Join WestEd’s Kirsten Daehler, Kathy DiRanna, Jo Topps, and Aída Walqui, who will present this week at the National Science Teachers Association National Conference in Chicago.

In addition to checking out our staff presentations (see details below), stop by the WestEd booth!


Professional Development Institute: Moving Standards into Practice: Five Tools and Processes for Translating the
 Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) into Instructional Sequences and Classroom Assessments

Date: Wednesday, March 11, 2015
Time & Location:
9am-4pm (CT), McCormick Place, W178b

Kathy DiRanna and Jo Topps will share a set of tools and processes that can help deepen your knowledge and enable you to translate the NGSS into instructional sequences that can engage students in using science and engineering practices and that highlight the crosscutting concepts.


AMNH Pathway Session: Using a Tool and the NGSS Performance Expectations to Plan for Classroom Assessments

Date: Thursday, March 12, 2015
Time & Location: 12:30-2:30pm (CT), McCormick Place, W178b

In this presentation by Jo Topps and Kathy DiRanna, you will use a tool to engage in a process that deepens understanding of the NGSS performance expectations to consider evidence of learning and plan for classroom assessment.


Featured Presentation: Next Generation Science Standards and English Language Learners—The Development of Deep and Generative Practices

Date: Thursday, March 12, 2015
Time & Location: 3:30-4:30pm (CT), McCormick Place, W190a

Featured presenter Aída Walqui will address the major theoretical and pedagogical shifts that science teachers need to engage in as they address the development of their students’ deep and generative understandings, skills, and language.


Short Course: Making Sense of Student Work: A Protocol for Teacher Collaboration

Date: Friday, March 13, 2015
Time & Location: 8-11am (CT), Palmer House, Crystal

Join presenter Kirsten Daehler, where you will take home a copy of WestEd’s new book Making Sense of Student Work and have the opportunity to experience this research-based approach designed to support groups of teachers looking together at student work in a way that models collaborative inquiry, maintains a focus on evidence, and encourages reflective instructional practices.


AMNH Pathway Session: Using a Tool and NGSS Performance Expectation Specifications to Develop Assessment Tasks

Date: Friday, March 13, 2015
Time & Location: 12:30-2:30pm (CT), McCormick Place, W178b

Jo Topps and Kathy DiRanna will present a tool used to engage in a process to create assessments aligned to performance expectations based on task specifications.

Special Pathway Session: Get Grounded—Experience the NGSS in Practice

Date:Friday, March 13, 2015
Time & Location: 2-4pm (CT), McCormick Place, W175c

Wondering how to put the NGSS into action in your classroom? You and presenter Kirsten Daehler will dig through soil samples to discuss how core NGSS ideas, practices, and crosscutting concepts can be explored as part of the geosphere.

Learn more about the NSTA 2015 National Conference.