JoinAll Blog Posts
Blog Post
Request for resources for guiding teachers to become more inquiry based in their teaching
The NSTA Elementary Science List had an interesting query last week: Steve Geresy asked if anyone has any great books on Early Learning Inquiry that h...
By Peggy Ashbrook
Blog Post
Next year there will be an opening in the middle school science department. Although I love teaching high school chemistry (my current assignment), I&...
By MsMentorAdmin
Blog Post
I was facilitating a workshop once, and I overhead these statements from two science teachers: My students are so busy, they don’t have time to ...
By Mary Bigelow
Blog Post
Give children tools for exploring a concept and they almost always show me a new way to teach it. In a session of flashlight and mirror exploration, W...
By Peggy Ashbrook
Blog Post
Overcoming socioeconomic hurdles
Do you have any advice for working with students in a low-income school? This is my first year in this school, teaching 9th grade environmental scienc...
By MsMentorAdmin
Blog Post
I was in a school once where the teachers did a “winter” unit on penguins with activities that included trade books, puzzles, writing acti...
By Mary Bigelow
Blog Post
I would like to curl up in a cave until this sore throat and runny nose goes away. And I would like to know exactly how to prevent the spread of cold ...
By Peggy Ashbrook
Blog Post
A classic activity to show that air is matter and takes up space is to tuck a piece of tissue into a small clear jar, up end the jar and lower it into...
By Peggy Ashbrook
Blog Post
I’m mentoring a new science teacher. I’ve never done this before, so I’m asking teachers, “What’s the best advice your m...
By MsMentorAdmin
Blog Post
Invertebrates in the classroom
Children often do not think of invertebrates as animals. If we can train ourselves to talk about insects and other invertebrates not as “bugs” but...
By Peggy Ashbrook
Blog Post
Playing with magnets and learning about the property of materials
Playing with magnets is a useful science activity in early childhood classrooms because it fosters conversation, exploration of materials, and learnin...
By Peggy Ashbrook
Blog Post
It’s one thing to get students to recite definitions for the states of matter. But what do they really understand? For instance, the word “gas...
By Mary Bigelow
Blog Post
Setup day for NSTA staff here in Cincinnati and all is going smoothly. We’re looking forward to thousands of attendees engaging in outstanding ...
By Howard Wahlberg
Blog Post
One of the many rich workshops I attended at the NSTA Portland Area Conference was the Family Science Day Session presented by the Foundation for Fami...
By Peggy Ashbrook
Blog Post
With the emphasis on literacy since the onset of No Child Left Behind, there seems to be two schools of thought. One emphasizes instruction in reading...
By Mary Bigelow