JoinAll Blog Posts
Blog Post
All of these articles this month reflect Isaac Newton’s work on forces and motion and the application of these principles to our daily lives – from seat belts and amusement parks to tools and trains. Check out additional web resources availab...
By Mary Bigelow
Blog Post
Was there ever a time when a one-size-fits-all approach to science instruction was appropriate?...
By Mary Bigelow
Blog Post
You’ve heard the old saying that when the student is ready, the teacher appears. In the case of the NSTA Boston National Conference, when the city is ready, thousands of teachers will appear!...
By Debra Shapiro
Blog Post
Natural history, nature science, and science teaching
Our science department meetings were interesting. My colleague and I taught life and environmental science, and our counterparts in the high school sciences would poke (good-natured) fun at our “woodsy-birdsy” themes. Well, I hope they...
By Mary Bigelow
Blog Post
I’ve been attending NSTA conferences off and on since the early 1980s. But this year, since I’ve retooled (rather than retired!), I don’t have to report back to a district on specific topics, and I’m taking a break from doing pres...
By Mary Bigelow
Blog Post
I’ll give Tyson credit – he spelled my last name correctly (no mean feat) and South Jersey includes the shore, so close enough. I joined the NSTA staff only a few months ago, so I am looking forward to my first National Conference in Boston. As ...
By Lynn Petrinjak
Blog Post
The articles in this issue focus on one of the fundamental processes of science: observation. How big? What happened? What changed? How does it feel? Students enjoy observing and using tools such as magnifiers, lenses, rulers, and scales. Inferencing...
By Mary Bigelow
Blog Post
In much of the country, February is not the month in which we think of environmental activities, at least the outdoor kind. But this month’s Science Scope has a lot of suggestions for teacher-tested activities that can be done at any time of th...
By Mary Bigelow
Blog Post
As I was reading my February issues of the NSTA publications, it occurred to me how there is a common thread among them. The lead article in The Science Teacher is “Back to the Future?” which looks at nature-study as an approach to teachi...
By Mary Bigelow
Blog Post
As I catch up on readings and resources from other blogs, listservs, and journals, I found several things I’d like to share. I’m calling them WOWs because that’s what I say when I see them – in some cases a positive wow (with one ...
By Mary Bigelow
Blog Post
I totally agree with the editor of TST this month, concerning the status of the earth sciences in many of our high schools. Many years ago when I was in high school (and when dinosaurs roamed the earth, as my students would say), I started my science...
By Mary Bigelow
Blog Post
“Are you teaching today or are the students just doing a lab or taking a test?” I used to dread this question from a former principal when he wanted to observe a class. He was implying that the only classroom activity worth observing was ...
By Mary Bigelow
Blog Post
Properties of objects and materials
Inquiry is not as dependent on equipment and technology as it is on the willingness of the teacher to model the process and to move from being a sage on the stage to be a guide on the side (or better yet – a partner in the process)....
By Mary Bigelow
Blog Post
Talk about an interesting day in the age of electronic information! This afternoon in a listserv I belong to, I read about a report by the National Academy of Sciences on the teaching of evolution in the classroom. There were two news articles, but I...
By Mary Bigelow
Blog Post
Mathematics and science seem like natural partners when designing interdisciplinary lessons or units. This issue of Science Scope has some suggestions for making these lessons authentic and purposeful, integrating science with geometry, scaling, grap...
By Mary Bigelow