I just got back from the NSTA convention in Baltimore. Baltimore is a great city (what I know of it) and is a great place for a convention.
I only got to go to the Friday seminars but those that I did go to were great. The first one was on magnetism. The speaker had a lot of great ideas for hands-on that I would like to try. What I liked about it was that they had a guy going around showing how to do the different activities. They really worked well together. I learned a lot.
Another, very similar seminar, was on involving parents in science learning. The speaker had great ideas on getting students to go home and teach their parents about what they learned in class.
The last session I went to involved reading in the content area. The focus was comprehension. Many students can read and sound fluent, however, when it comes time to explain what they just read, many cannot. Some of the strategies suggested were to work on paraphrasing and retelling - if a student can put something in their own words then they can show comprehension.
The problem with going to a convention like this is that you come back with so many ideas that it is difficult to know where to start!
