Biotechnology is a fairly new concept for middle school students as well as teachers. If the latest craze of TV shows focused on crime scene investigation events were not so popular, the term and concept might be even obscure to the public. There is an increased presence of biotechnology in our daily surroundings that makes it practical and necessary to introduce the basic concepts in our classrooms today. Help students to understand biotechnology using the DNA Extraction Lab and The Immunoassay Lab, available through The Biotechnology/Bioinformatics Discovery Project.
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Science is a proving ground for skills learned in math classes, and for most students, it is often the first place where they have had to repeatedly use math to answer questions and solve problems. A lack of math skills can have a negative impact on students' overall performance in science and can greatly hinder a deeper understanding of many important concepts, especially those in physical science. Here, the editor discusses this critical issue and shares some recommendations that science teachers can use to get an idea of their students' math proficiency while clearly showing students that math skills areimportant in science.
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Many science topics can naturally be integrated with a variety of mathematical concepts, including the study of light and optics. In the hands-on activities described here, students explore the properties of light energy while building their understanding of geometric concepts.
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The inertial balance is one device that can help students to quantify the quality of inertia—a body’s resistance to a change in movement—in more generally understood terms of mass. In this hands-on activity, students use the inertial balance to develop a more quantitative idea of what mass means in an inertial sense. The activity also helps students refine their ability to use numerical data and line graphs as a tool for making predictions.
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While most people regard bone as a static entity in our body, this is a serious misconception and one that should be corrected early because bone health is a concern for people of all ages—not just the elderly. While bone tissue is primarily for protection and structural support, it is among the most important of tissues in our body because bones have significant metabolic features. This article will address some of the features of bone, its cell types, the metabolic role that this important tissue has in our body, and ways we can help students to better understand bone and why it is important to their overall health—both now and in the future.
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Students are often confused by the difference between the terms accuracy and precision. In the following activities, students explore the definitions of accuracy and precision while learning about salt march ecology and the methods used by scientists to assess salt marsh health. The activities also address the concept that the ocean supports a great diversity of life and ecosystems, which is one of the ocean literacy principles outlined by the Ocean Literacy Network.
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The Sun and the Moon are our most visible neighbors in space, yet their distance and size relative to the Earth are often misunderstood. Science textbooks fuel this misconception because they regularly depict linear images of Moon phases without respect to the actual sizes of the Sun, Earth, and Moon, nor their correlated distances from one another. This integrated lesson is designed to help students communicate their ideas of the relative sizes and distances of the Sun, Earth, and Moon, and to construct appropriate understandings of how scaling factors can be used to make representations of astronomical distances.
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A hands-on approach to mean, median, mode, and range turned a simple lab into a two-day opportunity for cooperation among lab-group members and among lab groups. The concepts of accuracy and precision were introduced and distinguished from each other.
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Teaching students to gather and analyze data can be challenging. In particular, many students find the concepts of mean, mode, median, and range to be confusing, even though these concepts are typically introduced to students in second grade, and covered in more detail in subsequent grades. Mastering the concepts of median, mode, mean, and range is crucial to science experiments that involve numerous trials. In order to help students with their mastery, the author developed The Piñata Game—a hands-on, multicultural, problem-solving activity.
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The concept of density underlies the explanation for a variety of natural phenomena such as weather patterns and plate tectonics. However, we often find that although students can identify the formula d = m/v, they are not able to apply it to other concepts in science. Full understanding of density requires understanding the mathematical explanation behind it. In these activities, the mathematics is coaxed into student explanations of observed phenomena. This builds facility with two important mathematical concepts: ratio and proportion.
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The author’s experience with middle school learners has taught him that they need structure with the steps in solving mathematical word problems. They need a tool they can rely on if all else fails. As a result, he devised a method called IFSMU, a five-step process that deals more with the mechanics of solving the problem than with the algebra involved.
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The hazards of pests in the classroom are numerous. Mice can contaminate food and supplies and trigger asthma attacks, cockroaches can cause allergic reactions and aggravate asthma, flies can spread disease, bee and yellow jacket stings can be life threatening, and spiders and ant bites can cause pain and even death. As teachers, we want to provide a safe classroom for our students, but we are also concerned about the indiscriminant use of hazardous pesticides in schools and on school grounds. Numerous studies have shown the dangers of exposure to these chemicals, especially for children. This is a real issue and one that finally is being addressed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and many state legislators.
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Beyond Neptune and to the edge of the solar system is what is collectively known as the trans-Neptunian region, and objects in this region are sometimes referred to as TNOs. They are considered to be pristine remnants of the early solar system forming out of the protoplanetary disk. At the lower temperatures further out form the Sun, fewer TNOs formed because of the lack of building materials—fewer rocky objects to serve as the nuclei and smaller amounts of condensable gases that could add icy layers onto the rocks. Various forms of ice are a principal component of many of the outer planet moons. In addition to the icy moons, it has been estimated that there may be around 100,000 other icy objects with diameters greater than 100 km orbiting the Sun in the area of the outer planets and beyond.
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The abilities to propose experiments, make observations, and use data to justify conclusions are critical to the scientific process (NRC 1996; NRC 2000). The Blue Bottle Demonstration provides an excellent platform for introducing these skills. The demonstration process allows the teacher to maintain control while guiding an inquiry into the chemical system. This involves students in an investigation early, even on the first day of class if the teacher chooses, before they have any experience in hands-on group activities.
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