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Journal Article

Field Trips to Zoos and Aquariums: Solving Pedagogical Challenges Using the Next Generation Science Standards

Though zoos and aquariums have become increasingly focused on conservation education, their menageries of unique and diverse learning opportunities have been underutilized. This practical NGSS-aligned guide to field trips at zoos and aquariums is wri...

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Life Science NGSS Pedagogy

Journal Article

Medical and cancer-STEM education for underrepresented minority elementary school students in Audiology, Gastroenterology and Osteology/Orthopedics

The goal of the University of Southern California (USC)/Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center funded Wonderkids Program is to develop medical and cancer themed curricula for elementary students in an after-school program in the Los Angeles area. Wonder...

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Careers Equity Inclusion Sensemaking Social Justice STEM

Journal Article

Co-Development of a Museum-Based Scientist-Teacher Partnership

Scientist-led K-12 outreach offers many benefits to scientists, teachers, and students. However, according to recent research, many of these programs are top down rather than collaborative. Our team facilitated a museum-based scientist-teacher partne...

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Biology Pedagogy Teaching Strategies

Journal Article

Becoming Botanical Garden Educators: Engaging High School Students in Botany through the use of Flip

It is critical to develop students’ science communication skills as they progress through their education. One way in which this goal can be accomplished is through the integration of Flip (formerly known as Flipgrid) into educational programs. Fli...

Life Science STEM Technology

Journal Article

Creating Equity for Black Science Students

Creating equity for Black science students requires deep listening and can be achieved with phenomenological qualitative research and a community of inquiry. The phenomenological study examines the lived experience of a phenomenon of a participant. T...

Equity General Science Inclusion Inquiry Social Justice

Journal Article

Redesigning an environmental curriculum for student engagement

Apart from equipping learners with 21st-century skills, environmental science (ES) education fosters problem-solving, creativity, critical thinking, and a sense of responsibility and agency in children. Community science centres contribute to ES educ...

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Informal Education Environmental Science Labs Life Science Teaching Strategies

Journal

Connected Science Learning January/February 2024

Journal Article

Three Transformative Leadership Practices

What does it take to prioritize science instruction in an elementary system? In this article, we’ll examine three transformative leadership practices underway in a Title-1 school district in Central Phoenix and their role in shifting the district c...

By Rebecca Abbott, Meredith Moran, and Alicia Baier Wideman, 

Elementary Administration Leadership

Journal Article

Making Science Accessible for All

It’s time for a change in mindset. We must shift our focus toward recognizing the assets and strengths of our students as a pivotal starting point. While it’s easy to identify deficits, gaps, and challenges, we must also acknowledge our students�...

By Elizabeth Barrett-Zahn

Kindergarten Pre-K Early Childhood Elementary Equity Inclusion Pedagogy Teacher Preparation Teaching Strategies

Journal Article

Career of the Month: Industrial Engineer

Industrial engineers apply math and engineering principles to make systems—comprised of humans, machines, information, materials and/or energy—more efficient and effective. They can work in a wide variety of industries, as well as academia. Eliza...

High School Careers Engineering STEM

Journal Article

How Can We Make Our Students’ Thinking Visible?

Understanding our students’ thinking is paramount to moving a lesson forward and seeing where misconceptions exist. By providing particular prompts, we can uncover their thinking, take action, and enhance the overall learning experience for our stu...

High School Equity Inclusion Inquiry Literacy News Teaching Strategies

Journal Article

Becoming Scientifically Literate: Developing Epistemic Practices through Reading Scientific Papers

To help students confront pseudoscientific claims and misinformation in their everyday lives, it is important to develop the epistemic practices of scientists in the classroom. Many of these practices can be illuminated by challenging students to rea...

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High School Instructional Materials Literacy Preservice Science Education Teacher Preparation Teaching Strategies

Journal Article

Concentrating on Cross-Disciplinary Connections: Using reaction rates to help students make connections between chemistry and biology.

Too often, science courses (e.g, biology, chemistry, and physics) are disconnected from one another. When this happens, students often don’t see how the different disciplines relate to one another. For example, we have heard students ask, “Which...

