Constructing scientific explanations provides a learning experience in which learners make sense of science ideas. Developing scientific explanations based on evidence and supported with scientific reasoning is fundamental to accomplishing the practices of science in the classroom. When teachers engage students in developing scientific explanations, and the sense-making it requires, students are actively accomplishing most, if not all, of the practices of science. The students become active learners engaged in “figuring things out” rather than passive learners and this has been shown to provide deeper understanding and retention. Finally, these skills are foundational to writing in science. In this workshop, teachers will engage in activities to explore how to work with students to develop claims, support them with evidence, and provide the reasoning that ties the evidence to the claim and to science concepts and principles that they are teaching in class. Workshop activities include engaging in classroom exemplars, unpacking the teaching moves this practice of science teaching requires, and reflecting on how this accomplishes teaching for sense-making. This workshop can be structured for either primary or secondary science teachers.

In our increasingly data-driven society, data literacy is an important civic skill to be developed in our learners--and what better place to develop these skills than in science class. In addition to its importance as a civic skill, learners can engage in more meaningful science learning experiences from K-12 by using data to connect school subjects with real-world events. Further, there are more-and-more large data sets becoming available for teachers to use in the exploration phase of their science lessons. In this workshop, participants will engage in a science exemplar lesson that also explicitly teaches data literacy. Participants will examine and reflect upon the data literacy components of the lesson and how they were “scaffolded” throughout the lesson. Participants will then engage in an activity in which we develop a learning progression for teaching data literacy skills across the grades, beginning with primary grades and working through the secondary grades.

Scientific modeling is a core practice in science whereby scientists represent evidence-based explanations for natural phenomena, models, and use them to generate predictions and drive further research. Just as with scientists, modeling can help learners in science classrooms represent their ideas about scientific phenomena and revise and advance those ideas throughout the unit. Through models based inquiry (MBI) teachers can implement all eight practices of science. This workshop will engage participants in an MBI exemplar of teaching and then examine the pedagogy underpinning it drawing on what teachers just experienced.

GEMS curricula are a suite of more than 75 math and science units developed by Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of California-Berkeley. OSTA is a regioanl GEMS Center.

GEMS workshops are designed to introduce K-5 and 6-8 grade teachers to GEMS curricula and to the research-based teaching practices that underpin them. Teachers learn student-centered teaching practices by participating in GEMS science and mathematics units and then comparing and contrasting them with traditional teacher-centered teaching practices. This serves as an introduction to teaching practices that support the Common Core State Standards for mathematics and the national Next Generation Science Standards. Half-day, one-day, two-day, and three-day workshop formats are available.