Curriculum and Instruction Commons^™

Session D-3: The Mathematical Wonders Of Pascal's Triangle, Donald Porzio

Professional Learning Day

Most mathematics teachers are aware of the some of the more straightforward connections Pascal's Triangle has to mathematics. Come explore some of the lesser known connections that can be used to peak your students' interest and entice them into exploring the mathematics behind these connections.

Session D-2: Science And The Feminine: A Cultural Examination, Robert Kiely

Professional Learning Day

This session will explore the treatment of the feminine in science and natural philosophy from Antiquity to the 20th century. We will examine different views of the female role in nature and generation, and trace the links between such views and the treatment of women in society. We will also study changing notions of the relationship between gender and mind, and we will consider how such views have affected the place of women in the scientific community.

Session F-6: “To Infinity And Beyond” – Exploring Ways To Teach An Abstract Concept, Nicole Ross

Professional Learning Day

Imagine a numberless world. I wonder if you can. No need for calculations, or counting tools of man. Imagine all the people living without 1, 2, 3’s…Abstract concepts are often difficult to teach. Students frequently desire concrete examples of calculations or real-world connections to concepts. The concrete becomes increasingly difficult when numbers are extraordinarily large or small. Join us as we explore techniques designed to provide real-world connections and help make numbers, big, small, or infinite, easier to understand.

Session F-2: Simple Chemistry Labs And Activities To Teach Difficult And Important Concepts, Dave Devol, Deb Scarano, Anita White

Professional Learning Day

This will be a hands-on session where participants will perform four chemistry activities/experiments (two of the experiments will be a variation on one theme). The topics will include bonding, equilibrium, and stoichiometry. Teachers will be provided with copies of the activities to take back to their classes. In the spirit of learning together, we ask participants to bring their favorite activity/lab to share with the group (these labs will not be performed, just shared. Bringing an activity to share is optional, not required).

Session F-1: Exploration Geometry: Hands-On Transformations, Lindsey Herlehy, David Hernandez, Karen Togliatti

Professional Learning Day

In this session, participants will engage in a series of hands-on, minds-on Geometry lessons designed to explore the four transformations. By completing several critical thinking challenges, teachers will use the Common Core Mathematical Practices and various manipulatives to investigate how figures rotate, dilate, translate, and reflect within a plane. Appropriate for multiple grade levels, teachers will leave the session with all instructional plans and various ways to adapt the lesson based on the needs of their students.

Session F-4: Developing Parametric Equations Using Mathematical Modeling, Mark Kammrath

Professional Learning Day

Designing project to develop student understanding of parametric equations and two modeling situations in which they are applied. No previous knowledge of parametrics is required by the students. The project requires two days of class time, with the remaining work done outside of class. This project is intended to be given three days into a unit on vectors.

Session F-3: “It Is Rocket Science”, Carmela Jones, Christine L. Moskalik

Professional Learning Day

All current NASA rocket launchers are no longer useable because all of the available rocket-fuel sources on Earth have been depleted. Participants will serve as NASA engineers tasked with developing non-fuel-based rocket launcher prototypes in an effort to maintain current and future NASA space programs and missions. Model how you will get your students to take off with Rocket Science.

Session C-1: Crusades: The Bridging Of The East And West And The End Of The Middle Ages, George Haldaman

Professional Learning Day

This seminar will examine how to make the Crusades an easy concept for high school students to understand. By examining the cultural exchange that occurred between the Christians and Muslims, we will examine the legacy of the Crusades by discussing how they brought an end to the Middle Ages by sharing ideas, diseases, and knowledge. The seminar will also present lesson plans you can use to teach this turning point in history.

Session B-2: Is Stem Truly For All: Motivating Black And Latino Students To Engage In Stem, Adrienne Coleman

Professional Learning Day

This presentation takes an intricate look at the factors that motivate gifted and talented Black and Latino students to engage in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). According to the literature, the U.S. workforce could employ as many as 140,000 additional Black and Latino college graduates in STEM fields annually if the gap in college completion by Blacks and Latinos closed to roughly match that of the White and Asian student graduation rates. Thus, the goal of this presentation is to inform administrators, educators, and programs of a 5-step motivation-based process that encourages Black and Latino students to engage in …

Session B-1: Model Building In Planetary Science And The Ngss, Eric Hawker

Professional Learning Day

In this session I will guide teachers through the steps my students take in Planetary Science to develop a conceptual model of how planetary interiors work. Teachers will then create concept maps from their conceptual models, and then use their models and maps to understand planetary systems other than Earth.

