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 wanted to read the primary source. On the opening page of the National Academy of Sciences website, I found the news release from the Academy. It is in conjunction with the new book Science, Evolution, and Creationism. I followed that link and found out that I could download a PDF version of the book – for free! There was also a podcast. Guess what I’ll be reading/listening to over the weekend, and it all was available within a few minutes.
When I was teaching middle school science, evolution was in the district curriculum (and it is now in my state’s standards in biological sciences), and I can’t imagine teaching life science or biology without using evolution as an underlying principle. But as an undergraduate chemistry major, I never had the opportunity to formally study the theory of evolution. So my knowledge of evolution has accumulated from a variety of sources over the years.
Staying up-to-date on topics such as evolution is a lot easier with the Internet, but sometimes there is too much of a good thing. If you Google “evolution” for example, you get over 170,000,000 hits! Or — you could log into NSTA’s SciLinks, search on the word “evolution” and get a list of websites related to topics such as “biological evolution” or “evolution and adaptation.” Here are a few of my favorites.
Understanding Evolution is a comprehensive site from the University of California Museum of Paleontology. This could be the basis for a complete course, study group, or self-study. The teacher link in the right margin is a tremendous resource with a link to a searchable database of lesson ideas and a link called “conceptual framework” which is actually a set of essential questions around which to organize a unit! Many individual components of this site are noted separately in the SciLinks database, but if you go to the main site, you can see just how comprehensive it is. I would start with click on the Evolution 101 link for a tutorial on evolution. This would also be appropriate for students.
Another good source is Evolution from PBS. Even if you don’t have access to the video, the web-based resources are very good and visually stunning.
NSTA has a set of Evolution Resources,with links to the above websites as well as to position papers and other resources and articles.
I wonder how many people have actually read any of Darwin’s writing? Darwin’s The Origin of Species is not an easy read, but it is the primary source! The page has links to his other works, too.
A colleague of mine recently visited the Galapagos Islands and said it was a life-altering experience. I don’t know if I’ll ever get there, but Galapagos on the NSTA site is a great collection of background information, classroom investigations, and resources for teaching evolution.
If anyone else is reading the National Academy book, perhaps we could use this site to begin a discussion?

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, graphing, and other mathematical concepts.
Along with this issue, you can review the October issue of Science and Children for more articles on this topic that have ideas that are appropriate or adaptable for middle school students. The blog posting for that issue describes an outstanding graphing website that is suitable for all ages.
For even more ideas for integrating mathematics and science, log into SciLinks and enter the code “SC120701” for a list of websites. I saw a few that looked particularly interesting:

• Planet Quest is a set of activities that involved measurement. This is a PDF document, so you can download it and use them offline. As a bonus, the activities are structured as cooperative learning activities, with a description of roles and expectations.
• Science is not the only subject in which research is conducted. The National Science Foundation has an overview of research in mathematics.
• Along with the activities in the article “Making and Measuring a Model of a Salt Marsh,” you could use the activities downloaded from Tidepool Math. These guide students through the processes of observation and estimation.

The “Issues In-Depth” article – Making Some Bones About It – is an excellent review of the skeletal system. Even though I’ve taught units on the skeletal system, it was an enjoyable read, and it’s important to keep our own content knowledge up-to-date. As a follow-up, go to the SciLinks site and enter “bones” or “muscles” as keywords to get lists of websites with more background information and classroom activities. You can also check out this month’s edition of The Science Teacher for an article that describes a classroom activity “Modeling Muscles.” This could easily be adapted for middle school students!

