All Resources

Journal Article

Science Sampler: Clever with weather

In eighth-grade Earth science at Louisville Middle School in Louisville, Colorado, students learn how large-scale weather patterns such as the jet stream and weather fronts interact to generate local weather conditions. The authors have developed a m...

Journal Article

Science Sampler: Fun with a flume—Ideas for inquiry

A flume is a channel that is constructed to divert a flow of water for a specific purpose. Many students recognize the term flume from experience with an amusement park ride called the “log flume.” For the inquiry-based activities described here,...

Journal Article

Teaching Through Trade Books: Disease Detectives

“You’ve got cooties!” is a traditional taunt between children on the playground. Although children’s avoidance of “boy or girl” germs is not scientifically based, students have an innate understanding that transmission of germs can happen...

Journal Article

An Earth-system Approach to Understanding the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

The Deepwater Horizon explosion on April 20, 2010, and the subsequent release of oil into the Gulf of Mexico created an ecological disaster of immense proportions. The estimates of the amounts of oil, whether for the amount released per day or the to...

Journal Article

Safer Science: Equipment Safety—UL Ratings and More

The UL label signifies that an appliance has been safety-tested in accordance with a specific set of standards. This ensures safer operation and built-in protection for the user. Science teachers might find themselves asking whether the same is true ...

Journal Article

Guest Editorial: When teachers become scientists

Ask yourself this question: Have you ever worked on a real scientific experiment? Your thoughts may jump to the lab components of your undergraduate science courses and the research papers/assignments you completed in college, but should such structu...

Journal Article

Ocean Acidification: Hands-On Experiments to Explore the Causes and Consequences

Ocean acidification is one of the most serious environmental issues facing the planet (e.g., Doney 2006; Guinotte and Fabry 2009). It is caused by excess carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. Human activities such as burning fossil fuels put CO2 an...

Journal Article

Idea Bank: Electronic BeeSpace

Recent press coverage of the decrease in worldwide honeybee population (Kaplan 2010) has significantly increased public awareness of its ecological and economic importance. In addition, honeybees’ social nature, novel method of gender determination...

Journal Article

Editor’s Note: Selecting Inquiry Investigations

The National Science Education Standards (NSES) specifically addresses the frequency with which teachers should incorporate inquiry as a strategy in their science classrooms. “Although the Standards emphasize inquiry, this should not be interpreted...

Journal Article

Science 101: What causes convection?

Convection is when different parts of a fluid move in a more-or-less circular path, with parts of the fluid at the bottom moving to the top and vice versa. Here fluids refer to both liquids and gases. Convection happens when you have two fluids toget...

Journal Article

Science Sampler: Fossil patterns in time

This lesson works well as an introduction to Earth history, when students are asked to consider time periods of millions and billions of years. It would be a most helpful experience when introducing fossils, as part of an overview of the diversity of...

Journal Article

Scope on Safety: Animals in the classroom

Use of animals in middle school science classrooms is a curriculum component worthy of consideration, providing proper investigation and planning are addressed. A responsible approach to this action, including safety, must be adopted for success. In ...

Journal Article

Teaching Forward

Educators and educational researchers alike are discovering that inductive methods—in which learners start with specific observations, problems, or cases and infer general laws from these instances—are more effective when higher-order thinking is...

Journal Article

PD Pathways: Teacher? Learner? Both!

Teachers often have questions about how the strategies they learned at a professional development (PD) workshop will work with their students. Wouldn’t it be great if teachers had the opportunity to practice implementing new strategies during PD so...

Journal Article

The New Teacher’s Toolbox: Making the Most of “Lost Days”

In a given school year, one or two weeks of class time are inevitably eaten up by the calendar. There are the days before Thanksgiving, winter break, and spring break—when some students have left for early vacations, those left behind seem off the ...

Journal Article

Outdoor Integration

An outdoor classroom is an exciting way to connect the learning of science to nature and the environment. Many school grounds include gardens, grassy areas, courtyards, and wooded areas. Some even have nearby streams or creeks. These are built-in lab...

Journal Article

A Tale of Four Electrons

“A Tale of Four Electrons” is a creative writing assignment used with 10th-grade Honors Chemistry students. The project helps students consolidate their learning about bonding—an important unifying theme in chemistry—and answers questions suc...

Journal Article

What’s the Next Step?

The authors developed a demonstration with two similar setups that provide students with both the prior experience to form an expectation and the discrepancy to grab their attention. They follow the demonstration with a structured exploration format ...

Journal Article

Green Science: In the hot seat—Analyzing your heating options

When winter rolls around, keeping yourself and your home warm is of the utmost importance. Heating your home seems like a simple subject to tackle, but there are many heating systems available, requiring different fuels, installations, and costs. The...

Journal Article

Thinking <em>Inside</em> the Box

The authors conducted a test to determine whether they could incorporate a discovery box into a preschool setting was successful. It stimulated the students’ natural inquiry processes while promoting understanding of healthy foods and allowing for ...

Journal Article

One Fish, Two Fish, Redfish, You Fish!

The recreational fishing activity presented in this article provides a hands-on, problem-based experience for students; it unites biology, math, economics, environmental policy, and population dynamics concepts. In addition, the activity allows stude...

Journal Article

Scope on the Skies: Getting a crew into orbit

Despite the temporary setback in our country’s crewed space exploration program, there will continue to be missions requiring crews to orbit Earth and beyond. Under the NASA Authorization Act of 2010, NASA should have its own heavy launch rocket an...

Journal Article

Editor’s Roundtable: Not this teacher’s recommendation!

The unfortunate result of state and district curriculum recommendations is that, currently, most students get the bulk of their Earth science education in grades 6–8, where it is usually integrated into general science classes (Underwood 2008) and ...

Book Chapter

Why Did I Completely Change My Classroom?

Book Chapter

Research-Based Techniques Incorporated Within Mastery Learning

This chapter begins with a brief explanation of cognition and how we learn. This explanation will serve as the foundation for understanding why the various aspects of mastery learning have the impact that they do. ...