JoinAll Resources
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
This monthly feature contains facts and challenges for the science explorer. ...
Journal Article
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
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
“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
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
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...
NSTA Press Book
Brain-Powered Science: Teaching and Learning With Discrepant Events
• How can a long metal needle pass through a balloon without popping it? • How can water flow at very different rates through two identical funnels? • How can a stick, placed on a table under several sheets of newspaper and extended over t...
By Thomas O’Brien
Book Chapter
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
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
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
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
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...
Book Chapter
Students may well have the usual “bigger is better” conception about comparing different items. Pumpkins are the perfect object to help engage students in investigative science and answer most of their questions by direct observation. ...
Book Chapter
Do your students believe that an insulating substance such as wool can actually produce heat? The story in this chapter is designed to motivate your students to let you know what they believe and then for them to be able to test their theories in the...
Book Chapter
Most children have a difficult time believing that air has mass and takes up space, so the concept of water vapor floating in the air is just as problematic. The story in this chapter helps provide an opportunity to explore this phenomenon and to lea...
Book Chapter
Some students are not aware that an object weighs as much as the sum of its parts. The story in this chapter has two purposes. One is to allow students to test their ideas about the distribution of weight, and the other is to help them realize that w...
Book Chapter
Rust is one of the most common of every day phenomena, but again, is probably one of the least understood by students. The story in this chapter attempts to get students and their teachers involved in some tests to see what they can learn about rust ...
Book Chapter
Children think of floating or buoyancy in several ways. The purpose of the story in this chapter is to motivate students to solve the mystery of why objects bob up and down in carbonated drinks. ...
Book Chapter
Using the Book and the Stories
It is often difficult for overburdened teachers to develop lessons or activities that are compatible with the everyday life experiences of their students. A major premise of this book is that if students can see the real-life implications of science ...
Book Chapter
Using the Book in Different Ways
Although the book was originally designed for use with K–8 students by teachers or adults in informal settings, it became obvious that a book containing stories and content material for teachers who are intent on teaching in an inquiry mode had oth...
Book Chapter
There is currently a strong effort to combine science and literacy, because a growing body of research stresses the importance of language in learning science. Discussion, argumentation, discourse of all kinds, group consensus, and social interaction...
Book Chapter
Your students will probably not be aware of the amount of water that covers the Earth’s surface. The story in this chapter will help introduce students not only to a clearer idea of the characteristics of our planet, but also to the concepts of pro...
Book Chapter
It is not difficult to understand that students may have a misconception that the clocks we use are directly related to Sun time and that changing the clocks will alter the Sun-Earth time relationship. This chapter and story deal with this misconcept...
Book Chapter
Students may have the idea that all mountains are volcanoes and were formed by eruptions. The story in this chapter brings up questions about the geology of mountains and the weathering and erosion that takes place as nature breaks down the higher la...
Book Chapter
It is not difficult to understand that students may have a misconception that the clocks we use are directly related to Sun time and that changing the clocks will alter the Sun-Earth time relationship. This chapter and story deal with this misconcept...
Journal Article
In October of 2009, the Committee on Equal Opportunities in Science and Engineer (CEOSE) held a symposium on Women of Color in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics; NSF-OAI). The symposium featured data pertaining to Asian, African...