equitable learning environments through sensemaking, problematizing phenomena, and leveraging student work for understanding and care. The sessions are designed to rethink traditional feedback and grading practices, utilize AI to enhance learning experiences, and advance equity with culturally responsive assessment strategies.

Participants will engage in a structured process to analyze and revise science assessments, ensuring they cater to diverse learning styles and mitigate bias to foster inclusivity. Through collaborative discussions, educators will explore innovative approaches and pedagogical strategies aimed at enhancing the relevance and effectiveness of assessments.

This professional development series is dedicated to empowering teachers to (re)create student-centered assessments that authentically represent every student’s knowledge and abilities, irrespective of their background or identity. Each session aims to foster student engagement, address equity, and increase educational relevance, helping educators develop assessments that truly support sensemaking and student success.

Building Capacity for Adapting High-Quality Instructional Materials

This pathway follows the Leaders Institute sessions and will deepen your understanding of effective implementation and equitable systems.

How can we use high-quality instructional materials (HQIM) to design more equitable systems? Join us to consider how leaders rally interest and build internal capacity for the selection and effective implementation of high-quality instructional materials. Work with other leaders to consider strategies to make the case for change toward more equitable systems that support all learners in the system and the role of HQIM in leading ongoing science improvement efforts.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

A curated grouping of sessions focused on diversity, equity, and/or inclusion in education.

High School Havens

This pathway spotlights sessions from our dedicated, discipline-specific learning and connecting space for high school educators.

• Biology HS Haven
• Chemistry HS Haven
• Physics HS Haven
• Earth and Space Science HS Haven

Informal Education

A curated grouping of sessions for educators in informal science settings.

Leading the Way: A Pathway for Cultivating Teacher Leaders in Education

Embark on a journey of teacher leadership in science education with NSELA, where you will discover transformative practices that empower educators to drive change. Explore how teacher leaders can cultivate inclusive classrooms and advocate for equity in science education. Join a community of like-minded professionals to enhance your leadership skills, foster emerging teacher leaders, and become a catalyst for positive change in your school, district, or state.

Leadership

A curated grouping of sessions specifically for school and district administrators, coaches, department heads, and teacher leaders.

Louisiana Science Teachers Association (LSTA): Science Education Spotlight

The Louisiana Science Teachers Association has curated diverse presentations that include Louisiana science educators and highlights from the Science teams at the Louisiana Department of Education.

NSTA Early Childhood - Lower Elementary Science Pathway

Are you an early childhood or lower elementary teacher eager to infuse more science and STEM into your classroom? Don't miss this exciting opportunity at the NSTA Conference in vibrant New Orleans! Join the NSTA Early Childhood - Elementary Science Committee for an engaging session where you'll discover innovative, hands-on activities and sensemaking strategies tailored for young learners. Elevate your teaching and inspire your students with practical, fun, and effective science experiences. See you there!

NSTA Preservice Teacher Education 

Inviting all Preservice Teachers and higher education instructors attending the conference to join us on Friday to network and learn about ways to engage with NSTA resources and events. Sessions on Saturday in this pathway are targeted to preservice teachers and new teachers' experiences.

NSTA Press

Come learn from our esteemed NSTA Press authors, sharing their love of learning with research-backed expertise on a wide array of topics. You'll head back to the classroom with realistic, ready-to-use teaching strategies you can implement on Monday.

NSTA Professional Learning 

Join us each day to experience professional learning around a high-interest topic! Thursday we'll explore how student ideas can drive learning in the science classroom; Friday the focus is on instructional coaching (coach-to-teacher and teacher-to-teacher); and Saturday our sessions are centered on STEM Learning.

OpenSciEd Elementary is here!

The much anticipated first round of OpenSciEd elementary units are now available for public use! Come experience the joy possible when elementary science classrooms engage in collective science sensemaking.

OpenSciEd Middle School: Customizing High Quality Curriculum: Using Your Expertise to Better Support Students 

Feeling boxed in by pre-made curriculum? High quality, phenomenon-based materials have robust storylines that help students make sense of the phenomenon, but sometimes all of the support provided for teachers to use these materials can make it feel like there isn’t room for teachers to bring in their own expertise. And making changes in the wrong places can actually diminish the power of student sensemaking that is so important for student engagement and learning. The sessions across this pathway provide opportunities to learn more about a wide variety of customizations–from thinking about grading and sub plans to digging in and modifying the materials to encourage student voice or increasing relevance in the classroom.

We will unpack how you can utilize a high quality curriculum to both meet the identified learning goals and also provide opportunities for customization and localization. We think of this customization work as the perfect game of Jenga- how can you determine which pieces of the curriculum unit can be removed and changed without toppling the entire tower? Building this knowledge will help you take advantage of the strength of the well-constructed tower (curriculum) while making it your own to reach higher heights with your students.

OpenSciEd’s materials are used across these sessions because the materials have received an all green rating from EdReports and are free and publicly available for use, but many of the ideas, strategies, and tools shared across the pathway could be applied to any high-quality instructional materials.

We hope you will join an amazing community of educators who are taking high quality instructional materials and making them even better!

Postsecondary

A curated grouping of sessions for postsecondary instructors.

STEM Teaching Tools: Free Resources for Equitable Science Instruction 

Come explore our collection of open education resources (OER) at http://stemteachingtools.org focused on supporting equity-focused science and climate change instruction. These professional learning resources have been co-designed by educators and researchers to support foundational learning and key practices for NGSS implementation. Each STEM Teaching Tool is an idea and resource funnel about a problem or opportunity of teaching practice. The initiative is #NSFfunded