JoinAll Resources
Journal Article
This column provides original articles on innovations in case study teaching, assessment of the method, as well as case studies with teaching notes. In the nonmajor science classroom, case studies—when used as learning tools—should help students ...
eBook
Disciplinary Core Ideas: Reshaping Teaching and Learning (e-book)
Like all enthusiastic teachers, you want your students to see the connections between important science concepts so they can grasp how the world works now—and maybe even make it work better in the future. But how exactly do you help them learn and ...
Book Chapter
Introduction to DCIs: What They Are and Why They Are Important
This chapter serves as an introduction to Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCIs). As a whole, DCIs help students build usable knowledge that is central to the physical sciences but also across the life sciences, Earth and space sciences, and engineering. The...
Book Chapter
Core Idea PS1: Matter and Its Interactions
This chapter focuses on matter and its interactions and discusses the importance of how a rich understanding of atomic theory leads to a deeper understanding of why there are so many different substances in the world. A full understanding of matter a...
Book Chapter
Core Idea PS2: Motion and Stability: Forces and Interactions
This chapter discusses the disciplinary core idea of forces and interactions which consists of three component ideas that are described here. If any idea is a core concept, it is the idea of forces and interactions. Forces affect every single thing i...
Book Chapter
This chapter focuses on energy—perhaps the most important idea in all of science. It is used by every scientific discipline and applies to all known natural phenomena. Students hear and use the word “energy” from a very early age, but developin...
Book Chapter
Core Idea LS1: From Molecules to Organisms: Structures and Processes
In this chapter, the disciplinary core idea (DCI) is central to biology and also serves as the glue connecting all four DCIs in the life sciences strand. In essence, it is about the properties of living things and explaining the complexity of life an...
Book Chapter
Core Idea LS2: Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics
This chapter begins by suggesting three ways in which a deeper understanding of ecosystems could enrich students’ lives and support their participation as informed citizens in society. The three ways are by: developing a deeper appreciation of the ...
Book Chapter
Core Idea LS3: Heredity: Inheritance and Variation of Traits
The heredity disciplinary core idea (DCI) is about the biological mechanisms that underlie many familiar and less familiar phenomena such as genetic disorders, genetically modified foods, gene therapy, and others. Explaining how and why we are simila...
Book Chapter
Core Idea LS4: Biological Evolution: Unity and Diversity
This chapter has hopefully provided a bit more insight into the disciplinary core idea (DCI) of Evolution: Unity and Diversity. Taking an evolutionary perspective on biology is one of the most powerful ways that scientists make sense of and reason ab...
Book Chapter
Core Idea ESS1: Earth’s Place in the Universe
Earth and space sciences consists of three disciplinary core ideas (DCIs) that help to explain a wide variety of Earth-related phenomena, including the motion of the planets, changes in climate, and the shape of Earth structures. In this chapter, the...
Book Chapter
Core Idea ESS2: Earth’s Systems
The Earth exists as one large system, consisting of an array of interconnected subsystems. Often, scientists focus their efforts on exploring and explaining smaller, individual subsystems or even smaller relationships within these subsystems. However...
Book Chapter
Core Idea ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
Of all the fields of scientific study, the Earth sciences are one of the most interdisciplinary. This is particularly true for this disciplinary core idea (DCI), which focuses on society’s interactions with the planet’s complex systems. Today, Ea...
Book Chapter
Core Idea ETS1: Engineering Design
The engineering, technology, and applications of science disciplinary core ideas (DCIs) address questions about the ways in which engineers use science to develop solutions, the process of design, and the effects of our designed world on nature and, ...
Book Chapter
Core Idea ETS2: Links Among Engineering, Technology, Science, and Society
This component of the disciplinary core idea (DCI) brings together two movements in science education—environmental education and science, technology and society. Learning about the Influence of engineering, technology, and science on society and t...
