JoinAll Resources
Journal Article
Practical Ways to Assess and Change Students’ Perceptions of Scientists
One exercise that challenges students’ stereotypical perception of scientists is the Scientist Match-Up Activity. In this interactive lesson, students are asked to match a person to a profession based on three sets of clues. These clues include a p...
Journal Article
The Prepared Practitioner: Summer Reading
With summer in full swing, now is a great time to recommend summer reading about science and scientists. Since space is limited, let’s dive right in! ...
Journal Article
Searching for Professional Development
It’s an empowering feeling to be in a room full of people who know the lingo of teaching, who understand the demands of teaching young children, and who want to learn more to be able to put best practices in place in their classrooms. Professional ...
Journal Article
Preceding an editorial, this title always signals that the author is about to expound on his or her heartfelt dreams for a brighter future for the profession (and for the journal). That’s not the case here. The author is asking YOU to write down yo...
Journal Article
Every Day Science Calendar: August (2010)
This monthly feature contains facts and challenges for the science explorer....
Journal Article
Mendel and his peas. Goodall and her chimpanzees. Bentley and his snowflakes. Pasteur and his sheep. Not only do these stories intrigue students, but they also demonstrate the trials and tribulations associated with scientific inquiry. Using scientis...
Journal Article
For the first few weeks of summer break, most teachers appreciate nothing more than a comfortable lounge chair on a breezy veranda. Fortunately, that is the ideal position from which to begin a personal program of rich professional development (PD)�...
Journal Article
Safer Science: Are Your “Bungs” on Tight?
Alcohols, glycols, aldehydes, esters, ketones, and other flammable or combustible liquids are found in many high school labs. But they need special care when it comes to storage. Unfortunately, in some laboratories, many flammable or combustible liqu...
Journal Article
Seven Principles of Highly Collaborative PD
Convening professionals—physically or virtually—is necessary but certainly not sufficient for meaningful collaboration and networking to occur. Professional development (PD) must be designed and carried out in ways that encourage a culture of sus...
Journal Article
Become part of a professional learning community by pairing up to exchange ideas and lesson plans. Professional development in real-life situations and collaborations with others is part of the National Science Education Standard A: Work together as ...
Journal Article
Career of the Month: An Interview With Arborist Tchukki Andersen
If you like being outside and have a fondness for trees, this may be the career for you. Professional arborists are trained in the art and science of planting, caring for, and maintaining trees. Arborist Tchukki Andersen provides care and management ...
Journal Article
Tried and True: Teaching the practice of science, unteaching the “scientific method”
Many teachers continue to teach the scientific method not only because they too were taught to believe in it, but also because it is still emphasized in many textbooks. However, it was just such mechanical teaching of science that prompted education ...
Journal Article
The phrase “21st-century skills” suggests that our students will need a new batch of skills and tools in order to be prepared for the next century. However, many teachers would say that they already incorporate these skills in their lessons, such...
Journal Article
Editor’s Roundtable: Reading is fundamental—to science
A student’s reading level is one of the predictors of his or her overall academic success in middle school and afterwards. Science teachers, however, do not need to be reading experts to help students develop close-reading skills and effective scre...
Journal Article
While diagrams make the text more visually appealing and provide an image of the text, they also do much more. Subsequently, the authors designed a series of lessons for students to discover the many purposes of graphics in science. A particular util...
Journal Article
Institutionalizing Undergraduate Research for Geology Majors Through Creative Inquiry Experiences
The geology program at Clemson University has instituted a new, six-semester-long undergraduate research course sequence that requires student participation in ongoing departmental research projects from their sophomore through senior years....
Journal Article
“Engineering Challenge for the 21st Century,” a weeklong teacher workshop sponsored by the National Science Foundation, uses project-based learning (PBL) to help students and teachers build science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) skills...
Journal Article
Weaving Science and Civics Through Interdisciplinary Courses
Cross-curricular programming offers unique opportunities to connect non-majors with science. In this article, the author describes personal experiences related to a novel initiative uniting science, civics, and citizenship that may serve as a model f...
Journal Article
Science Shorts: The Challenge of Nutrition
You have no doubt seen it in your classrooms and heard it in the news: Childhood obesity is an epidemic in the United States. Obesity may predispose children to health issues later in their lifetime, including type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Weigh...
Journal Article
The University of Colorado’s Physics Education Technology (PhET) website offers free, high-quality simulations of many physics experiments that can be used in the classroom. The Circuit Construction Kit, for example, allows students to safely and c...
Journal Article
Science 101: What kind of professional development is best for teachers?
The simple answer to this question is that it depends on your needs. For elementary and middle school teachers, though, the author has found that a high percentage of teachers lack the proper background in science content to teach effectively. There ...
Journal Article
How to Create a Professional Learning Community
Devoting time to a professional learning community (PLC) can be frustrating or rewarding. The authors have experienced both of these outcomes and can share processes that may help make your PLC one that enriches your professional growth and improves ...
Journal Article
Achievable Inquiry in the College Laboratory: The Mini-Journal
The authors engage students in inquiry-based learning by presenting laboratory exercises as mini-journal articles that mirror the format of a scientific journal article, including a title, authors, abstract, introduction, materials and methods, resul...
Journal Article
Twin strategies of Institutes on the Teaching and Learning of Science and Mathematics and support for faculty through minigrants are shown to be effective in stimulating college science and mathematics faculty to modify their introductory courses to ...
Journal Article
Guest Editorial: The Root of the Problem
By providing opportunities for in-depth exploration of content and engagement of educators in modeling the instructional process, we will be able to focus on the needed differentiation in the professional development (PD) of science educators, just a...
Journal Article
Science Sampler: Annotated reading
In order to make reading assignments a more meaningful instructional strategy, the author created MP3 audio recordings of the textbook, which included commentary that was interspersed in the recording. At the start of every recording, he also modeled...
Journal Article
Tech Trek: Hang up and learn—Cell phones in the science classroom
In some schools, cell phones have to be turned off or perhaps kept in lockers to avoid misuse. But the authors hope to demonstrate in this article how they can be used under supervision to assist learning. There is no question that the uninitiated wi...
Journal Article
Point of View: Dual Enrollment—Postsecondary/Secondary Partnerships to Prepare Students
The last decade has seen an explosion of interest in dual enrollment. In dual enrollment, high school students are permitted to take college courses and, if they pass them, earn college credit. Sometimes, as in the case of dual credit, students earn ...
eBook
Nationally known science educator Page Keeley—principal author of the hugely popular, four-volume NSTA Press series Uncovering Students Ideas in Science—has teamed up with physicist and science educator Rand Harrington to write this first volume ...
eBook
The Frugal Science Teacher, 6-9: Strategies and Activities (e-book)
Teachers of all grades and disciplines often dip into their own wallets to outfit their classrooms with materials and supplies that school and district budgets can’t—or won’t—cover. Science teachers tend to find themselves supplementing their...