JoinAll Blog Posts
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Elementary Science—Best Practices for All Students
Envision a room filled with noise, excited whispers, and students shouting across tables. Piles of tinfoil, plastic cups, scissors, string, and tape a...
By Cindy Workosky
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Contemporary Instructional Approaches to Promote STEM Learning for English Learners
The release of the report English Learners in STEM Subjects: Transforming Classrooms, Schools, and Lives (shortened to “the report” hereafter) (NA...
By Okhee Lee
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Using Discourse With High School Science Students
High school students love to talk. Covering topics from music to memes, the hallway conversations are always lively. But when students enter the class...
By Cindy Workosky
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One District’s Path to Improving Student Discourse
If you’ve spent any time exploring the shifts in NGSS instructional practices you will understand the call for “less sage on the stage and more gu...
By Cindy Workosky
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Exploring Structure and Function in Insects
As an entomologist, one of my greatest challenges is trying to overcome my students’ feelings of fear and disgust regarding insects. Insects often h...
By Cindy Workosky
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Using Toxic Algal Blooms to Teach Structure and Function
Young children often experience a developmental stage in which they question everything. Why aren’t there dinosaurs anymore? Why do cats purr? Why a...
By Rebecca Brewer
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Scaffolding the Practice of Asking Questions and Defining Problems
With the adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), teachers are wondering how to teach their students to do the science and engineerin...
By Cindy Workosky
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First-Graders Modeling Day and Night: Making Sense of a Phenomenon
As a first-grade teacher in Detroit with predominantly Latinx students and English language learners, I worked for several weeks at the end of last sc...
By Cindy Workosky
Blog Post
Recently, my colleagues and I had an exchange with some teachers in one of our professional development programs. One teacher said, “I think I do a ...
Blog Post
Modeling in Science Instruction
With the shift toward three-dimensional teaching and learning that the Next Generation Science Standards requires, the Crosscutting Concept of Modelin...
By Cindy Workosky
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What Does 3-Dimensional Space Look Like
When transitioning my classroom instruction to three dimensional learning, I decided to start with one or two areas in each unit or lesson set where I...
By Korei Martin
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Global Thinking Inside and Outside the Classroom
Dynamic Equilibrium. These two words represent what is essential in teaching Earth science: the idea that forces are constantly working against one an...
By Cindy Workosky
Blog Post
Cereal to Stream Tables: Putting Stability and Change in Students’ Hands
Stability and Change is one of the seven Crosscutting Concepts (CCs) that can be difficult to convey in a lesson. Other CCs like Patterns, Cause and E...
By Cindy Workosky
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Choosing Instructional Materials: Lessons Learned
Throughout my career as an educator, I’ve had many opportunities to select instructional materials. One experience is particularly memorable because...
By Cindy Workosky
Blog Post
Seeds of Science, Roots of Reading Program Helps Students Develop Explanations
The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) encourage three-dimensional thinking in students. 3-D thinking, and the process of developing scientific ...
By Jim McDonald