Day One: The National Center for Science Education has created lessons that are aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) to teach about evolution, climate change, and the nature of science. In this session, teachers will be introduced to five Climate Change Story Shorts, which is a new and innovative method for creating three-dimensional storylines. This approach was developed after conducting a two-year curriculum field study with middle and high school science teachers. The Story Short format is a concise storyline that can be completed in as little as five class periods, or expanded with optional Side Quest activities. All the materials, including detailed lesson plans, student handouts, slides, and resources, are freely available to teachers online. During this session, teachers will get hands-on experience with one or two selected activities and will learn how to access all the resources online for future use.

Day Two: The DataWISE tool combines key principles and practices gathered from research-based strategies in media literacy and data analysis into one easy-to-use tool with added attention given to the ways that data can be co-opted or misrepresented. When considering a claim presented with accompanying data, students will ask themselves a series of questions to judge the authority, purpose, presentation, and sensibility of the claim and evidence using the WISE acronym. They start with questions that allow them to determine whether the claim is Worthy of their attention, Inspect the data, ask if the interpretation of the data and the conclusions make Sense, and pay close attention to the Emotions elicited by the claim and data presented. With continued practice, students should eventually be able to internalize these questions and use this method to critically evaluate any data-based claim presented to them in person, print, or digital formats.