Session B-4: Stem Integration: Statistics Is The Connection, Karen Togliatti, Lindsey Herlehy

Professional Learning Day

In this activity, participants will complete a STEM-integrated lesson incorporating problems in aerodynamics. Using the mathematical, science and engineering practice standards, they will design and model parachutes to determine a life-size chute to support their body weight. Participants will also consider design criteria for rate of descent, and graphically represent data and mathematical information as a scatter plot.

Session B-3: Operation Paperclip And The Rise Of Weapons Of Mass Destruction, Diane Haleas, Matthew Miller

Professional Learning Day

On November 26, 1944 Dutch-American particle physicist Samual Goudsmit and his fellow members of the secret Operation Alsos carefully scoured the private papers of Nazi scientists, uncovering startling information on the extent of Nazi biological weapons experiments. Operation Alsos would give rise to Operation Paperclip – the U.S. government’s effort to bring over 1,600 German and Nazi scientists, doctors, engineers, and technologists to the United States. Also recruited were Nazi war criminals whose scientific prowess seemed to override the U.S. government’s moral qualms. The period from November, 1944 – May, 1945 changed the world as the U.S. government began to …

Session B-2: Why World War I? Being Intelligent About The Causes, Lee Eysturlid

Professional Learning Day

This presentation will guide attendees through the complicated and often misrepresented ideas that have formed around understanding why it is that World War I started the way that it did. The focus will be mostly on the military and technological elements. Participants will be ready to teach the topic when they leave, and it suits US and World History teachers (and middle school).

Session B-1: Messing With The “Rise Of The West”, John Horton

Professional Learning Day

This session will present strategies and lesson plans for World History teachers who want their students to learn how to interrogate the idea that modern European hegemony began in 1492. Was the Renaissance the Renaissance? Does modernity or early modernity have origins in Song China, Abbasid Baghdad, and Mongolian Asia? Does the era of western hegemony begin with the Opium Wars and the repression of the Sepoy Rebellion? We will examine these and other questions in a session that will question some of the basic assumptions about we teach world or global history courses.

Session B-4: Who Freed The Slaves? Emancipation And The Sources Of Social Change, David Heineman

Professional Learning Day

Abraham Lincoln argued that all knew slavery was “somehow the cause of the war”. And every student knows that one of the most significant outcomes of the Civil War was the abolition of slavery. But how did this happen? Who actually freed the slaves? In this session, we’ll model a lesson that teachers can use, rooted in historical thinking and primary sources that helps students engage in authentic historical inquiry about a turning point in our nation’s past.

Session A-1: Teaching Fields In Introductory Physics, Peter Dong

Professional Learning Day

The concept of a field is integral to all areas of contemporary physics - perhaps as fundamental a concept as energy. Fields are mentioned in several NGSS standards and essential to understand physics at an advanced level. However, fields are not difficult and can be taught in an introductory course with minimal math. Students who understand the basic concept early should have less difficulty understanding electric and magnetic fields in later classes. I will discuss our implementation of a fields unit in our introductory physics course and give examples of simple labs and exercises to help students understand this basic …

Session C-1: Ecosystem Disruption: Using Lab And Real-World Examples To Bring Changes In Earth’S Ecosystems To Life, Crystal Randall, Sarah O'Leary-Driscoll, Sowmya Anjur, Don Dosch

Professional Learning Day

The magnitude of the changes occurring in Earth’s ecosystems seems difficult to tackle in the classroom and lab. Here we explore ways to demonstrate the changes in the Earth’s water and carbon cycles in the lab and bring them to life in real-world ecosystems in the classroom.

Session A-4: It’S A Wrap, Lindsey Herlehy, David Hernandez

Professional Learning Day

Investigate the concepts of surface area, measurement, ratio and proportion through a visual and kinesthetic mathematical investigation. Participants will be presented with the challenge of calculating how many sheets of toilet paper it would take to wrap one of their group members using a limited selection of tools. This session will provide teachers with a wonderful hands-on, minds-on activity that could easily be implemented into any classroom!

Session A-3: The Box Problem – An Introduction, Ruth Dover

Professional Learning Day

Create some simple boxes with paper and scissors. Then we'll measure the height, area of the base, and the volume. Find formulas, find regressions, and graph the functions. It's a simple activity to engage students and combine many different aspects of mathematics.

Session C-4: Design Your School’S New Innovation Space, Britta W. Mckenna, Lawrence Bergie

Professional Learning Day

Schools are rethinking learning spaces, turning outdated computer labs and tired libraries into vibrant innovation spaces. Maker spaces, collaboration areas and technology hubs that connect applied learning to the real world are emerging. See plans for IMSA's new innovation hub, called IN2, (opening fall 2016) learn how it was designed, and tour IN1 (the prototype of IN2) in a former computer lab. Learners are guided through a design thinking process to reimagine a current space at your school. Participants should come with photos of their potential space/s and room dimensions ready to create a prototype of their new space.