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High School Biology Chemistry Crosscutting Concepts Interdisciplinary Physics Science and Engineering Practices

Journal Article

Multiple Representations and Multiple Expressions: Simulating Enzymatic Reactions to Showcase Learning

The purpose of this article is to describe a lesson aimed at teaching students the function of enzymes in order to obtain mastery of NGSS Standard HS-LS1-2. The lesson is designed to engage learners through the frameworks of the 5E process and sensem...

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High School Biology Chemistry Instructional Materials Interdisciplinary Labs NGSS Teaching Strategies

Journal Article

Exploring Student Perceptions of Engagement During Maker-centered Instruction

This article explores the levels of engagement that students experience during maker-centered instruction, with a particular focus on students in two secondary STEM classrooms. The authors first define key terms related to making and maker-centered i...

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Instructional Materials Makerspace Robotics STEM Teacher Preparation Teaching Strategies Technology

Journal Article

Teaching for Tomorrow: Scientific Literacy in the Classroom

This article describes the integrated Coding, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (CSTEM) full-year course that aligns mathematical skill-building and computational thinking while applying them to real-world problems and the ways in whi...

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Literacy Preservice Science Education Teacher Preparation Teaching Strategies

Journal Article

Conceptual and Mathematical Evolutionary Fitness models

Biological evolutionary models have become popular tools for inquiry. Models can help expose complex systems and guide experimentation. Not all research questions require modelling. However, evolutionary models are helpful at quantitative predictions...

High School Biology Evolution Mathematics Teacher Preparation Teaching Strategies

Journal Article

Using Photo-journals to Support Real-World Connections to Classroom Content

Many teachers are asked by their students how the science content they are learning in class matters in the "real world." Although these connections may be clear to expert teachers, students often require additional support and scaffolding to see how...

High School Biology Instructional Materials Interdisciplinary Teaching Strategies

Journal Article

Science L.I.A.R.S.: A Game to Combat Misinformation

Science in the wild — misinformation beyond the boundaries of the science classroom and curated media sources — threatens our culture Here, I present one fun classroom activity, in an engaging game format, that fits in the NGSS framework and can ...

Instructional Materials Literacy Teaching Strategies

Journal Article

A Solar Panel Modeling Project for Chemistry

The Solar Panel Modeling Project challenged 10th-grade chemistry students to apply knowledge of Atomic Models to explain electricity generation in a solar panel, deepening their scientific literacy about climate solutions. Here, I describe the proje...

High School Chemistry Instructional Materials Interdisciplinary Labs NGSS Physical Science Teaching Strategies

Journal Article

Engaging Students in Waste-to-Energy Research Using Model Biodigesters

Anaerobic digestion (AD) is a natural process whereby microorganisms break down organic material in the absence of oxygen. Biodigesters (sealed tanks where AD occurs) are complex ecological systems where different microorganisms work together to prod...

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High School Biology Instructional Materials Labs Science and Engineering Practices Teaching Strategies

Journal Article

Rules of Teaching That I learned in My Student Years

As teachers we commonly learn our subject matter in high school and college. We acquire more knowledge in graduate school and in life experiences. At what stage do we learn how to teach? Answers vary. This article is about how I learned much about te...

High School Postsecondary Pedagogy Physics Teacher Preparation Teaching Strategies

Journal Article

STEM for Our Youngest Learners series

Elementary Instructional Materials Literacy STEM

Journal Article

Science in Preschool, Part 1: Leveraging the Power of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) with Consideration to Developmentally Appropriate Practice (DAP)

This two-part article will describe four powerful key ideas embedded in the Framework and the NGSS and ways in which early educators might leverage them with consideration to the unique characteristics of young children and developmentally-appropriat...

Pre-K Preschool Equity Inclusion NGSS Teaching Strategies

Journal Article

STEM Learning is for Everyone!

Early Years Column....

