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Book Chapter
A group of students wonders how a single cat can have kittens with different coat colors. In this problem, the challenge for students is to explain the difference between cats with pale versus dark coats in terms of DNA, proteins, and traits and expl...
Book Chapter
Black and White and Spots All Over
In this problem, students explore how spotted coat color is inherited in cats. The goal is to figure out the gene for spotting in cats by applying what students learned earlier in this chapter from the snapdragon and bell pepper cases. Students will ...
Book Chapter
In this problem, a group of students tries to explain the genetic cause of calico and tortoiseshell coat color in cats. The challenge to students is to describe the genetics of calico cats by explaining the inheritance of three genes—spotting, bla...
Book Chapter
In this problem, students are asked to determine if all the different-color kittens in a litter could be related to the same father. The challenge to students is to use cat coat color genetics to determine if all of the kittens in a litter could have...
Book Chapter
In this chapter, students wonder how burning a log in a campfire compares to eating a marshmallow. This problem focuses on combustion and metabolism of marshmallows. Marshmallows are a food that is mostly sugar and that students may have experience b...
Book Chapter
In this problem, the challenge to students is to determine in what ways are the matter and energy changes in burning wood similar to and different from those in burning food for energy? What are the matter and energy changes that occur when a plant g...
Book Chapter
This problem focuses on how the body changes the materials of things we eat into our own tissue. How do animals and plants use food? Why do we not become what we eat? Students often wonder if the saying “you are what you eat” makes sense. In this...
NSTA Press Book
Once Upon an Earth Science Book: 12 Interdisciplinary Activities to Create Confident Readers
If you work with students who struggle to understand their Earth science texts, this book provides everything you need to boost their skills in both science and reading. Once Upon an Earth Science Book starts with advice on teaching reading comprehen...
By Jodi Wheeler-Toppen
NSTA Press Book
Be a Winner! A Science Teacher’s Guide to Writing Successful Grant Proposals
Be a Winner! is your chance to learn from veteran science teachers about the secrets to successful grant writing. Formatted as a handy workbook, this practical book takes you step by step through the writing process. You’ll learn the top 10 reasons...
By Patty McGinnis, Kitchka Petrova
NSTA Press Book
Bringing STEM to the Elementary Classroom
Many resources help you encourage young children to learn about science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). But only this book of quality STEM experiences was curated by the veteran educator who edits Science and Children, NSTA’s award-winni...
Book Chapter
Problem-Based Learning in the Life Science Classroom, K–12 (Book Sample)
Problem-Based Learning in the Life Science Classroom, K–12 offers a great new way to ignite your creativity. Authors Tom McConnell, Joyce Parker, and Janet Eberhardt show you how to engage students with scenarios that represent real-world science ...
Book Chapter
How to Develop an Engineering Design Task
This chapter is a good introduction to the process of designing lessons. It provides a valuable way to start your journey through the many wonderful ideas shared in Bringing STEM to the Elementary Classroom, as well as generic strategies that you can...
Book Chapter
This chapter will assist you in identifying the misconceptions of students who are new to STEM. It provides a valuable way to start your journey through the many wonderful ideas shared in Bringing STEM to the Elementary Classroom, as well as generic ...
Book Chapter
In this chapter, through two different stories, students are introduced to the process—including the frustrations—of designing something to solve a problem. The experiences of the books’ characters are brought into the classroom by having stude...
Book Chapter
More Teaching Through Trade Books
This chapter presents two fiction trade books that can be used to inspire students to design and test various flying machines. It provides opportunities for students to engage in optimizing design solutions through testing and comparing flying machin...
Book Chapter
This chapter shares the seven overlapping and mutually reinforcing strategies teachers used that effectively supported children’s learning in physical science and engineering. Consistent implementation of these teaching strategies requires that pre...
Book Chapter
This chapter shares experiences introducing preschoolers and kindergarteners to engineering through an hour-long lesson about designing structures. The 5E lesson framework remains a useful tool within science education. It represents a way to situate...
Book Chapter
Can a Student Really Do What Engineers Do?
