JoinAll Resources
Journal Article
Editor’s Corner: New Year, New Look
The Science Teacher’s editor shares thoughts on the current issue....
Journal Article
The Green Room: The Top 5 Environmental Stories of 2017
This column focuses on making your teaching more environmentally friendly. This month’s issue highlights top environmental news....
Journal Article
Focus on Physics: Our Molecular Selves
This column helps teachers build an understanding of physical principles. This month's issue discusses atoms and molecules....
Journal Article
Career of the Month: Robotics Engineer
This column shares interviews with professionals using science in the workplace. This month’s issue describes Kevin Dowling's career path to becoming a Robotics Engineer....
Journal Article
Right to the Source: Invention vs. Innovation
Exploring science and history with the Library of Congress. This month's issue discusses the content of photographs of Thomas Edison and Emile Berliner....
Journal Article
Create open-ended prompts that integrate prior knowledge....
Journal Article
Creating a Positive Feedback Culture: Eight Practical Principles to Improve Students’ Learning
Learn how to elicit evidence of student learning, provide effective feedback, and extend student learning beyond the assessment....
Journal Article
Use a real-world scenario to engage in the scientific practice of collecting, analyzing, graphing, and interpreting data....
Journal Article
Integrating Technology: Bringing Science to Life
This column shares how teachers use technology for assessment, student learning, or classroom management. Using social learning to make real-world connections in science....
Journal Article
This column provides how-to strategies and practical advice for the science teacher. The CERR framework helps students synthesize science investigations, data analysis, and scientific concepts by having them focus on four elements: Claim, Evidence, R...
Journal Article
From the Editor’s Desk: Engaging Students in Learning Through Assessment
Science Scope’s editor shares thoughts regarding the current issue....
Journal Article
Commentary: Installing Glass Walls and Doors in the Science Classroom
An opinion piece about a science teacher team framework for improving student achievement....
Journal Article
Citizen Science: Birds, Binoculars, and Biodiversity
This column highlights formal and informal science research projects that students can join and contribute to by gathering and sharing data. Count birds and contribute to citizen science with the Great Backyard Bird Count....
Journal Article
Disequilibrium: Why Is Regular Soda Denser Than Diet Soda?
This column shows how to use discrepant events to confront misconceptions. This month’s discrepant event helps students visualize the difference between the densities of diet and regular soda and learn about the nutritional differences between the ...
Journal Article
Listserv Roundup: Technology tools for paperless formative assessment
This column shares recent conversations taken from the NSTA listserv community about current science education topics. This month’s column focuses on technology tools that NSTA e-mail listserv members use for formative assessment....
Journal Article
Science for All: Encouraging Academic Talk
This column shares strategies for increasing student engagement. Strategies for engaging all learners in classroom conversations....
Journal Article
Teacher to Teacher: The Steps of a Conceptual Storyline
This column provides practical advice from your peers. This month describes the steps involved in writing a conceptual storyline, a sequence of lessons designed to clarify relationships between concepts....
Journal Article
Scope on the Skies: Timely Motions of the Earth and Moon
This column focuses on astronomy throughout the year. During the first few days of January, the Earth reaches perihelion, the closest it will come to the Sun each year. The Earth’s perihelion does not occur on the same day or time. When the Earth r...
Journal Article
Data Modeling for Preservice Teachers and Everyone Else
Although data modeling, the employment of statistical reasoning for the purpose of investigating questions about the world, is central to both mathematics and science, it is rarely emphasized in K–16 instruction. This article focuses on developing ...
Journal Article
Providing Opportunities for Argumentation in Science Exam Settings
This article explores undergraduates’ efforts to engage in scientific argumentation during exam settings....
Journal Article
Integration, Authenticity, and Relevancy in College Science Through Engineering Design
An engineering design problem-solving framework was used to create a general chemistry lab activity focused on an important environmental issue—dead zones. Dead zones impact over 400 locations around the world and are a result of nutrient pollutio...