Elementary Equity Inclusion STEM Teacher Preparation Teaching Strategies

Journal Article

Teaching Through Trade Books: Advocating for Action

Teaching Through Trade Books...

Elementary Advocacy Literacy News Phenomena

Journal Article

Supporting Inclusive Science Classrooms: Strategies to Improve Accessibility and Engagement for Students with Exceptionalities

This article explores a lesson on structure and function in an inclusive first grade classroom. The class is co-taught by a general and special education teacher. The lesson describes how the teachers co-teach through team teaching to plan for possib...

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Elementary Advocacy Equity Inclusion Teaching Strategies

Journal Article

Design Talks: Whole-Class Conversations during Engineering Design Units

Teacher-facilitated whole-class conversations can help elementary students apply the full power of the NGSS science and engineering practices to an engineering design process. In this article we describe and provide examples for five kinds of Design ...

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Elementary Engineering Inclusion Pedagogy Teaching Strategies

Journal Article

Bookending STEM Lessons: Co-teaching with an Education Librarian for Elementary Picture-Perfect Success

No abstract required....

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Elementary Interdisciplinary Literacy Teacher Preparation Teaching Strategies

Journal Article

Creating a Buzz About Community-Engaged Research

School districts across the United States are actively exploring avenues to aid elementary-aged Gifted and Talented (GT) students in conducting student-driven research, value science within their local community, develop students’ science practices...

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Elementary Citizen Science Pedagogy Research Teaching Strategies

Journal Article

Promoting Meaningful and Equitable Modeling Practices in Online Science Instruction

Many elementary science teachers have faced some challenges in implementing meaningful and equitable modeling practices in online science instruction that is aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards. Integrating technology tools into modeli...

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Elementary Distance Learning Equity Inclusion Teaching Strategies

Journal Article

Science 101: What is Light?

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Elementary Phenomena Teacher Preparation Teaching Strategies

Journal Article

The Poetry of Science: Sensitive, Sensory Science

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Journal Article

Bugging Out with Bugscope

Looking for something REALLY exciting, creepy-crawly, accessible and pertains to phenomenon-based/ storyline-based NGSS? Bugscope is a free educational project at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. K-12 classrooms have an opportunity to ...

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Elementary Biology Citizen Science Interdisciplinary Technology

Journal Article

Equitable from the Start: Strategies for Making Science Relevant, Engaging, and Accessible

Equalizing opportunities for students to learn science and engineering in the ways described in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) requires intentional planning. In this paper, we describe a framework for designing equitable and inclusive s...

By Rachel Ruggirello and Alison Brockhouse

Early Childhood Elementary Equity Inclusion Teaching Strategies

Journal Article

Moving Beyond Equity-as-Access to Expanding What Counts as Science in the Elementary Classroom

Making science accessible is an important and worthy goal, but for many students, science is inaccessible because what counts as science in the classroom is narrowly defined as what is known as western science, rooted in Europe in the 1600s and often...

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Elementary Equity Inclusion Multicultural Sensemaking Teacher Preparation Teaching Strategies

Journal Article

Culturally Relevant Science Learning

Creating learning opportunities for students to culturally connect in the science classroom is crucial to ensuring inclusivity and accessibility for all. This article describes how multicultural picture books that use visuals to capture diverse repre...

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Preschool Early Childhood Elementary Inclusion Literacy Multicultural Teaching Strategies

Journal Article

Reading Like a Scientist: Teaching Students to Strategically Read Multimodal Science Texts

Calls for disciplinary literacy instruction in elementary schools encourage teachers to provide authentic opportunities for students to read and write like scientists. Enacting disciplinary literacy with problem-based learning practices to inquire ab...

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Early Childhood Elementary Instructional Materials Interdisciplinary Literacy Teaching Strategies

Journal Article

Achieving Desired Student Outcomes in Virtual Field Experiences through Attention to Design Considerations: A Delphi Study

Virtual field experiences (VFEs) hold promise as a mechanism to approximate the in situ field experiences that are central to many undergraduate programs in the natural sciences. In this Delphi study, the collective expertise of 26 VFE experts was so...

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