National+Science+Teachers+Association+-+November+2010

This conference has been exceptional! I have been able to attend sessions that will improve my Ecology class, however I have also attended several sessions that will hopefully be useful to the science department or other faculty in different subject matter (World Civ., British Lit., or Geometry).

STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) seems to be one of the major buzz words here this year. I attended a couple of sessions regarding STEM, both giving us great resources to work on integrating STEM into our already extensive curriculum. Whether is was websites or actual projects, we were given better insight as to STEM and its potential with enhancing science curriculum.

I also attended a dynamic session on enhancing Inquiry Based Learning in the classroom. This was a session that would be helpful and reinforcing across all disciplines. They gave us 6 simple strategies; (a) call for clarification, (b) call for evidence, (c) call for evaluation, (d) play devil's advocate, (e) wait time I and II, and (f) don't always look for the "right" answer.

Another great session discussed the value of upper school science students being mentors to middle school science students. In the session, they used the county science fair as an example...while we don't do science fairs, there is still tremendous value in creating science mentors. Even a thought passed through my mind of creating an evening science symposium at the middle school, where select middle school science students work with upper school science students and present papers on current science research.

Another buzz phrase prevalent here was Project Based Learning (PBL). I went to a few sessions that specifically spoke to implementing PBL into the classroom. Again, while it was geared towards science educators, these sessions had practical use for all subject areas; history, English, etc. They suggested that we look at the BUCK INSTITUTE to help with the process. In essence, the teacher creates a 10 day unit that entails the following: a kid friendly title, core learning goals, "big ideas", essential questions, essential vocabulary, what does the research tell us, prerequisite list, and create enduring understanding. These are literal titles for each section of the Unit Guide for the teacher. Fascinating stuff, especially when you consider that this is geared towards creating thinkers, not doers.

One last great session was on Professional Development (PD) for science teachers. NSTA gave an in-depth session on how NSTA has 1000's of resources and on-line classes for teachers to take in the comfort of their own home...for a very minimal fee, especially if they are NSTA members. They also showed us a website that they have created to help science teachers stay organized and current with data, helpful hints, and even lesson plan ideas. The website is: []. On this website, they can sign up for free and still have all the same resource availability that an NSTA member would have. The only difference is if there is a resource that costs money, it is $1-$5 dollars more for a non-NSTA member. It's truly fantastic. I have already started using it.

Thanks for reading and please feel free to ask me anything, I have lots of websites and detailed notes for all of my sessions.

Don