Book Chapter
This lesson helps students understand the function of the nucleus, cell membrane, cell wall, mitochondria, and chloroplasts. Students will relate the structure of each organelle to its function, develop and use a model to explain the functions of org...
Book Chapter
This lesson helps students: develop and use a model to explain the inheritance of traits; predict the frequency of genotypes and phenotypes in a cross; recognize that each parent contributes equally to the genotype even when the recessive trait is no...
Book Chapter
Seriously …That’s Where the Mass of a Tree Comes From?
This lesson helps students identify photosynthesis as the process through which plants make glucose, determine that most of the mass of a plant comes from carbon dioxide, explain that plants use glucose for energy and raw materials for plant growth a...
Book Chapter
Chemistry, Toys, and Accidental Inventions
This lesson helps students distinguish between reactants and products, explain the law of conservation of matter, measure properties or reactants and products, recognize that a change in the reactants results in a difference in the products, observe ...
Book Chapter
Nature’s Light Show: It’s Magnetic!
This lesson helps students draw and describe Earth’s magnetic field, explain the phenomenon of the aurora, summarize a text, including the central ideas and supporting details, and synthesize information gained from investigations and text. The inv...
Book Chapter
Thermal Energy: An Ice Cube’s Kryptonite!
This lesson helps students recognize that different materials have different thermal properties, distinguish between qualitative and quantitative measurements of temperature, illustrate that thermal energy moves from areas of high heat to areas of lo...
Book Chapter
This lesson helps students to recognize that interventions can slow or stop the negative impact of human activities on the environment, identify strategies for reusing natural resources, investigate ways to reduce municipal solid waste, draw conclusi...
Book Chapter
This lesson helps students to develop and use a model of the Sun–Earth system to explain: the relationship between the amount of sunlight and the season; the relationship between the angle of incidence of sunlight and the season; and the reason the...
Book Chapter
This lesson helps students explain that Earth’s history is broken up into smaller time periods and rocks and fossils provide evidence for these time periods. Students synthesize information gathered through investigations and text. The investigatio...
Book Chapter
This lesson helps students recognize that secondhand evidence can be used to answer scientific questions, describe how organisms change over time in response to environmental pressures, compare anatomical differences between modern and ancestral orga...
Book Chapter
Core Idea PS4: Waves and Their Applications in Technologies for Information Transfer
Like all enthusiastic teachers, you want your students to see the connections between important science concepts so they can grasp how the world works now—and maybe even make it work better in the future. But how exactly do you help them learn and ...
Book Chapter
Great news for multitasking middle school teachers: Science educators Terry Shiverdecker and Jessica Fries-Gaither can help you blend inquiry-based science and literacy instruction to support student learning and maximize your time. Several unique fe...
NSTA Kids
Named an Outstanding Science Trade Book for Students K-12! Next time you want to see a show, go outside and look at the sky. The clouds will put on a show for you with their ever-changing shapes and sizes. This book reveals some fascinating science b...
NSTA Kids
Next Time You See a Cloud (Library binding)
Named an Outstanding Science Trade Book for Students K-12! Next time you want to see a show, go outside and look at the sky. The clouds will put on a show for you with their ever-changing shapes and sizes. This book reveals some fascinating science b...
NSTA Kids
This lively book’s title makes the perfect motto for young scientists: Look and see! With the help of charming text and bright pictures, you learn just how much you can use your sense of sight. Toys and tools, birds and bugs, flowers and fish, and ...
NSTA Kids
Fragrant as a Flower: I Wonder Why
Follow your nose! This book invites you to learn what your sense of smell can teach you as you amble around town. Go along as a little boy listens to his dad’s tale about taking in the deliciousness of a pastry shop, the woodsy smells of a lumberya...
NSTA Kids
Quiet as a Butterfly: I Wonder Why
“One day I listened. I listened to all the sounds I heard. I listened and I wondered.” From a clock’s ticks in the morning to a father’s snores at night, sounds are everywhere. That’s what an attentive boy discovers as he listens his way...