In this chapter, a science teacher educator, a water company informal educator, and a second-grade teacher develop and co-teach a three- to four-day instructional unit within the authentic context of water filtration. This unit was designed to suppor...
Book Chapter
A STEM activity is any activity that integrates the use of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics to solve a problem. This chapter presents a STEM unit that was completed over two weeks in a kindergarten classroom. The unit focused on the ...
Book Chapter
Inviting Engineering Into the Science Lab
This chapter presents examples of two lessons adapted from a second-grade program to incorporate the science and engineering practices into lab activities through the use of guided inquiry, rather than the structured-inquiry approach dictated in the ...
Book Chapter
In this activity, note the steps for redesign, and be open to following a design process, not a rigid the design process. Students may spend a long time exploring the properties of the materials before they begin making purposeful changes to refine t...
Book Chapter
Elephant Trunks and Dolphin Tails
This chapter focuses on how engineers help animals. After some time to brainstorm together, students come up with an idea that engineers may help veterinarians heal sick animals or zookeepers develop safe habitats. An engineering design challenge is ...
Book Chapter
This chapter shares two examples of “classic” science lessons adapted to teach science content through engineering design. It also provides some more general strategies for adapting science investigations to focus on engineering design. In the fi...
Book Chapter
In this activity, students transform STEM journals into E-books while integrating science, technology, and literacy. The chapter brings forward the idea of integrating iPads into the classroom. With the students’ previous experience with Engineerin...
Book Chapter
The lessons contained in this chapter highlight collaborating to improve teacher STEM preparation. This collaboration provided preservice teachers the unique opportunity to develop science units that could be implemented with young children at the lo...
Book Chapter
Am I Really Teaching Engineering to Elementary Students?
This chapter features lessons from an environmental engineering summer camp for first and second graders, with the goal of introducing students to engineering and to address the engineering design standards found in the Next Generation Science Standa...
Book Chapter
In this chapter, students investigate how to carry and transport a heavy object including designing and using a tool. With science, technology, engineering, and mathematical concepts involved, it could be included as part of a larger inquiry or proje...
Book Chapter
In this chapter, early childhood students design a piece of playground equipment using a 3-D printer. Kindergarten and first-grade students were charged with designing new playground equipment to create a solution to a problem of the school playgroun...
Book Chapter
In this chapter, second-grade students investigate material properties. Students were introduced to the Next Generation Science Standards model of the engineering design process (EDP) and given different materials to test to determine the best soluti...
Book Chapter
The true purpose of this activity is to introduce students to a five-step EDP (engineering design process). In this chapter, second graders design, build, test, and improve tools to map a waterway, and the design activities are described in detail as...
Book Chapter
Think It, Design It, Build It, Test It, Refine It
In this chapter, a unit on water quality ends with a water filtration engineering design activity and was a win-win situation. Students were already very curious to learn about water filtration after their study of water properties and water quality ...
Book Chapter
A design task helps students identify and find solutions to a school-yard problem. A module was conducted in four 90-minute sessions. Session 1, Preview module and introduce engineering with a warm-up design; Session 2, Unpack and explore the communi...
Book Chapter
This chapter shows how science and engineering practices can be integrated into the elementary classroom by providing snapshots of activities from a STEM curriculum unit. The unit, focused on aerospace engineering, challenges students to design parac...
Book Chapter
Designing a Sound-Reducing Wall
In this chapter, students explore engineering with a fun challenge. To help students better understand sound in a fun and engaging way, an engineering design–based science learning activity was conducted that is appropriate for a third- or fourth-g...
Book Chapter
Blade Structure and Wind Turbine Function
In this chapter, third and fifth graders co-investigate and co-design wind turbine blades and voltage output. The wind turbine lessons featured emerged from the desire to help students build on their learning about energy transformation. The goals of...
Book Chapter
You and Your Students as Green Engineers
In this chapter, using creativity and everyday materials to design and improve a solar oven highlights one teacher’s journey with her fifth-grade students as they embarked on an engineering adventure together. In this case, literacy, social studies...
Book Chapter
In this chapter, third-grade students solve a real-world problem using the engineering design process, collaborative group work, and integrated STEM education. By introducing students to the ideas of recycling and composting and by showing them the e...