UtSTA 2024: Out-Of-This-World Science Teaching

Attendees will experience a lesson where students gather evidence to make and support a claim about whether cotton or spandex is best to wear while river rafting. The lesson aligns to Chem.2.3 and focuses on how the structure of macromolecules affects the functions of those materials. Students will see macro-scale properties of cotton and spandex fibers including water absorbency and a flame test. Students will also experience the structures of the molecules using models and visual aids. This lesson was created through the 3D-RST project as BYU. Lesson materials can be found at 3drst.byu.edu.

During my conference presentation, I'll be share insights gained and lesson plans developed as part of a collaborative cohort in Nebo School District adopting high quality instructional materials. The main source of curriculum is open source, OpenSciEd. Attendees will have the opportunity to actively participate in a segment of an OpenSciEd lesson, and they'll also walk away with digital copies of student workbooks and presentation slides to support their teaching.

Want to up the engagement level in your Science instruction while simultaneously increasing student ownership of their own learning and foster their critical thinking skills? If so, I invite you to join me as I share some powerful strategies that can be tailored to fit any lesson. Incorporating these strategies will also help you to ensure that your lesson design, learning goals, and lesson instruction implementation all directly align with the SEEd standards.

Presentation

Students make long-lasting connections to content when they engage with a phenomenon before direct instruction. In this workshop, participants will dive into a lesson that introduces the concepts of kinetic and potential energy before those terms are formally defined for students. This activity also provides an excellent opportunity to develop your student's skills with the practice of planning and carrying out investigations. It has multiple options for scaffolding to meet diverse student needs. Use this lesson at the beginning of your energy unit for an engaging and memorable launch point that students will connect back to in future lessons.