I am so looking forward to the NSTA national conference in Indianapolis in March 2012! It’s not that I’m tired of my everyday life and teaching work—it’s that I’m eager to be back from the conference with fresh ideas and new connections to create in the curriculum. NSTA conferences are joyful events, populated with educators [...]
Can it reflect light? Is it a plant? Is it made of cells? These questions are among more than 100 formative assessment probes developed by Page Keeley and her colleagues to help teachers elicit information about what students think about key science concepts. A capacity crowd at Keeley’s Seattle conference session turned out to learn [...]
Being away from my daily routine is both exciting and a little anxiety-producing, as in Look at all the other early childhood educators who are attending a session on science! and Did I remember to ask someone to feed the fish? Here are descriptions of a few of the sessions I attended at the 2011 [...]
Being part of a military family, Veterans Day holds special significance for me. Members of my family have served in the Coast Guard, Navy, and Army. Wherever I am on Veterans Day, I seek out a way to reflect on the sacrifices and accomplishments of the men and women who serve in our armed forces. [...]
I enjoyed watching auto races as a child, so I decided to check out Norm Barstow’s session, Elastic Power: Wind Up Your Engines and Explore (a.k.a. “NASCAR in New Orleans”).
Steve Rich’s early morning NSTA Press Session in New Orleans “Bringing Outdoor Science Into Your Classroom” drew teachers eager to explore strategies to incorporate more of the outdoors into their science lessons. Rich presented dozens of ideas for activities linked to nature, and the participants brainstormed about “what can we bring indoors to study?” Some [...]
Demonstrating the carbon cycle was never so much fun as it was in Kristen Dotti’s session, Drop the Lecture and Let the Students Pick Up the Learning in Environmental Science.
This morning in New Orleans, as part of the Urban Science Education Leadership (USEL) session, presenters from the Baltimore City Public Schools described their district’s Elementary STEM Teacher Clinic and how it transformed the teachers who participated in it.
The NSTA Science Store at the conferences is a popular meeting spot where teachers can browse new teaching resources and NSTA gear while catching up with colleagues. A few of the popular books at the Store in New Orleans include Science the “Write” Way, Picture-Perfect Science Lessons, 2nd Edition; Celebrating Cultural Diversity: Science for All; [...]
