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Journal Article
Science Shorts: Learning From the Spill
It is hard to imagine anything good coming from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill; even suggestions that the public and private sectors will learn and adapt to ensure that nothing like it can happen again are almost as difficult to digest as the massiv...
Journal Article
Scope on the Skies: Total lunar eclipse
In the hours before the December solstice, the full Moon will pass through the Earth’s shadow for a total lunar eclipse that will be visible at some point from all of North America. Depending on your longitude and time zone, this event will be visi...
Journal Article
Guest Editorial: Sparks That Ignite Inquiry
Students ask questions all the time. They have natural curiosities about the world in which they live. Teachers help pique this curiosity with engaging activities—making students want to know more. Therefore, experienced teachers listen for and to ...
Journal Article
Curiosity + Kindergarten = Future Scientists
Carefully crafted experiences in the early childhood classroom can create learning opportunities for children that allow one curiosity to lead to another. Learning how to find out answers to fascinating questions is what science is all about. In fact...
Journal Article
The Hudson River Watershed contains a variety of geologic, topographic, climatic, and hydrologic features and a diversity of land-use patterns—making it an ideal model for studying human impact on the coastal environment. In this article, the autho...
Journal Article
Science Sampler: The S<sup>3</sup>: Singing Science Students
How do music, joy, fun, and science fit into a middle school science curriculum? This article describes how the authors’ Singing Science Students learn science topics and concepts through song and then perform concerts for the entire school, wearin...
Journal Article
PD Pathways: Attending a Science Institute
For two weeks during Summer 2009, three elementary school teachers—Darcy Marcou, Melissa Lange, and Andrea Konitzer—participated in a science institute directed by Scott Ashmann, a science education professor at the University of Wisconsin-Green ...
Journal Article
Science 2.0: Invitation to Inquiry
Too often, students are not engaged in authentic questioning. Dan Meyer, a math educator, explains, “Our curricula are full of pseudoproblems wrapped in pseudocontext. We ask students to grapple with problems that only sort of resemble the real wor...
Journal Article
Science Sampler: Deal me in—Using playing cards to model the periodic table of elements
Unfortunately, the terms “resource deprived” and “science teacher” are too often paired. Gaining access to inexpensive materials to teach with serves both teachers and students well, and simple materials do not necessarily produce simple less...
Journal Article
Why Do Athletes Drink Sports Drinks?
Why does an athlete reach for a sports drink after a tough game or practice? The learning cycle presented in this article helps students answer this question. Learning cycles (Marek 2009) are designed to guide students through direct experiences with...
Journal Article
Thoughtful teachers allow students to pursue the relationship between structure and function before learning about particular organelles, usually through an analogy to a factory or some other complex system (Crooks and Sheldon 2005). In this Idea Ban...
Journal Article
Experts, politicians, and large numbers of American citizens recognize that our present dependence on oil is a major obstacle to the progress of this nation; an examination of the potential solar alternatives will likely be of considerable interest t...
Journal Article
Career of the Month: An Interview With Broadcast Engineer Glenn Leffler
Broadcast engineers maintain radio stations—their job is to keep stations on the air and making money. From rewiring a station’s equipment to fixing a transmitter on a mountaintop at 3:00 a.m., these engineers make sure that we, the listeners, ca...
Journal Article
Tried and True: The romance of the atoms—Animated atomic attractions
Since the formation of atomic bonds is active, the authors sought a way of learning through drama or kinetic activity. To achieve this goal, they developed an activity called Romance of the Atoms. The activity requires students to use computer-animat...
Journal Article
The National Science Digital Library (NSDL) provides a wealth of resources to assist teachers with easy access to standards, resources, and assessment tools. The author has found NSDL to be an invaluable tool throughout the school year. In particular...
Journal Article
The Green Room: Greening Your Science Curriculum
You do not need to significantly change your curriculum to incorporate environmental topics. There are plenty of course-specific resources that can help you green your individual course content; or, if your whole science department is “on board,”...
Journal Article
A method for elevating the thinking level of students while accommodating their digital needs is to use real-world, problem-based projects. One such project is the Poison Blog, which requires middle school students to group content that is usually ta...
Journal Article
Questions are powerful tools that are central to scientific inquiry. Given the importance of investigable questions to scientific inquiry, what can teachers do to help students learn how to generate them? Possibilities the author explores in this art...
Journal Article
Editor’s Corner: Into the Future With <em>The Science Teacher</em>
The end of the year is always a time for reflection. Although December may feel more like midyear for teachers, the end of the calendar year inevitably brings top 10 lists, reviews of the year’s best, and personal vows for improvement. But before y...
Journal Article
The New Teacher’s Toolbox: Getting a Handle on Grading
Anecdotally, colleagues have shared that they spend anywhere from 3 to 10 hours a week on grading—depending on the time of year. When you add planning time to that, it’s easy to see how evenings and weekends can be quickly eaten up by paperwork. ...