Creative Commons handwritten recipe photo posted to flickr by Deb Roby.

So much of science involves communication and skills in language arts. Follow this simple recipe to help your students become science communicators: Add 1 cup of science (life, Earth, physical, or general) to 1 cup of language arts. Blend well by attending sessions at the NSTA conference in Phoenix.

Sample these recipe variations.

Elementary Science Surprise

You’ll actually make ice cream—as well as build molecular structures and integrate elementary trade books—in the session titled “Infusing Literacy and Mathematics Skills in the Science Content of the Elementary School.” Science never tasted so good!

Earth Science as a Main Course

“Science, Math, and Literacy: The Three Essentials Needed for Success” will help teachers serve these three important ingredients, flavored with Earth science.

Chemistry Cookies

“Stirring Up Reading in Chemistry” will have middle school, high school, and college teacher “chefs” producing smart cookies who can understand what they read in chemistry. Are you hungry yet?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimmiehomeschoolmom/ / CC BY 2.0

“When we long for life without difficulties, remind us that oaks grow strong in contrary winds, and diamonds are made under pressure.” While these words widely attributed to the late Senate chaplain Peter Marshall hold true in many circumstances, girls and women experiencing the “contrary winds and pressure” of gender inequity may need additional support to succeed in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Several sessions at the NSTA conference in Phoenix can help you help them.

On Thursday, Suman Patil of the Society of Women Engineers will tell you about SWE’s scientific support resources for classrooms and labs during her presentation, Building Productive Relationships with the Society of Women Engineers.

Does using handheld data loggers in physics classes boost high school girls’ confidence in their abilities? Find out at Friday’s National Association for Research in Science Teaching session, Data Logging in Senior High Science: Are We Disadvantaging Girls?

Learning methods and tools that help girls succeed can also benefit other disadvantaged students. Check out the Phoenix session browser, and search using the terms “diversity” and “equity” to see how you can make science for all a reality in your classroom.

Divining the keys to better science education doesn’t require extrasensory perception—just check out the ESP Symposium at the Phoenix Area Conference. Coordinated by Robert Yager, 1982-1983 NSTA president, NSTA’s Exemplary Science Program (ESP) sessions will examine outstanding science education programs and share insight into successful science learning.

“The National Science Education Standards provide the reforms of science teaching advocated after four years of debate,” says Yager. “More than a dozen NSTA leaders (officers and committee members) evaluate nominations…A panel of experts in the focus for a given search evaluates and works with the persons judged to have the most exciting programs for each monograph.”

Six monographs have been released; a seventh, on science dealing with personal and societal issues, is expected to be available in 2010. Three symposia offered in Phoenix will focus on informal education, science education in grades 5-8, and inquiry.

“The ESP sessions are designed to discuss the nature of teacher successes with meeting the specific reforms that are central to the recommendations central to the National Science Education Standards that are often not approached in State Standards which focus primarily on traditional science concepts,” says Yager. He explains the session will share information “concerning how real changes were accomplished and how they can be duplicated in other classrooms.” He hopes the session will get more educators involved by giving them an opportunity to try the practices themselves and “act as research teams similar to those of scientists and technologists. The sessions are meant to be as interactive as time permits.”

And if you use the online session browser, you won’t need that other ESP to find the sessions!

Strands of silk woven into a tapestry. Single strands of thread twined into rope. Strands can be a simple foundation for something greater—more beautiful, stronger, or useful. Following a strand at an NSTA regional conference can have a similar result, combining several sessions into a comprehensive professional development experience.

Three strands run through the Phoenix conference. Conference attendees can focus their professional development experience by following a particular strand such as “Relationships: Building Professional Relationships for Transformative Learning.” Thirteen sessions over three days (only two presentations overlap) explore how educators working together can enhance their students’ learning experiences, as well as their own. Each session offers a different view on professional relationships: some focus on peer outreach, one on professional organizations membership, another on participation in summer internships. The featured presentation from Page Keeley, retiring president of NSTA, will focus on professional learning communities and their potential to change science teaching and learning.

Whether you opt to follow a strand, or weave your own schedule, you’ll leave the conference a stronger educator, equipped with useful ideas (and perhaps samples!) to share with your colleagues and students at home.

One of the organizing strands for the NSTA Conference in Phoenix is “Rigor Without Mortis: Challenging and Accessible Content.” Challenging AND accessible? Genetics fits that bill. The science is in our cells, so it’s certainly accessible, and for those of us with only a rudimentary appreciation of genetics, it’s challenging as well.

For instance, we can use a cheek swab to produce DNA to map our geneology. A number of databases are available for this. And we can do the same to support broader anthropological research. For example, National Geographic’s and IBM’s Genographic Project is mapping historical human migration patterns by collecting and analyzing DNA samples from hundreds of thousands of people from around the world.

Using similar techniques, session presenter Matthew E. Kaplan (Associate Staff Scientist and Project Lead, Human Origins Genotyping Laboratory, Arizona Research Laboratories, Division of Biotechnology, University of Arizona) is contributing to the DNA Shoah Project in order to analyze DNA data for a cause: to reunite families displaced by the Holocaust. His presentation is called DNA: The Strand That Connects Us All.

This fascinating session will take place on Friday, December 4 from 9:30–10:30 AM in the Phoenix Convention Center, Room 120B.

Do you have any questions you’d like Matt to cover?

If you’re a science educator or administrator, NSTA’s Conference on Science Education in Phoenix, scheduled for Dec. 3–5, is an event you won’t want to miss. With a new interest in science education to better prepare our children to compete in the global market, educators will need to pursue the best professional development to bolster content knowledge, learn assessment and inquiry strategies, and test the newest classroom tools and techniques. Featuring more than 400 sessions, workshops, presentations, and symposia, the conference is for teachers in every grade band and from every discipline.

• Daylong programs—Biology Day, Chemistry Day, Physical Science Day, and Physics Day.
• Activities from Across the Earth System—Hands-on, inquiry-based activities spanning the five “spheres” of Earth system science. Handouts! (Elem–High School)
• The School Water Audit Project: Authentic and Integrative Project-based Learning-engages learners in science, literacy, and mathematics to determine the amount of water used in their school and to implement conservation. (Elem–High School)
• Facing the Future—Explore sustainability issues and the incorporation of literacy in the science classroom through hands-on, inquiry-based activities. CD-ROM provided.
• Ice Core Records: From Volcanoes to Stars—Use absolute and relative dating techniques with high-resolution ice core data and historic volcanic eruptions to correlate and date supernova events from nitrate anomalies. (High–College, Informal Educators)
• Ira Flatow (Host, NPR’s Science Friday®): Talking Science in a Science-Challenged World—Mixing Flatow’s passion for science with a tendency toward being “a bit of a ham,” Flatow describes his work as the challenge “to make science and technology a topic for discussion around the dinner table.”

• Lost Dutchman State Park Moonlight Hike—Located in the Sonoran Desert 40 miles east of Phoenix, the park derives its name from the fabled Lost Dutchman Mine. (Ticketed)
• Networking with your peers and the experts
• The Exhibition Hall—Bring a tote to carry home the many giveaways from top companies.

And there is much more to explore. Visit www.nsta.org/phoenix to get details or to register.