All Resources

Journal Article

Science Sampler: A project-based environmental unit for teaching content through inquiry

Recent science education reform efforts for adolescents have attempted to engage students in science by using project-based instruction (Rivet and Krajcik 2008). The features of project-based learning (PBL) are consistent with the learning needs of m...

Journal Article

Science on the Shipyard

Over 200 science, mathematics, and technology teachers have participated in real-world industry experiences through the Industry–Education Partnership (IEP) program at the Mississippi State University. Since 2005, IEP teachers have traveled to the ...

Journal Article

Editor’s Note: Conceptual Understanding

Weather. Doesn’t that sound like an easy topic to teach and learn? Children experience it without effort and without even thinking about it. But, that’s part of the problem. We need to take every opportunity to create circumstances for students t...

Journal Article

Editor’s Corner: National Lab Day

In November 2009, President Obama helped launch National Lab Day (NLD)—an initiative that promises to become the most ambitious science–education partnership project ever in the United States. NLD is a nationwide movement to “build local commun...

Journal Article

Health Wise: April/May 2010

My students have their headphones on all the time! Could they be at risk for permanent hearing loss? How loud is too loud?...

Journal Article

Methods and Strategies: Making the Climate Connection

This article presents classroom resources for teaching both weather and climate along with background resources for teachers who want to beef up their own knowledge in the subjects. In addition, the author proposes learning progressions that teachers...

Journal Article

Home Sweet Home: How to Build a Madagascar Hissing Cockroach Habitat Out of Recycled Materials

Madagascar hissing cockroaches (MHC) are amazing insects that can be an integral part of an effective science learning and teaching environment. MHCs have a fascinating social structure. They make excellent pets, teach students how to properly care f...

Journal Article

Look! It Is Going to Rain

It is important to help young children make connections between events in their lives and science concepts in preschool classrooms, so introducing basic meteorology ideas offer a great opportunity to make weather connections and awaken scientific cur...

Journal Article

The Adventures of the Gray Whale: An Integrated Approach to Learning About the Long Migration

Using migration as a springboard, students can begin to understand patterns of survival and interdependence that exist within nature, as well as humankind’s role in modifying these patterns. This mini-unit involves a series of integrated activities...

Journal Article

Students for Sustainable Energy

At Montpelier High School (MHS) in Vermont, students are accustomed to making changes in their school and community. Over the last six years, MHS students have participated in the Annual Winooski River Cleanup Project, the construction of a solar-pow...

Journal Article

Career of the Month: An Interview With Tsunami Researcher Vasily Titov

When the Indian Ocean tsunami struck Sumatra in 2004, nations around the world were shocked to learn that tsunamis, though rare, are a major threat to people and property. Tsunami researchers investigate these natural disasters in an attempt to forec...

Journal Article

Every Day Science: April 2010

This monthly feature contains facts and challenges for the science explorer. ...

Journal Article

Time for a Change

Fifth graders in Mrs. Caldwell’s class would soon experience a “change” as they made the transition from elementary to middle school. Participation in classroom inquiry investigations and schoolwide science enrichment events had already develop...

Journal Article

Tried and True: Soil is more than just dirt

This article describes a series of activities in which students investigate soil, culminating in the biomimicry of reducing landfill waste. After students learned about soil’s ecosystem structure and the function of its food web with nutrient cycli...

Journal Article

Science Sampler: Smelling the chocolate—The Perks of modeling habit of mind

Branston, a sixth-grade urban charter school student, used scientific habits of mind to explain a real event. This was due to a series of lessons that make up the “smell” unit (Krajcik et al. 2006), a six-week, project-based unit to develop a mod...

Journal Article

Every Day Science: May 2010

This monthly feature contains facts and challenges for the science explorer. ...

Journal Article

Cruising the Climate With Spreadsheets

Electronic spreadsheets and online weather databases are excellent tools for making real-world comparisons of local, national, and global climate trends. The activities described in this article incorporate these tools to help familiarize students wi...

Journal Article

Everyday Engineering: A little flash (of) light

The flashlight is a simple device that is composed of a lightbulb, usually two cells connected in series, a housing, a switch, and a reflector for the light. All flashlights essentially use these parts to complete a circuit that converts the stored c...

Journal Article

Dress for the Weather

“If someone were traveling to our area for the first time during this time of year, what would you tell them to bring to wear? Why?” This question was used to engage students in a guided-inquiry unit about how climate differs from weather. In thi...

Journal Article

The Air Up There

To engage students in a real-world issue (Bransford, Brown, and Cocking 2000) that affects their communities, the author designed an entire unit to investigate air pollution in their home state, Connecticut. The unit’s goal is to understand how the...

Journal Article

Talk Like a Scientist

In the scientific community, the symposium is one formal structure of conversation. Scientists routinely hold symposiums to gather and talk about a common topic. To model this method of communication in the classroom, the author designed an activity ...

Journal Article

Idea Bank: The Lunar “Space Weather” Action Center

The Lunar “Space Weather” Action Center (LSWAC) provides an opportunity to use knowledge about the Sun’s stormy “weather” and understandings about the lunar environment to forecast “space weather” on the Moon and current “weather” c...

Journal Article

Science Shorts: The Reasons for the Seasons

Ask a fifth-grader why he or she believes Earth has seasons, and the answer usually involves a mistaken notion about Earth’s distance from the Sun. However, the construction of a three-dimensional model of the changing seasons using simple material...

Journal Article

Teaching Temperature With Project-Based Learning

In this project-based unit on weather, a fictional director of a Hungarian Wildlife Refuge invites fourth-grade students to determine whether the backyard of their school contained a variety of surface temperature environments that would satisfy the ...

Journal Article

Classroom Terraria: Enhancing Student Understanding of Plant-Related Gas Processes

Despite our best teaching efforts, many students hold misconceptions related to the roles plants play in gas-related processes (Amir and Tamir 1994; Hershey 1992; 2004). In an effort to remedy this problem, the author presents a series of activities ...

Journal Article

Safer Science: Failure of “Duty to Warn”

The science teacher has several legal duties of care to students. Taking the precautions noted in this column is a step in the right direction to avoid legal issues and make the science classroom and laboratory as safe as possible for students and te...

Book Chapter

Theory Behind The Book

This book, and particularly the stories which lie within, provide an opportunity for students to take ownership of their learning and learn science in a way that will give them a more positive attitude about science. In addition, it will serve to hel...

Book Chapter

The Trouble With Bubble Gum

Most students are totally unaware of the amount of sugar in bubble gum and don’t know that they are literally eating sugar in huge amounts. In this chapter, the author is concerned with finding out what happens to the weight of gum when it is chewe...

Book Chapter

Plunk, Plunk

What happens when seeds are soaked in water, you may find that your students cannot perceive of seeds absorbing so much water, for they may equate the seeds with how a sponge soaks up water. The story in this chapter offers students an opportunity to...

Book Chapter

In a Heartbeat

Children may not be aware of what is exactly happening when they have their pulse taken by a doctor or nurse or even why it is important. The story in this chapter is aimed at helping children discover what kinds of activities change their heart rate...

Book Chapter

Hitchhikers

Students are usually aware that seed plants have adapted to overcrowding by developing mechanisms that disperse their seeds to other locations. In this chapter, the story explores one of the important characteristics of plant evolution, the wide dist...