JoinAll Resources
Journal Article
After months of exploring various ecosystems, a third grade teacher incorporates "Nature's Advice Book", a writing tool created to assess what her students had learned and to gain insight into their ideas about nature in a creative way. This writing...
Journal Article
Spill Sleuths: An Interdisciplinary Environmental Health Investigation
An environmental health mystery can help teach students many aspects of environmental health and crisis management in the context of their own community. Students use skills from several disciplines to pinpoint, assess, and address the environmental ...
Journal Article
Science Sampler: Strategies to increase active discussion and thinking for all students
How many times have you expected to hold an exciting class discussion after a laboratory activity or demonstration only to have just one or two students speak? To increase student participation in class discussions, try using the three instructional ...
Journal Article
Teaching Through Trade Books: Talking Trees
Students love outdoor activities and will love them even more when they build confidence in their tree identification and measurement skills. The activities in this month's Teaching Through Trade Books column help students learn to identify the major...
Journal Article
Science 101: How do insects help the environment?
Although insects sometimes have a bad reputation, most are beneficial to humans and the environment, not detrimental. Without insects, the environment could not function as it does, yet few of us have considered how these numerous and varied organism...
Journal Article
If only Humpty-Dumpty had known about the egg bungee jump... This engaging activity helps students experience science in a constructivist, inquiry-oriented manner and has the added benefit of providing a concrete context within which students can ex...
Book Chapter
If you understood the first two chapters, you now know how to describe motion (using velocity and accelerations) and you know what causes changes in motion (net forces do it). Remember that net force refers to what you get when you consider the tota...
Book Chapter
The contents of this chapter deal with air pressure and water pressure and what causes those things to increase and decrease. In addition, the real-world results of those increases and decreases in air and water pressure will be addressed....
Book Chapter
This chapter delves deeper into air pressure, or to be more correct, the pressure exerted by any gas. The most important part of this chapter is a scientific model for how gases behave, which will be used to explain previous activities pertaining to ...
Book Chapter
Balloons and Other Things That Sometimes Float
Hot air balloons float--sometimes. Regular old balloons that you get at a party float--sometimes. Boats float--sometimes. What makes them float and what makes them sink? How can a boat made of steel float but a solid chunk of steel sink to the bottom...
Book Chapter
Before moving on to weather patterns, there are a few concepts about air and water that haven't been covered thus far. This chapter ties together these loose ends and prepares readers for a better understanding of the various processes that cause wea...
Book Chapter
The concepts covered so far that pertain to the Earth's weather will finally be applied in this chapter. A number of basic mechanisms that govern small-scale things such as cloud formation, rain, fog, dew point, and humidity, will be addressed. ...
Book Chapter
In the previous chapter, we dealt with how the properties of air and water affected small-scale weather such as the formation of clouds, the formation of fog, and how comfortable you feel at different times of the year. In this chapter, we're going t...
Book Chapter
So far, small-scale and large-scale weather patterns have been dealt with. What seems to interest people most, though, are the "special" events related to weather. Those special events include thunderstorms, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, and drought...
Book Chapter
Connecting Electricity and Magnetism
As discussed at the beginning of the book, there is an intimate connection between electricity and magnetism, which will be further addressed in this chapter as well. We'll end up with a scientific model for what magnetism is, what makes something a ...