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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 ...
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...
Journal Article
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...
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...
Journal Article
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 ...
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...
Journal Article
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...
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
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 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...