Journal Article
Physics Meets Art in the General Education Core
This article describes a general education course offering, Physics and the Arts. During the development of this course, physics and arts faculty collaborated closely. Goals of the course are to increase students’ engagement with physics and to dev...
Journal Article
Recruitment and retention in the sciences is both difficult and crucial, especially in the community college setting. In this study, the resources used by General Chemistry I students at two different public, predominantly two-year colleges in two s...
Journal Article
Case Study: Skinny Genes? An Interdisciplinary Look at a Complex Behavioral Disorder
This column provides original articles on innovations in case study teaching, assessment of the method, as well as case studies with teaching notes. This directed case study uses a progressive disclosure model to expose students to the multiple facet...
Journal Article
Research and Teaching: Assessing the Effectiveness of Sustainability Learning
This study investigated the interaction of disciplinary and interdisciplinary learning in a team-taught, first-year, interdisciplinary sustainability course. We surveyed (pre/post) both STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and non...
Journal Article
In this article, the authors describe their approach to flipping the General Chemistry sequence at two different colleges within the City University of New York, a large, urban public university system. Our results indicate that the flipped model le...
Journal Article
Research and Teaching: Many Paths Toward Discovery: A Module for Teaching How Science Works
Improving students’ understanding of how science works requires explicit instruction. Here, the authors test the efficacy of a module based on two previously published activities (the Cube Puzzle and the case study Asteroids and Dinosaurs) that tea...
Journal Article
This study describes the development and implementation of an iterative diagnostic and intervention routine designed to elicit and quantitatively describe aspects of student metacognition, affect, and study habits in a first-year undergraduate biolog...
Book Chapter
Beyond the Egg Drop: Infusing Engineering Into High School Physics (Book Sample)
Problem: You’re eager to expand your physics curriculum and engage your students with engineering content but you don’t know how. Solution: Use the approach and lessons in Beyond the Egg Drop to infuse engineering into what you’re already teach...
Book Chapter
In this activity, students are challenged to construct a cantilever that supports the greatest weight at the greatest distance from the edge of a desk using only the materials provided. This selection highlights the core engineering concepts of desig...
Book Chapter
Cards to the Sky Gummy Bear Tower
In this activity, students use playing cards to build a tower that can withstand wind such that gummy bears can stand on top of it. This selection highlights the core engineering concepts of design and analysis. It includes the Table of Contents, Pre...
Book Chapter
In this activity, students use tape, string, and 20 strands of spaghetti to build the tallest tower that will support one large marshmallow on top. This selection highlights the core engineering concept of design. It includes the Table of Contents, P...
Book Chapter
In this activity, students create a mathematical model to predict the time it will take for a soda can punctured with holes of different sizes to drain. This selection highlights the core engineering concept of models. It includes the Table of Conten...
Book Chapter
In this activity, students will predict and analyze how different materials will behave in a wind tube, then design and test a hovercraft that can stay in the wind tube for 10 seconds. This selection highlights the core engineering concepts of design...
Book Chapter
In this activity, students create a Rube Goldberg device that includes at least three energy transfers and eventually pops a balloon. This selection highlights the core engineering concepts of systems. It includes the Table of Contents, Preface, Summ...
Book Chapter
In this activity, students use limited materials to design a balloon-powered cart that travels three meters in less than five seconds. This selection highlights the physics concepts of distance, time, velocity, Newton’s laws, and energy, as well as...
Book Chapter
In this activity, students use a toothbrush, a small motor, and some wire to make a bristlebot, then optimize it for maximum displacement. This selection highlights the physics concepts of distance, time, velocity, and vectors, as well as the core en...
Book Chapter
In this activity, students design a mousetrap-powered car that goes the fastest down a narrow racetrack. This selection highlights the physics concepts of motion and force, as well as the core engineering concepts of design, systems, and models. It i...
Book Chapter
Amusement Park Engineer—Bumper Cars
In this activity, students use PhET simulation to create a proposal for a design of a set of bumper cars that are safe, fair, and fun for children, teenagers, and adults. This selection highlights the physics concept of momentum, as well as the core ...