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Chemical Change Café ClassPack

Class Pack

Chemical Change Café ClassPack

Using Picture-Perfect Science Lessons, Expanded 2nd Edition in your classroom is easier than ever! NSTA’s ClassPacks, each sufficient for a class of 28 students, are lesson-specific collections of materials—an unmatched time-saver and a great de...

Sheep in a Jeep ClassPack

Class Pack

Sheep in a Jeep ClassPack

Using Picture-Perfect Science Lessons, Expanded 2nd Edition in your classroom is easier than ever! NSTA’s ClassPacks, each sufficient for a class of 28 students, are lesson-specific collections of materials—an unmatched time-saver and a great dea...

Elementary Informal Education Middle School Engineering General Science Physical Science STEM Instructional Materials Inquiry Lesson Plans Phenomena Science and Engineering Practices Teaching Strategies Three-Dimensional Learning Interdisciplinary Labs Literacy New Science Teachers Preservice Science Education Teacher Preparation

The Changing Moon ClassPack

Class Pack

The Changing Moon ClassPack

*LAST CHANCE! This product is not eligible for return or exchange. All sales are final.* Using Picture-Perfect Science Lessons, Expanded 2nd Edition in your classroom is easier than ever! NSTA’s ClassPacks, each sufficient for a class of 28 s...

Elementary Middle School Earth & Space Science Crosscutting Concepts Disciplinary Core Ideas Science and Engineering Practices

Day and Night ClassPack

Class Pack

Day and Night ClassPack

*LAST CHANCE! This product is not eligible for return or exchange. All sales are final.* Using Picture-Perfect Science Lessons, Expanded 2nd Edition in your classroom is easier than ever! NSTA’s ClassPacks, each sufficient for a class of 28 ...

Elementary Earth & Space Science Crosscutting Concepts Disciplinary Core Ideas Teaching Strategies

Earth Hounds ClassPack

Class Pack

Earth Hounds ClassPack

Using Picture-Perfect Science Lessons, Expanded 2nd Edition in your classroom is easier than ever! NSTA’s ClassPacks, each sufficient for a class of 28 students, are lesson-specific collections of materials—an unmatched time-saver and a great de...

What's Poppin'? ClassPack

Class Pack

What's Poppin'? ClassPack

Using Picture-Perfect Science Lessons, Expanded 2nd Edition in your classroom is easier than ever! NSTA’s ClassPacks, each sufficient for a class of 28 students, are lesson-specific collections of materials—an unmatched time-saver and a great de...

Mystery Pellets ClassPack

Class Pack

Mystery Pellets ClassPack

*LAST CHANCE! This product is not eligible for return or exchange. All sales are final.* ...

Elementary Middle School General Science Life Science Crosscutting Concepts Disciplinary Core Ideas Science and Engineering Practices

Name That Shell! ClassPack

Class Pack

Name That Shell! ClassPack

Using Picture-Perfect Science Lessons, Expanded 2nd Edition in your classroom is easier than ever! NSTA’s ClassPacks, each sufficient for a class of 28 students, are lesson-specific collections of materials—an unmatched time-saver and a great de...

NSTA Press Book

Once Upon a Life Science Book: 12 Interdisciplinary Activities to Create Confident Readers

Reading skills and life science come together in this engaging new book for middle school teachers. Once Upon a Life Science Book makes it easy for teachers to improve their students’ reading abilities and teach science content simultaneously throu...

By Jodi Wheeler-Toppen

Middle School General Science Life Science Assessment Instructional Materials Inquiry Lesson Plans Teaching Strategies Interdisciplinary Literacy New Science Teachers Preservice Science Education Professional Learning old Teacher Preparation

DIY Versus Professional

Journal Article

DIY Versus Professional

Weather, with its built-in atmospheric laboratory, is a natural source of inquiry. The ever-changing nature of weather provides a constant source of questions to investigate and connects to a multitude of physical science concepts. The question, “H...

Natural Resources: There Is a Season

Journal Article

Natural Resources: There Is a Season

You’ll gain plenty of weather resources from this month’s issue (temperature concepts, weather instruments, the water cycle/evaporation). You can use that information with these outdoor seasonal connections....

Scope on Safety: Administrators say the darndest things!

Journal Article

Scope on Safety: Administrators say the darndest things!

Science teachers are licensed professionals and therefore are held to a higher standard by the court when it comes to “duty of care” of students and fellow employees. Remember, most courts today rely on the teacher to determine if a lab is safe�...

