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MnSTA at MEA

October 19 - 20, 2017

This year MnSTA will have a presence at the Education Minnesota Professional Conference on Thursday, October 19th. MnSTA will sponsor a series of great science sessions and a general information booth with exciting science demonstrations.

 The MnSTA strand of science sessions will start Thursday at 8:30 am with an hour of amazing science demonstrations (Science Magic) by Jerry Wenzel. Laurie Arnason will follow at 9:50 with a presentation on outdoor notebooking. At her session, you will discover how to integrate your science teaching so students will learn to treat science with new understanding and appreciation At 1:00, Lee Schmitt will present Science and Engineering Practices: Free and Fun Professional Development for Teachers of Science. During this session you will join your science colleagues for an investigation of a new series of online professional development modules focused on Asking Questions, Using Models, and Constructing Explanations. Each module provides a set of interactive sessions designed to help teach the practices of science and engineering more directly and more often.

     On Friday, October 20 at 11:30 Apple Valley High School MN staff will present Fab Lab K-12 STEM Pathway Integration. The Apple Valley High School MN Fabrication Lab, with support from our E3STEM grant, has integrated STEM throughout the K12 pathway, school and community. Apple Valley High School is the pinnacle of a K-12 STEM corridor of Independent School District 196 in Minnesota. This corridor is comprised of five elementary schools, one middle school and our high school. Both the High school and Middle school have full international fabrication labs. The elementary schools have makerspaces.

     One goal of the K12 STEM corridor is to become a model for the rest of the school district, state of Minnesota and the nation. This corridor has aligned STEM curriculum with district, state and national standards and has enabled dialogue between teachers at all three levels.

     The Department of Labor E3STEM grant awarded the high school created partnerships with businesses that allow students at all levels to experience field trips, internships and mentoring with businesses. Community outreach in STEM related fields has been greatly increased with the addition of the fabrication labs in the middle school and high school.

     The AVHS Fab Lab has integrated STEM into several courses at the high school.

     In addition to these sessions, we hope you will visit the MnSTA booth on Thursday on the main convention floor to enjoy more wiz-bang science demonstrations, to learn about the benefits of MnSTA membership, and to register early for MNCOSE, MnSTA’s Minnesota Conference on Science Education.