All Resources

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...