Science Sampler: The Plant Feastival

Journal Article

Science Sampler: The Plant Feastival

The Plant Feastival is a celebration of the plants we use as food. It is a culminating activity for the plant unit, during which students participate in the “Great Plant Race” and prepare a research project on a food plant. The research project i...

Teaching Through Trade Books: Cloud Watchers

Journal Article

Teaching Through Trade Books: Cloud Watchers

Weather is a topic in science that is applicable to our lives on an everyday basis. The weather often determines what we wear, where we go, and what we do. This month’s column focuses on clouds and the part they play in determining our weather. In ...

Scope on the Skies: Out with the old and in with the new

Journal Article

Scope on the Skies: Out with the old and in with the new

Spring in the Northern Hemisphere is not only a transition between seasons; it is also a transition between the brighter starry winter skies and the relatively dimmer skies of the spring season. Our solar system is also going through a transition fro...

Blogging About the Weather

Journal Article

Blogging About the Weather

Since the majority of the content standards related to weather focus on forecasting, elementary students often spend a lot of time studying cloud types, fronts, storms, and using a barometer to read air pressure. Although this allows students to “d...

Using Citizen Scientists to Measure the Effects of Ozone Damage on Native Wildflowers

Journal Article

Using Citizen Scientists to Measure the Effects of Ozone Damage on Native Wildflowers

Since 2004, middle and high school students have been monitoring the effects of ground-level ozone by collecting data on observable leaf injury on cutleaf coneflower (Rudbeckia laciniata) and crownbeard (Verbesina occidentalis) in the Great Smokey Mo...

Science 2.0: Wiki, Wiki!

Journal Article

Science 2.0: Wiki, Wiki!

Wikis are particularly useful in education because they are easy to use, accessible, and allow students to collaborate on projects both in and outside of class. Most wiki platforms provide a “history” function that gives teachers the opportunity ...

The Prepared Practitioner: The National Science Digital Library

Journal Article

The Prepared Practitioner: The National Science Digital Library

The National Science Digital Library (NSDL)—a National Science Foundation–funded funded website—features tons of cool stuff for science teachers. On this site, users can find online teaching resources related to science, technology, engineering...

Leaving Their Legacy

Journal Article

Leaving Their Legacy

Research Experiences for Teachers (RET), funded by the National Science Foundation, offer teachers an opportunity to participate in current, hands-on scientific research in laboratories across the United States. These experiences provide an avenue fo...

The Invasive Plant Species Education Guide

Journal Article

The Invasive Plant Species Education Guide

To help high school students gain a solid understanding of invasive plant species, university faculty and students from the University of Wisconsin–Stout (UW–Stout) and a local high school teacher worked together to develop the Invasive Plant Spe...

Science Sampler: Fix the potholes! Helping students translate their interests and life experiences into scientific investigations

Journal Article

Science Sampler: Fix the potholes! Helping students translate their interests and life experiences into scientific investigations

One strategy for differentiating science instruction that shows promise is a shift toward valuing students’ questions and life experiences (Barton 1998; Upadhyay 2006). In this article, the authors present potential techniques for doing exactly tha...

Teacher’s Toolkit: Presto! Open inquiry!

Journal Article

Teacher’s Toolkit: Presto! Open inquiry!

Although inquiry-based science teaching has been around since the 1960s, many teachers are slow to incorporate inquiry principles into their science lessons. The authors address this issue by using an analogy between a magician’s card trick and op...

Editor’s Roundtable: An air of respectability

Journal Article

Editor’s Roundtable: An air of respectability

Hold up an open container without any obvious liquid or solid in it and ask a typical class what’s in the container, and you will readily and enthusiastically get the response, “Nothing.” Out of sight, out of mind is a fair summation of how mos...

The Early Years: Where Did the Water Go?

Journal Article

The Early Years: Where Did the Water Go?

Everyday occurrences with evaporation are so ordinary that adults may not realize that children wonder about them and create explanations about what happens to water as wet objects dry. The process of evaporation is not visible, making it hard for yo...

The Case of the Tree Hit Man

Book Chapter

The Case of the Tree Hit Man

The topic of plants does not excite many middle school students. Learning about the inner workings of xylem and phloem feels far removed from any practical applications in their lives. This chapter uses a (true life!) crime scenario to frame the stud...

Science 101: What causes wind?

Journal Article

Science 101: What causes wind?

There’s a quick and easy answer to this question. The Sun causes wind. Exactly how the Sun causes wind takes a bit to explain. We’ll begin with what wind is. You’ve no doubt heard that wind is the motion of air molecules, which is true. Putting...

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