New Releases

Because you demanded it! Since publication of Volume 1 of this series, thousands of teachers are using these innovative classroom tools to improve student learning in science. Following in the footsteps of earlier volumes in the Uncovering Student Ideas in Science series, this all-new book provides short, easy-to-administer probes that determine what misconceptions students bring to the classroom about the nature of science and about physical, life, Earth, and space sciences. This new volume in our bestselling series provides more topic areas for classroom use as well as guidance on how teachers can use the probes for their own learning.

As outlined in previous volumes, teachers—like their students—can have misconceptions that come to the fore when administering the probes. Volume 3 provides 10 detailed suggestions for teachers on how to use the probes to uncover, accurately assess, and correct their own preconceptions as well as their students’ (e.g., do the probes yourself, examine student responses with other teachers, embed the probes into existing professional development programs, select specific areas to focus on, examine student thinking across grade spans, categorize ideas, and crunch data to create classroom profiles).

Volume 3 offers five life science probes, seven Earth and space science probes, ten physical science probes, and three nature of science probes. This volume is an invaluable resource for classroom teachers, preservice teachers, professional developers, and college science and preservice faculty.


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Elementary teachers know that learning science involves both the process of thinking and the ability to communicate those thoughts. One of the most effective ways of demonstrating this is through the use of student science notebooks. The earlier students learn to keep records, the better they will be prepared to make this a natural part of their science activities.

Classroom teachers who want to begin using or who are currently including science notebooks as part of their instruction will find that Using Science Notebooks in Elementary Classrooms is a “must-have” resource for the development of scientific inquiry, literacy, and reasoning skills. This book makes the case for using science notebooks strategically—promoting hands-on observing, recording, and reflecting—and demonstrates how best to do so.

Connecting language arts to science through expository writing, the book presents proven techniques such as scaffolds, sentence starters, discussion starters, and other writing prompts to encourage students to build on current knowledge. Every step of the process is examined: introducing notebook writing to the class, creating questions to explore, making predictions, recording observations, making and defending claims, and using the notebooks to provide targeted student feedback. Also included are chapters on the specialized needs of English language learners, offering specific strategies to increase proficiency and fluency in both science and language.


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What causes condensation? Does temperature affect how well a balloon will fly? How do tiny bugs get into oatmeal? Through 15 mystery stories, this book memorably illustrates science concepts for students and reinforces the value of learning science through inquiry. Each mystery presents opportunities for students to create questions, form hypotheses, test their ideas, and come up with explanations. Focused on concepts such as periodic motion, thermodynamics, temperature and energy, and sound, these mysteries draw students into the stories by grounding them in experiences students are familiar with, providing them with a foundation for classroom discussion and inquiry.

The story format is used because it is one of the most effective ways to engage students’ attention right from the start. Each chapter includes a list of science concepts explored, targeted strategies for using the stories with children in grades K–4 and with older students in grades 5–8, and a key matching story concepts with corresponding standards in the NSES.


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Behind the stereotype of girls’ not doing well in science are some reasons, mostly based on one fact: They are often—and most often inadvertently—treated differently in the classroom. The authors of Girls in Science engaged in years of working under a grant funded by the National Science Foundation on this all-too-real problem of gender-equitable science teaching. What they found through working with students, teachers, and scientists— the three elements of the Triad community in which their research started—can change the way you teach and level the playing field of science education for girls.

The Triad refers also to the Student Goals, the Teaching Goals, and the Science Goals – there are five in each area—that lie at the heart of the book. Each of the 15 goals is supported by an essay, strategies, and brief vignettes that will help teachers and students reach the goal. The vignettes, written by teachers and scientists involved in the project, illustrate the strategies. They illuminate problems and provoke the reader to find remedies through the use of reflection questions and links to similar vignettes. For the Student Goal of “Confidence to Explore,” for instance, one of the three strategies is “Knowing that I learn when I make mistakes.” The five vignettes supporting the strategies include “After the Initial Eewww,” “No Longer the Same,” and “No Step-by-Step Instructions.”

Girls in Science is valuable for more than issues of gender equity. As their work progressed, the authors realized what they were learning could be adapted to help with equitable teaching for other groups of students; special-needs students, English language learners, and ethnic and racial minorities, for example.


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A classic resource for teachers is now back in an updated edition! Using an inductive and experimental approach, Animal Coloration aims to increase students’ awareness of the ways wild organisms are adapted to their environments. Even though the activities suggest a specific teaching procedure, each activity is also intended to be an investigation by the students and an opportunity for them to make and test hypotheses based on their observations. Through these activities, students will begin to appreciate how scientific knowledge and understanding are attained.

Each of the activities provides an opportunity to incorporate National Science Education Content Standards, including science and inquiry, life science, and history and nature of science. Also new to this revision is a table summarizing each activity with learning outcomes and relevant content standards.

