JoinAll Resources
Journal Article
This column shares exercises to challenge content knowledge. This issue presents a new challenge and answers the A Faucet Phenomenon challenge from last month....
Journal Article
Engineering Encounters: The Giant Problem
This column presents ideas and techniques to enhance your science teaching. This issue shares information about using design thinking to explore thermal conductivity....
Journal Article
Methods and Strategies: Reading With a Purpose
This column provides ideas and techniques to enhance your science teaching. Young students learn science and literacy through the Strategic Research Cycle....
Journal Article
Partner with a scientist to tackle a classic engineering challenge with a twist....
Journal Article
The Evolution of a Partnership
Collaborate with a scientist and researcher and use authentic data to clarify evolutionary concepts....
Journal Article
Bridging the Gap Between “Rocks for Jocks" and the Mars Sample Return Program
Increase student interest in science with a multidisciplinary project and NASA’s Curiosity rover....
Journal Article
Integrating Technology: Web Conferencing for Student Engagement
This column shares how teachers use technology for assessment, student learning, or classroom management. Many classrooms are not located close to universities or research facilities, which reduces the available number of possible guest speakers from...
Journal Article
Classic Lessons 2.0: What kind of person becomes a scientist?
This column shares updated perennial classroom favorites. This article describes an activity called “What Kind of Person Becomes a Scientist?” that teachers can use to help students confront their biases about scientists....
Journal Article
Teacher’s Toolkit: Communicate Effectively With Parents and Family Members Through a STEM Newsletter
This column provides how-to strategies and practical advice for the science teacher. This issue discusses newsletters, which are an eye-catching way to keep family members updated on student activities, guest speakers, STEM content, career connection...
Journal Article
From the Editor’s Desk: Real-World Connections for Your Student Scientists
Science Scope’s editor shares thoughts regarding the current issue....
Journal Article
Disequilibrium: Inseparable Magazines
This column shows how to use discrepant events to confront misconceptions. Reinforcing the importance of friction through the inseparable magazines discrepant event will help students better understand the world around them. While friction is not a m...
Journal Article
Listserv Roundup: Guest Speakers and Mentors for Career Exploration in the Science Classroom
This column shares recent conversations taken from the NSTA listserv community about current science education topics. In this three-week “Code Blue” human body systems simulation project students worked in small groups and learned about the bod...
Journal Article
Science For All: Be Our Guest!
This column shares strategies for increasing student engagement. Using research and experience, the authors have compiled a list of go-to strategies for preparing all of your students—and your speaker—for a memorable guest presentation that is su...
Journal Article
Teacher To Teacher: Using Models to Explain Their Thinking
This column provides practical advice from your peers. This column focuses on implementing the science and engineering practice of Developing and Using Models....
Journal Article
Scope on the Skies: Gaining Insight Into Mars
This column focuses on astronomy throughout the year. This issue discusses the Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport (In-Sight) mission to explore the “inner space” of Mars: its crust, mantle, and core....
Journal Article
Citizen Science: Prepare an Ant Picnic for Science
This column highlights formal and informal science research projects that students can join and contribute to by gathering and sharing data. Ant Picnic is a global citizen science project that invites teachers and students to engage in myrmecology, ...
Journal Article
“I Never Thought of Science as Something Like This”
Learn about how a university-based teacher preparation program, public schools, and local science-focused museums implement an ecological approach to STEM learning in Chicago. ...
By Daniel Birmingham, Lara Smetana, Heidi Rouleau, and Jenna Carlson
Journal Article
Environmental Education and STEM (E-STEM)
The North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE) shares the programs and publications it developed to advance E-STEM—the integration of environmental education into STEM. ...
By Kristen Kunkle
Journal Article
Digital Observation Technology Skills
Digital Observation Technology Skills (DOTS) is a framework for integrating modern, mobile technology into outdoor, experiential science education. DOTS addresses longstanding tensions between modern technology and classical outdoor education by ca...
By R. Justin Hougham, Marc Nutter, and Caitlin Graham
Interactive E-book Kids
Bobby and Carmen are at summer engineering camp. They have been challenged to design and build a useful project for their fellow campers. Time is short, and most of the materials have been used! Will Bobby and Carmen succeed in using science and engi...
Interactive E-book Kids
In Kristel Pushes and Pulls, a bed mysteriously ends up hanging in a tree in Kristel’s front yard. Kristel is determined to figure out how it got there and e-book readers will help her figure it out. As Kristel progresses through the day, she explo...
Interactive E-book Kids
The Sunlight Science e-book engages readers through an interactive story that features a family outing at the beach. Learners investigate, along with the characters, the phenomenon of sunlight heating sand, rocks, water, and other surfaces. Readers a...
Book Chapter
The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about reflection. The probe is designed to find out if students recognize that all objects we can see reflect some light. The probe is provided in English and Spanish. This book sele...
Book Chapter
The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about sound. The probe is designed to reveal whether students recognize that sound is produced by vibrating matter. The probe is provided in English and Spanish. This book selection ...
Book Chapter
The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about conservation of matter (or mass). The probe is designed to reveal whether students think matter (or mass) is conserved during a change in state. The probe is provided in Englis...
Book Chapter
The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about the physical process of melting. The probe is designed to find out if students recognize melting as a change in state from solid to liquid that involves an interaction between ...
Book Chapter
The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about molecules. The probe is designed to uncover whether students recognize that objects, materials, and substances of both a biological and physical nature are made of molecules. T...
Book Chapter
The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about gravity. The probe is designed to determine whether students recognize that gravity is a universal force that exists everywhere on Earth and in space, regardless of whether air...
Book Chapter
The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about temperature. The probe is designed to find out whether students recognize that non–heat-producing objects exposed to the same ambient conditions will have the same temperatur...
Book Chapter
The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about animals. The probe is designed to find out what characteristics students use to determine whether an organism is classified as an animal. The probe is provided in English and S...
Book Chapter
The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about living and nonliving. The probe is designed to find out what attributes students consider when determining if something is living or was once living. The probe is provided in E...
Book Chapter
The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about cells. The probe is designed to find out how students think about matter composed of cells. The probe is provided in English and Spanish. This book selection includes the Table...
Book Chapter
The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about levels of organization in the human body. The probe is designed to find out whether students recognize cells as the basic unit of both structure and function in living organism...
Book Chapter
The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about life processes. The probe is designed to find out if students recognize that plants and animals share several life functions, even though they are seemingly very different orga...
Book Chapter
The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about the water cycle. The probe is designed to reveal whether students recognize that water goes into the air around us after it evaporates. The probe is provided in English and Spa...
Book Chapter
The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about beach formation. The probe is designed to reveal whether students use concepts of weathering, erosion, and deposition to explain how a beach made up of tiny rock particles form...
Book Chapter
The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about the Earth-Sun-Moon system. The probe is designed to uncover students’ ideas about Moon phases and whether they think the phase of the moon changes with geographic location. T...
Book Chapter
The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about how light travels. The probe is designed to find out if students know that light travels outward from its source, regardless of distance, until it interacts with an object that...
Book Chapter
The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about conservation of matter. The probe is designed to reveal whether students think weight is conserved when a whole object is broken up into small pieces. The probe is provided in ...