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Journal Article

The Green Room: The Green Chemistry Laboratory

When it comes to making chemistry labs greener, there are two overarching goals: to reduce the consumption of energy and resources and reduce the production of hazardous and nonhazardous waste. Clearly, these two goals are inextricably linked. What i...

Journal Article

Art Instruction in the Botany Lab: A Collaborative Approach

Good observations are often fundamental to good science, and drawing has long been recognized as a tool to develop students’ observation skills. Yet when drawing in illustrated journals was introduced into botany laboratories in an undergraduate, t...

Journal Article

Natural Resources: Seasons Change

Fall catches our attention, sometimes in subtle ways. A brisk wind, a seed pod. Consider the nondescript tree that you never notice until its golden or garnet leaves flutter to the ground. For those of us who don’t like cold weather, the beauty of ...

Journal Article

Reuse That Notebook!

How many scientists throw out their notebooks at the end of each year and start over no matter how many empty pages remain? How many of them approach a new research question or experiment without using knowledge gained from the previous years? The an...

Journal Article

Nature Detectives

Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods (2008) added to a growing consensus to get children outside and experiencing nature. Using ideas from place-based education, the authors present a simple year-long project that brings science, nature, and othe...

Journal Article

Model-Based Inquiry

Model-Based Inquiry (MBI) is an emergent instructional strategy that is gaining acceptance among science educators. This approach to learning realistically mirrors the work of scientists, who develop and test hypotheses to construct more sophisticate...

Journal Article

Editor’s Roundtable: Model behavior

Models are manageable representations of objects, concepts, and phenomena, and are everywhere in science. Models are “thinking tools” for scientists and have always played a key role in the development of scientific knowledge. Models of the solar...

Journal Article

Science 2.0: Instant Inquiry

Since 2008, several digital cameras have offered high-speed movie settings that allow video to be captured at 120 to 1,000 frames per second. That means you can play back a 1-second, real-time event in slow motion that spans 5, 10, 24, or even 40 sec...

Journal Article

Scope on the Skies: Rocks, robots, and ices

Solar system exploration in November includes flybys of Saturn’s moons, a comet, and the next-to-last launch of a space shuttle before the shuttle program ends. In addition, on November 1 and 29 before sunrise, the waning crescent Moon will be clos...

Journal Article

Favorite Demonstration: Using Magnets, Paper Clips, and Ball Bearings to Explore Molecular Geometries

The valence-shell electron-pair repulsion model (VSEPR model) provides a simple way of predicting the molecular geometries. However, the particularly challenging part in demonstrating the VSEPR models is to show the “best” arrangement of bonding ...

Journal Article

Editorial: Smoke and Mirrors

It seems that every year, the author sees more examples in television, movies, and even books of dislike, distrust, and disdain of the field of science. In “real” life, she teaches increasing numbers of students outspoken in their assertions that...

Journal Article

Managing Misconceptions: Seafarers, great circles, and a tad of rhumb—Understanding the Mercator misconception

Being flat, Mercator maps inherently misrepresent some aspects of Earth’s geography. That’s because there is absolutely no way to simultaneously conserve all of the elements of three-dimensional space in a two-dimensional model. To dispel misconc...

Journal Article

Graphically Enhanced Science Notebooks

A common mode of communication in the elementary classroom is the science notebook. In this article, the authors outline the ways in which “graphically enhanced science notebooks” can help engage students in complete and robust inquiry. Central t...

Journal Article

A Laboratory of Words

Students are using the tools of scientists when keeping a science notebook. They are also keeping track of their thinking and the changes to their original ideas. To bring students’ existing ideas out for examination, the author implemented a “qu...

Journal Article

Guest Editorial: Making Meaning With Notebooks

Communication is vital to science and has a central role in inquiry—students of all ages need to have a place and a means to reflect on their ideas. Language becomes the primary avenue that students use to arrive at and communicate their scientific...

Journal Article

Idea Bank: The Gulf Oil Spill

This summer, the environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico unfolded with more drama than a summer blockbuster. America was riveted by a deadly explosion, a seemingly unstoppable geyser of toxic petroleum, beach cleaners in hazmat suits, and the me...

Journal Article

Editor’s Note: A Foolproof Tool

It’s difficult to think of a tool we use in science classes that provides as much for student learning as a science notebook. It supports the development of science skills, processes, and understanding as well as literacy, numeracy, and attitudes. ...

Journal Article

Guest Editorial: A revolutionary model of professional development

Traditionally, professional development in education has focused on three main areas: content, general pedagogy, or pedagogical content knowledge. While each area has its own purpose, in this article the author focuses on what the literature states s...

Journal Article

Editor’s Corner: Inquiring Minds

Regular readers of The Science Teacher (TST) may have noticed a lot of articles on scientific inquiry and notable among TST articles on inquiry are Bell and colleagues' “Simplifying Inquiry Instruction” and McComas’s “Laboratory Instruction i...

Journal Article

Astronomical Scale of Stellar Distances Using 3-D Models

One of the largest challenges of teaching astronomy is bringing the infinite scale of the universe into the four walls of a classroom. However, concepts of astronomy are often the most interesting to students. This article focuses on an alternative m...

Journal Article

Using Google Earth to Study the Basic Characteristics of Volcanoes

With the advent of Google Earth and the database of volcanoes supplied by the Smithsonian Institution’s Global Volcanism Program, students can describe almost any volcano on Earth. In this article, the authors guide students to use tools in Google ...

Journal Article

Nonfiction Literacy in Kindergarten

After an outdoor excursion hunting for a “special leaf” on a delightful fall day, students returned to the classroom and were instructed to capture the leaf on a blank page in their science notebooks. They were asked to document as many details a...

Journal Article

Science Sampler: Using historical investigations in the classroom—History of science as a tool for teaching

Using “hands-on” instruction in the science classroom has obvious value for both teachers and students. However, just because a type of instruction does not allow students to physically interact with objects does not mean it is not worthwhile. On...

Journal Article

Case Study: Cooking Under Pressure—Applying the Ideal Gas Law in the Kitchen

This case study uses a daily cooking scenario to demonstrate how the boiling point of water is directly related to the external pressures in order to reinforce the concepts of boiling and boiling point, apply ideal gas law, and relate chemical reacti...

Journal Article

Everyday Engineering: Toothbrush design—Is there a better bristle?

Manufacturers often claim that their particular toothbrush design is better than the competitors, but is it? As a result, engineers must consider the economic issues involved with selling the products they create, as well as their functionality: to p...