Originally published in 1966 by the Regents of the University of California (UC), Animal Coloration is the result of over five years of field-testing and experimentation by the Elementary School Science Project at UC Berkeley, funded by the National Science Foundation. This book was difficult to find for far too long (worn copies are a cherished part of many teachers’ libraries), so NSTA Press is especially proud to bring the book to a new generation of teachers and to update the work for its long-time admirers.
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If you’re teaching an introductory science education course in a college or university, Readings in Science Methods, K–8, with its blend of theory, research, and examples of best practices, can serve as your only text, your primary text, or a supplemental text. If you’re a preservice teacher, you’ll want a copy for its insights into how you can effectively teach science. If you’re a practicing teacher, this book will refresh what you already know—and could lead you into new and fruitful approaches. And if you’re an administrator, this is the perfect professional development tool as a reference for your staff.

The book is a generously sized compendium of articles drawn from NSTA’s middle and elementary level journals, Science Scope and Science and Children. Editor Eric Brunsell teaches his methods courses using only the articles—the “voice of the classroom teacher,” he says. Brunsell has chosen the best journal articles, tested each in the classroom, and organized them into seven sections—each supplemented with its own insightful introduction and “action steps.”

• The Nature of Science and Science Inquiry

• Teaching Science

• Science for All

• Science-Teaching Toolbox

• Teaching Life and Environmental Science

• Teaching Physical Science

• Teaching Earth and Space Science
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Taking science education beyond the classroom provides learning opportunities and experiences for students that just aren’t available within school walls, and Science Beyond the Classroom has a wealth of ideas on how to do it successfully. These carefully selected articles from the NSTA journals Science Scope and Science and Children were gathered into a compendium because of the value of informal science education in providing access to those experiences and in tapping into student interests.

Science Beyond the Classroom provides an overview of information and ideas—many of them include step-by-step, teacher-tested instructions and guidelines—that can be easily modified and adapted by teachers and others—scout leaders, club sponsors, parents, and home schoolers among them—who want to nurture enthusiasm for science. An introduc¬tion providing background and ideas for using the articles and a list of additional articles and web sites leads each of the five sections:

• Extending Science Learning Beyond the Curriculum: Projects and Challenges

• Extending Science Learning Beyond the School Building Walls: Using Local Sites

• Extending Science Learning Beyond the School Day: Clubs, Camps and Science Expositions

• Extending Science Learning to the Family: Take-Home Projects and Family Science Events

• Extending Science Learning to Informal Institutions: Museums, Zoos, and Other Field Trips

With its potential for engaging student interest, this book aims also at encouraging more students to enter academic fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
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The National Science Foundation-funded research projects described here show the strong link between assessment and improved student learning; the essays invite science teachers to reflect on their practices and priorities and to consider a variety of productive assessment strategies and frameworks. The central ideas around which the chapters are based—and which provide compelling data to fuel conversations about assessment purposes and opportunities—include the:

• Roles of assessment in teaching and learning

• Characteristics of meaningful assessment items

• Need for research to validate assessment practices

• Significance of assessing both student knowledge and their misconceptions

• Value of assessing students’ ability to apply their knowledge

• Importance of assessment-focused professional development

In addressing assessment as a central element of teaching practice, Assessing Science Learning explores the various forms assessment can take, including student journal entries, feedback on lab reports, observations of students engaged in activities, whole-class discussion, and large annual tests.
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Can a student’s cultural background support learning in science? Or is concentrating on the specialized vocabulary of science the best way to help English language learners learn science? This book addresses these and other pressing questions you face when working with students whose linguistic and cultural backgrounds, as well as their languages, are different from your own.

Teaching Science to English Language Learners combines research findings with classroom vignettes and the perspectives of teachers. The chapter authors strive to support your efforts to see diversity as a resource—rather than as an obstacle—in the science classroom. Among their topics:

• Building on what students know and recognizing students’ strengths
• Teaching vocabulary for learning
• Supporting the development of academic language
• Challenges associated with learning a second language
• Types of programs for teaching English language learners
• Using students’ cultural resources

Mastering the principles outlined in the book will give any teacher a broad base of knowledge from which to draw. But the book also urges you to think deeply about the roles of diversity. It offers valuable information for reflecting on, experimenting with, and adapting your instructional practices. As the authors note, “the vision of science teaching and learning put forward in this volume is one in which English language learners have as much to teach their fellow students as they have to learn from them.”
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Prize-winning scientist and bestselling author James Trefil contends that in order to participate fully in the democratic process, people must understand fundamental scientific concepts. In Why Science? Trefil details the concepts needed in order to be “scientifically literate.”

The concepts he explores range from understanding natural selection to grasping Maxwell’s Equations governing electricity and magnetism; from recognizing that the surface of the earth is constantly in flux to grasping the basic concepts of physics and chemistry.

