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Journal Article
Formative Assessment Probes: To Hypothesize or Not
Formative assessment probes are used not only to uncover the ideas students bring to their learning, they can also be used to reveal teachers’ common misconceptions. Consider a process widely used in inquiry science—developing hypotheses. Perhaps...
Journal Article
The ingredient lists of your shampoo, makeup, and moisturizer are likely to include a dizzying number of unknown ingredients. What these ingredients are and do is a mystery to most consumers. However, many cosmetics contain ingredients that are linke...
Journal Article
Editor’s Note: No Dumb Questions, But. . .
Investigable questions are important elements of lessons that promote inquiry and help students construct meaning. Good questions help students make links between what they know, what they want to find out, what they observe, and how their observatio...
Journal Article
Every Day Science: December 2010
This monthly feature presents facts and challenges for the science explorer. ...
Journal Article
Digital photography energizes students and focuses their attention on their environment. The personal connection to science helps students develop a habit of mind in which everything they see inside or outside of school can prompt them to wonder and ...
Journal Article
A Life-Cycle Assessment of Biofuels
A life-cycle assessment (LCA) is a tool used by engineers to make measurements of net energy, greenhouse gas production, water consumption, and other items of concern. This article describes an activity designed to walk students through the qualitati...
Journal Article
Little Shrimp, Big Results: A Model of an Integrative, Cross-Curricular Activity
This integrative, cross-curricular lab engages middle school biology students in an exercise involving ecology, arthropod biology, and mathematics. Students research the anatomy and behavioral patterns of a species of brine shrimp, compare the anatom...
Journal Article
For scientists, the sandbox serves as an analog for faulting in Earth’s crust. Here, the large, slow processes within the crust can be scaled to the size of a table, and time scales are directly observable. This makes it a useful tool for demonstra...
Journal Article
Thermal Paper Exposed: The Secret of “Smart Paper”
This article discusses how, as part of a National Science Foundation-funded internship program, the authors translated smart papers into an exciting and informative activity for the middle school classroom. This activity opens students’ eyes to an ...