Session C-5: Biotech Basics, Elizabeth Martinez, Emily Hood Ferrin

Professional Learning Day

The field of biotechnology is rapidly expanding. What is biotech? What are the applications? How is biotech studied? These topics will be explored as participants engage in hands-on lessons developed at an appropriate level for middle school students. Activities may be used to introduce students to the world of biotech.

Session C-3: Engineering With Reinforced Concrete, Patrick Young

Professional Learning Day

Does your school need a shelter? Whether your students are concerned about tornadoes, sharknadoes, or a zombie apocalypse, reinforced concrete is the answer! Learn about the history and chemistry of concrete. Make your own. Design a test to evaluate the strength of your concrete, based on anticipated threat (the natural or unnatural disaster of your choice). Conduct that test using small, preformed slabs. Making and breaking concrete is easy and fun, but wear your play-clothes. You will get dirty.

Session C-2: “It Is Easy As Pi”, Christine L. Moskalik, Carmela Jones

Professional Learning Day

Participants will work together using pi to try to open an ancient chest filled with treasure!! The chest is protected by a passcode that can only be determined through the activities within the lesson. Enjoy a progressive exposure to pi through this two-part lesson (total 110 minutes) offering a FUN storyline within the context of geometry and circles. With "pi-day" right around the corner, this hands-on, fun, inquiry-based lesson is sure to be a hit with your budding mathematicians.

Session A-2: She Fought For The Fatherland: Gender, War And Memory In The Soviet Union Subject: History, Kitty Lam

Professional Learning Day

John Keegan once wrote, “Warfare is…the one human activity…from which women have always and everywhere stood apart. Women…do not fight…and they never in any military sense, fight men” (John Keegan, A History of Warfare, 76). Yet in the Second World War, an estimated 120,000 Soviet women served in combat roles. This presentation uses photographs of women in combat and images of Soviet war monuments and to help students reconsider wartime division of gender roles. It also prompts students to examine how women’s contributions to war were commemorated in a country that supposedly championed gender equality.

Session A-1: The New Illinois Civics Curriculum: Perils And Pitfalls, Claiborne A. Skinner Jr., Eric Smith

Professional Learning Day

The Illinois Legislature will require all Illinois students to complete one semester in civics in order graduate beginning with students entering next academic year. IMSA adopted a combined one-semester civics/American history curriculum this year that can serve as a critical study in how to achieve the goals the state hopes to achieve. Rather than wrestle with the issue of American History vs. American Government curriculum, we are attempting to present a History of American Government, exploring the origins of our political institutions beginning in the Dark Ages and how these have evolved to meet the needs of the times. We …

There’S A Dragon In My Classroom, Sarah O'Leary-Driscoll

Nature of Science

What makes science, science?

How do we help students make sense of the science they are learning and how it fits in with preconceived notions and misconceptions, social perspectives, and potential controversy?

Pbl Rock And Roll: Tectonics In Illinois, Illinois Mathematics And Science Academy

Teacher Resources

This sample Problem Based Learning (PBL) unit focuses on creating earthquake friendly buildings and homes in response to the history of seismic activity in Illinois. Students explore concepts of engineering and tectonics. This unit is designed for educators who are learning to implement PBL into their classroom instruction.

3: "The Current Extinction: Defaunation & Ecosystem Disruption", Sarah O'Leary-Driscoll, Crystal Randall

Ecosystem Disruption & Climate Change

Information taken from: Dirzo, R. et al (2014). Defaunation in the Anthropocene. Science, 345(401).

Scientists estimate, conservatively, that there are 5 to 9 million different animal species on the planet. But that number is continually changing, and unfortunately, dropping, as we are likely losing 11,000- 58,000 species annually, and evidence suggests that on average, there has been a decline of about 28% in terms of numbers of individuals within a species over the last four decades. Both of these statistics are vitally important. The critical nature of the first is perhaps more obvious, as total loss of a species is …

2a: "Illinois Carbon Dioxide Emissions Activity", Sarah O'Leary-Driscoll, Crystal Randall

Ecosystem Disruption & Climate Change

Your goal for this activity is to compare the different sources of carbon dioxide emissions, stemming from the consumption of fossil fuels, in Illinois. To do this you will be working with data spanning from 1980 to 2012.

The Greenhouse Effect: Does The Concentration Of Carbon Dioxide Affect The Air Temperature In A Closed Environment?, Climate Science Investigations - Nasa

Ecosystem Disruption & Climate Change

The purpose of this lesson is to investigate the effect of carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration on air temperature in a closed environment.