In addition, Trefil describes the state of science knowledge today; explains why he believes today’s science education is insufficient for tomorrow’s needs; confronts headline issues, including stem cell research, global warming, cloning, and “intelligent design;” and suggests a middle way between the two prevailing approaches to science education: “deep and narrow” vs. “broad but shallow.”
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With Forensics: Wildlife Crime Scene!, your students investigate an actual crime, learn the science behind animal-species identification, and find out about efforts to fight real-world threats against wild animals.

The book is designed to be engaging for both you and your student-detectives. It’s also easy to use. The material is divided into four clear sections:

1. Background about crimes that threaten wild animal species around the world.

2. Eight forensic training lessons about antlers and horns, blood typing, DNA fingerprinting, fingerprints, hair identification, pH and pH indicators, mammal skulls, and tracks and trace fossils.

3. An investigation simulation based on a real wildlife crime: the illegal shooting and dismemberment of a bear. Students work in teams to review crime scene reports, conduct interviews of suspects and witnesses, analyze evidence, and bring charges before a “prosecuting attorney.”

4. Teacher strategies for evaluating individual students and student teams.

Using Forensics: Wildlife Crime Scene! is an ideal complement to middle and high school courses in biology, environmental science, general science, and criminology. It provides a high-interest, real-life format for learning a variety of scientific concepts and skills that correlate with the Standards. It also gives students reason to genuinely care about preserving the wildlife and ecosystems they’re studying.
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If you’re waiting to be convinced that computers offer more than pricey bells and whistles in the classroom, this is the book that will open your mind to technology’s potential. But even if you’re an early (and avid) adopter, you’ll discover intriguing new concepts for technology-based teaching strategies that help students really learn science concepts.

The featured technologies range from the easy to master (such as digital cameras) to the more complex (such as Probeware and geographic information systems). Among the chapter topics:

• Digital images and video for teaching science
• Using computer simulations
• Probeware tools for science investigations
• Extending inquiry with geo-technologies
• Acquiring online data for scientific analysis
• Web-based inquiry projects
• Online assessments and hearing students think about science

The book’s emphasis is never on technology for technology’s sake. Each chapter includes a summary of current research on the technology’s effectiveness in the classroom; best-practice guidelines drawn from the research and practitioner literature; and innovative ideas for teaching with the particular technology.

The goal is to stimulate your thinking about using these tools—and deepen your students’ engagement in science content.
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Just as science education doesn’t stop at the schoolhouse door, neither should effective application of the National Science Education Standards. Exemplary Science in Informal Education Settings shows real-world examples of how science education reform has taken hold in museums, science centers, zoos, and aquariums as well as on television, radio, and the internet.

This essay collection—the fifth volume in the Exemplary Science Monograph Series—features 17 informal education programs that were judged to be most successful at increasing participants’ learning. The programs demonstrate how the Standards can be used to inform and improve science education in a wide range of settings and with learners ranging from pre-schoolers to older adults.
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If Hollywood filmed this sequel, the studio would call it “Probes II: More Battles Against Misunderstandings.” Like the blockbuster before it, Volume 2 will reveal the surprising misconceptions students bring to the classroom—so you can adjust your teaching to foster a sound understanding of science.

The popular features from Volume 1 are all here. The field-tested probes are short, easy to administer, and ready to reproduce. Teacher materials explain science content and suggest grade-appropriate ways to present information. But Volume 2 covers more life science and Earth and space science probes. New topics include forms of matter, changes in matter, living things and life processes, rocks and landforms, the day/night cycle, and objects in the night sky. Volume 2 also suggests ways to embed the probes throughout your instruction, not just when starting a unit or topic.

This new classroom tool will help you not only uncover students’ existing ideas, but also use that knowledge to improve your teaching and advance student understanding of science concepts.

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It can be a tough thing to admit: Despite hearing so much about the importance of inquiry-based science education, you may not be exactly sure what it is—not to mention how to do it. But now this engaging new book takes the intimidation out of inquiry. Science as Inquiry in the Secondary Setting gives you an overview of what inquiry can be like in middle and high school and explores how to incorporate more inquiry-centered practices into your own teaching.

In 11 concise chapters, leading researchers raise and resolve such key questions as:

• What is inquiry?
• What does inquiry look like in specific classes, such as the Earth science lab or the chemistry lab?
• What are the basic features of inquiry instruction?
• How do you assess science as inquiry?

Science as Inquiry was created to fill a vacuum. No other book serves as such a compact, easy-to-understand orientation to inquiry. It’s ideal for guiding discussion, fostering reflection, and helping you enhance your own classroom practices. As chapter author Mark Windschitl writes, “The aim of doing more authentic science in schools is not to mimic scientists, but to develop the depth of content knowledge, the habits of mind, and the critical reasoning skills that are so crucial to basic science literacy.” This volume guides you to find new ways of helping students further along