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Your Elementary Classroom

Science and Children

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In the current issue:

This issue of Science and Children offers engaging ideas, strategies, and resources for helping your students understand how the parts of an ecosystem interact.

Featured articles:

Science and Children is now available to NSTA members in a digital version. Same great content, but now NSTA members can read it on the computer as well as the Kindle Fire, Android tablet/phone, and Apple devices. For more information, please go to our digital journals page. Questions? e-mail us at digitaljournals@nsta.org.

Student Competitions

Looking for ways to engage your students in the fun of science? NSTA-sponsored competitions encourage teamwork while tapping into their natural curiosity.

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NSTA Position Statements

NSTA has developed several position statements of particular interest to elementary-level teachers:

All position statements

Grants and Fellowships

  • 3/10/2014 - 3/16/2014
    BrainWare Brain Awareness Week Grants  More »
  • 5/1/2014 - 12/31/2014
    Office Depot Foundation Grants  More »
  • 1/1/2015 - 2/28/2015
    Monsanto Fund Grants  More »

To see more science education events and programs, visit the NSTA calendar.

Freebies for Science Teachers

The staff of NSTA Reports has collected hundreds of free resources for you. Take a moment to browse the listings—we think you'll find something to reward the effort.

Resources and Opportunities for Your Elementary Classroom

Guidelines for Classroom Safety

This four-page document should be given to students at the beginning of the school year to help them understand their role in ensuring a safe and productive science experience.

Download Safety in the Science Classroom

A Year of Inquiry

All issues of Science and Children include inquiry, but we took it a step further with this volume—an entire year devoted to inquiry! Follow along as we explore what scientists do and then progress through process skills, notebooking, posing questions, collecting data, choosing investigations, and sharing and assessing the results of inquiry.

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Reward Yourself!

You could win a trip to the NSTA National Conference on Science Education. Apply for NSTA Teacher Awards to showcase your hard work! At the elementary level, Delta Education, DuPont/Pioneer, PASCO, SeaWorld, Shell, and Vernier sponsor awards. In addition, the Sylvia Shugrue Award, Mohling Aerospace Educator Award, and the Maitland P. Simmons scholarships for new teachers have niches for the elementary science educator.

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Early Years Blog

The Early Years Blog offers resources and conversation on PreK to 2 science. Topic areas include Activity Ideas, Classroom Management, Integrating Science, and more!

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Award-winning Lesson Plans

The Sylvia Shugrue Award for Elementary School Teachers honors one elementary school teacher who creates and makes use of interdisciplinary, inquiry-based lesson plans. To qualify, teachers submit a lesson plan with fully referenced sources of information and any relevant National Science Education Standards and benchmarks found in The Atlas of Science Literacy. Since the award's debut in 2007, NSTA has recognized six teachers (we made two awards the first year … the submissions were that good). Please follow the link below to read the award winners' lesson plan ideas.

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Need Help Selecting Resources?

NSTA Recommends®

Our panel of top-flight teachers and other outstanding science educators has designated the best available supplements for your science teaching.

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Outstanding Science Trade Books for Students K–12

Since 1973, NSTA and the Children's Book Council have compiled a yearly list of outstanding children's science trade books. The results from 1996 on are available online.

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Blick’s Pick: Crow tools

The more we study animal intelligence, the smarter they seem to get. This crow, who goes by the nick name 007, is able to complete an eight-step process to get a food reward. While he had done all the individual steps before, the fact that he could put them all together in the right order is still impressive. (Bonus points if you recognize the Far Side reference in the title of this pick.) YouTube link | Archive