This month’s Science Teacher is a collection of ideas from low-tech card sorts (a wonderful way to get students thinking) to high-tech investigations that take advantage of technology.
The article “Fun with Ionic Compounds” was an enjoyable walk down memory lane. Many years ago, my colleague and I made cards such as these to help students visualize the concept of ionic bonding, and we found that it really helped the students. Sometimes we brought out the cards as a review, too. However, I like how these authors designed and used a review sheet to help students organize and summarize the activity. If I could only go back in time to do this again, I would use their ideas! For more information and activities on the topic of ionic bonding, log into SciLinks and enter “ionic” in the keyword search box to get lists of related websites.
Don’t forget to look at this months Science Scope, especially if you’re going to try the activity in the Modeling Muscles article to integrate a study of the skeletal and muscular systems. SS has a background article on the skeletal system that is probably designed for teachers, but high school students should be able to use the article, too. If you log into SciLinks and enter bones or muscles as keywords, you’ll get lists of related online resources. There is also an interesting activity “Making and Measuring a Model of a Salt Marsh.” This involves more than just making a model; the students’ models are used as a basis for making and graphing observations. If a salt marsh is not part of your students’ experiences, you could modify this to represent the plants and animals of freshwater wetlands.
I was observing some classes last year, and I noticed that some of the teachers referred to any hands-on activity as an “experiment,” even those activities that focused on making models, demonstrating a concept, or replicating investigations from textbooks or other resources. All of these can be valuable ways to help students learn. But I think we need to be careful with our vocabulary. You may want to check out the article “More Than One Way to Investigate” from this month’s Science and Children , which illustrates the differences between experimental and descriptive studies and how both are authentic ways to study science.
“My students are too busy to think!” When I heard a fellow teacher say this at a workshop, I hoped that she was exaggerating what was happening in her classroom. I envisioned a whirlwind in which the students followed directions for lots of activities with little time to summarize, reflect, or discuss what they were doing. I’ve been in classrooms where students were making models (DNA, atoms, the cell), but some of them really didn’t “get it” in terms of what the models meant or in applying what they were doing to other situations. Whether the students are making a model, doing an investigation from a textbook, or doing a true experiment, teachers need to help many of them to make connections between the hands-on activity and the students’ own experiences, previous activities or topics from class, or to later experiences. A few minutes of helping students to make some meaning of what they are doing can change being “busy” to being truly “engaged” with these activities.

It will soon be the time when many schools go into Science Fair mode, with reactions from students (and perhaps some teachers) that range from cheers of excitement to groans of despair. This month’s Science and Children should be required reading for any teacher whose students are going to be involved in science fairs. I also would encourage secondary teachers to review these articles, especially if your students are novices at science fairs or if you’re looking for some fresh ideas.
The S&C editor notes that when she Googled “science fair” there were more than 2 million entries! Fortunately for SciLinks users, if you enter “science fair” in the keyword search you’ll get a manageable list of 21 sites to get you and your students started!
Getting started was the hardest part for my students. The Science Buddies website has a “topic selection wizard” that guides students through the process of selecting and fine-tuning a topic. This site has sections that can help students with planning a project and teachers with planning a science fair (including rubrics for evaluating projects). If you only have time for one site (and not 2 million), this should be it!
The authors of the S&C article Four Tools for Science Fair Success also recommend Science Buddies, and the article has timelines, rubrics, and suggestions for helping students who may not have resources at home. Other articles in this issue discuss topics such as involving kindergarten students and conducting online science fairs or science expos.
There’s been a lot of talk recently that a lockstep “Scientific Method” is not always how real scientists conduct investigations, as the author of the Science 101 article describes. The article More Than One Way to Investigate illustrates the differences between experimental and descriptive studies and how both are authentic ways to study science.
For students who do a experiment for their projects, the authors of the archived Science Scope article Non-Traditional Characteristics of a Successful Science Fair Project describe six characteristics of high quality projects, and they include a rubric for assessing a student’s presentation.
You may also want to check out the resources that are part of the website of the National History Day competition. Although the topics are different, the resources include a questionnaire to help students decide whether to do an individual or a group project. This competition has several categories that reflect the authentic work of historians: documentary, exhibit, paper, performance. Each category has its own rubric. These resources could be modified for your science fair. If you’ve ever been to a NHD showcase, you won’t find any pretzel-stick log cabins! These students are doing history, just as your students will do science. (I hope your school does not require students to do both history and science projects at the same time!)
If you’ve never been involved in a science fair before, the Georgia Department of Education website has resources to help you plan and organize a science fair, from student worksheets, letters to parents, a template for a program booklet, timelines, and examples of rubrics.
With these articles and the related SciLinks websites, you and your students should be ready to go!