All Resources

Journal Article

Engaging Students With Dynamic Models: Peruvian Food Chain Jenga

Use a popular tower-building party game to enhance the teaching of food chains....

Journal Article

Editor's Roundtable: More Than Just a Chart

Science Scope’s editor shares thoughts regarding the current issue....

Journal Article

Teacher's Toolkit: Cultivating a Next-Generation Classroom Culture

This column provides how-to strategies and practical advice for the science teacher. This month’s issue identifies four key challenges that classroom communities will encounter when trying to engage students in NGSS-aligned instruction....

Journal Article

Tried and True: Bird-Brained Foraging: Learn to Eat Like a Crow

This column provides classic demonstrations and experiments with a new twist. This month’s issue presents a role-playing activity that is a great way for middle school biology or environmental science students to learn about animal behavior and soc...

Journal Article

Scope on Safety: Safer Science Outside the Classroom

This column shares safety information for your classroom. This month’s issue discuss safety concerns on field trips....

Journal Article

Scope on the Skies: A Model Solar System

This column focuses on astronomy throughout the year. This month’s issue discusses planets and their orbital positions....

Journal Article

Don't "Short Circuit" Stem Instruction

Exploring the goals of engineering and science....

Journal Article

How Do Siamese Cats Get Their Color?

Exploring the role of proteins in molecular genetics....

Journal Article

Salamander Saver

Students design salamander traps to help a scientist study habitats....

Journal Article

Assessment as Learning

Students learn, self-correct, and collaborate during the test....

Journal Article

Help Yourself, Help Your Students

What research says about choosing a good professional development program....

Journal Article

Addressing Three Common Myths About the Next Generation Science Standards

Uncover misconceptions about the NGSS that are still held by some science educators....

Journal Article

Editor's Corner: Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions

The Science Teacher’s editor shares thoughts on the current issue....

Journal Article

Science 2.0: Do I Need a Robot?

This column shares web tools that support learning. This month’s issue discusses telepresence robots and their use in the classroom....

High School Technology Instructional Materials Pedagogy Teaching Strategies

Journal Article

The Green Room: Hurricanes and Humans

This column focuses on making your teaching more environmentally friendly. This month’s issue discusses the effect of human activities on hurricanes....

Journal Article

Spotting Depression in High School Students

High School

Journal Article

Idea Bank: Secrets of the "Sunspots"

The Idea Bank provides tips and techniques for creative teaching, in about 1,000 words. This month’s Idea Bank discusses several interesting activities that can be done with the topics of the sun and moon....

Journal Article

Safer Science: Safer Reproductive Health in Science Labs

This column provides best safety practices for the science classroom and laboratory. This month’s issue discusses reproductive hazards in the science classroom....

High School Chemistry Equity Labs Safety

Journal Article

Career of the Month: Agricultural Engineer

This column shares interviews with professionals using science in the workplace. This month’s issue describes Erin Webb's career path to becoming an agricultural engineer....

Journal Article

Strategies to Recruit and Retain Students in Physical Science and Mathematics on a Diverse College Campus

This article presents implementation details and findings of a National Science Foundation Scholarship in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Program (S-STEM) consisting of many high-impact practices to recruit and retain students in t...

Journal Article

Two Wrongs Make a Right: Using Pseudoscience and Reasoning Fallacies to Complement Primary Literature

Undergraduate science students benefit greatly by learning to read and interpret primary research articles. However, once they obtain a level of competence in analyzing primary literature and develop a better understanding of the nature of science, t...

Journal Article

Ways to Include Global Climate Change in Courses for Prospective Teachers

What responsibility do science teacher educators have for engaging students in learning about global climate change in courses? How can the topic of global climate change be added to an already packed course curriculum? The authors have begun assembl...

Journal Article

The Development of a Learning Gap Between Students With Strong Prerequisite Skills and Students With Weak Prerequisite Skills

This article investigates how mastery of prerequisite course material impacts student learning in follow-on courses. To measure the importance of prerequisite skills, we compare the exam scores of students with a GPA of 3.0 or better in their multidi...

Journal Article

Crossing Boundaries in Undergraduate Biology Education

In an effort to make mathematics relevant to biology students, the authors developed two modules that sought to integrate mathematics and ecology instruction to differing degrees. The modules were developed by a team of biology and mathematics educat...

Journal Article

The Effect of Gender on Perception of Case Studies and Performance

The case study method of teaching uses real-world narratives to teach concepts and content. This method of teaching encourages active learning, which has been shown to have a positive effect on student performance in many disciplines including scienc...

Journal Article

Point of View: Predictably Unpredictable

This column shares reflections or thoughtful opinions on issues of broad interest to the community. This month’s issue describes examples of challenging student behavior and provides ideas to help confront this type of behavior....

Journal Article

Case Study: Student-Produced Videos for the Flipped Classroom

This column provides original articles on innovations in case study teaching, assessment of the method, as well as case studies with teaching notes. This month’s issue describes a way of building a library of student-produced videos to use in the f...

Journal Article

Research and Teaching: Correlations Between Students' Written Responses to Lecture-Tutorial Questions and Their Understandings of Key Astrophysics Concepts

This article reports on an investigation into the correlations between students’ understandings of introductory astronomy concepts and the correctness and coherency of their written responses to targeted Lecture-Tutorial questions....

Journal Article

Research and Teaching: Development of Undergraduate Teaching Assistants as Effective Instructors in STEM Courses

This study examined the development of peer mentoring skills and deepening of content knowledge by trained and supported undergraduate teaching assistants working with students in entry-level STEM courses across nine departments at a large research-i...

Journal Article

Research and Teaching: Computational Methods in General Chemistry: Perceptions of Programming, Prior Experience, and Student Outcomes

This article explores how integrating computational tools into a general chemistry laboratory course can influence student perceptions of programming and investigates relationships among student perceptions, prior experience, and student outcomes....

Book Chapter

Understanding and Tracking the Daily Motion of the Sun

In this chapter, students will easily recognize the learning they do related to the disciplinary core ideas, specifically that shadows made by the Sun can be observed, described, predicted, and explained with models to reveal patterns of the Sun’s ...

Book Chapter

Understanding and Tracking the Annual Motion of the Sun and the Seasons

This chapter helps expand students’ thinking to how the apparent motion of the Sun in the sky changes throughout the year and the effects of those changes on the Earth, including the varying length of daytime and differences in the Sun’s height ...

Book Chapter

Solar Activity and Space Weather

This chapter only deals with the analysis of data as it relates to key phenomena on the Sun. It focuses on the sunspot cycle, space weather, and related concepts that are most accessible to middle school students. Only a subset of the concepts in the...

Book Chapter

The Sun, the Moon, and the Earth Together: Phases, Eclipses, and More

This chapter adds a third cycle of importance in astronomy (and human culture): the revolution of the Moon around the Earth. The chapter starts with a simple challenge for the students: putting a series of lunar photographs in order by the shape of t...