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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
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
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” 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
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
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. ...
Book Chapter
Practical Implications of Mastery Learning
The research supports the belief that mastery learning results in improved student learning and motivation. But how do you actually do it? What are the implications of revamping a course to make it a mastery learning course? How do you handle the det...
Book Chapter
How Mastery Learning Might Look
In this chapter, the author describes what their mastery learning classroom looks like and presents several variations that could be used to make mastery learning fit specific circumstances or people....
Book Chapter
It’s very daunting to consider completely changing the way your classroom is run. The author went back and forth many times in the month before school started before making the switch to mastery learning. The author knew my students would benefit, ...
Journal Article
College and university science programs generate hazardous waste that must be dealt with and disposed of in accordance with state and federal regulations. During a recent renovation and addition project for the State University of New York at Plattsb...
Journal Article
Resisting Rote: The Importance of Active Learning for All Course Learning Objectives
Many college science educators have moved away from the traditional lecture format and toward learner-centered classroom environments. Yet many of us struggle to cover large content loads, reverting at times to rote memorization. This paper suggests ...
Journal Article
Editor’s Note: Understanding Data
Science is a data-based subject. In any experiment, the two most important product components are the data and the analysis of that data—what happened, and what does it mean? When considering how to design inquiry experiences for students, the auth...
Journal Article
Natural Resources: Fireside Science
Enthusiasm is contagious. From you to your students, and from scientists to you! Though many of you are enjoying temperate winters and continuing your outdoor adventures, we know many others are spending the coldest months curled up with a good book....
Journal Article
Methods and Strategies: Math and Science Night
Family Math and Science Nights engage students and parents in active investigations tied to the curriculum in a fun, informal environment. Through this program, families actively explore math and science ideas, discover together through guided inquir...
Journal Article
Formative Assessment Probes: How Far Did It Go?
The formative assessment probe “How Far Did It Go?” in Uncovering Student Ideas in Physical Science: 45 Force and Motion Assessment Probes (Keeley and Harrington 2010) can be used to reveal whether students recognize that units of distance travel...
Journal Article
Scope on the Skies: Solar explorations
Even though there is no change of season during January, we have just passed the December solstice, it is winter in the Northern Hemisphere, and we are 147,100,000 km (91,403,702 mi.) from the Sun. This is in contrast to when Earth reaches aphelion d...
Journal Article
Case Study: The Wealth of Water—The Value of an Essential Resource
Many students take water availability for granted and yet, by 2025, two-thirds of the world will not have access to clean drinking water. This case study is designed to encourage students to think about water as a limited natural resource and is used...
Journal Article
Science Sampler: Teacher read-alouds make science come alive
Demonstrations, hands-on activities, and videos are common ways an industrious science teacher will provide inquiry-based instruction, offering engaging access to the middle school science curriculum. In this article, the authors present short teache...
Journal Article
Teaching Through Trade Books: Wild About Data
In today’s world of short attention spans and media overload, the ability to create visual representations to communicate data is an important skill. This month’s lessons focus on various ways to display data and the purpose of visual representat...
Journal Article
Science 2.0: Picture This Assessment
If a picture is worth a thousand words, imagine the power of an image-filled science test! In a world rich with drag-and-drop, copy-and-paste digital imaging, today’s teachers have a number of options to create visually rich assessment tools for th...
Journal Article
Inquiry-based instruction is widely promoted to increase both students’ conceptual understanding and their engagement in course content. What this means for day-to-day practices in the classroom is more elusive. Instructors adopting inquiry-based c...
Journal Article
The Green Room: Teaching About Energy
Winter is the perfect time to get students thinking about their energy use and introduce them to conservation methods. Students can monitor the energy use of a classroom appliance and even compete in a nationwide energy conservation challenge! Read T...
Journal Article
One tool for enhancing students’ work with data in the science classroom is the measure line. As a coteacher and curriculum developer for The Inquiry Project, the author has seen how measure lines—a number line in which the numbers refer to units...
Journal Article
Point of View: Where Are Skills Learned in a Science Program?
Communication, critical thinking, and collaboration are outcomes we hope students will learn from experts in “other” courses. But if science teachers value certain skills, then they should accept the challenge to help students learn those skills ...
Journal Article
Chemistry students appear to bring significantly higher critical-thinking skill to their nonmajors course than do biology students. Knowing student preconceptions and thinking ability is essential to learning growth and effective teaching. Of the fac...
Journal Article
To help students learn and apply science content, teachers can embed content literacy instruction within science instruction. This involves teaching the content and the literacy skills students need to learn that content, such as vocabulary and compr...
Journal Article
The New Teacher’s Toolbox: Homeless Not Hopeless—Tips for the Traveling Teacher
In a world of expanding class sizes and shrinking budgets, it’s rare to find a new teacher with his or her own classroom. New teachers often juggle multiple sections of multiple preps in different rooms—sometimes teaching back-to-back classes on ...
Journal Article
The Early Years: Recording Data With Young Children
Young children collect data every day. They note who has pink sparkly shoes and find out who will share the ball on the playground. Children will be interested in collecting data if the topic is important to them, such as recording their favorite col...