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Book Chapter
This chapter introduces the topic of topography, including map use and interpretation. Activities are provided to help students apply their understanding of the topic to the form and structure of the actual landscape....
Book Chapter
Physical geography becomes a way to identify and better understand the components in the environment and the structure of the landscape. The activities in this chapter will help students build on their observational skills and begin to use interpreta...
Book Chapter
The focus for this chapter is soil, and the activities investigate the general soil characteristics of color, structure, and texture. Students learn that an examination of the soil can tell much about the area under investigation. Learning about soil...
Book Chapter
This chapter explores the concepts of energy and nutrients and goes back to the fundamental connection of these concepts with the environment. Activities are provided that help students design their own experiments to explore simple, but important, c...
Book Chapter
Biodiversity can be defined as the variation of taxonomic life forms within a given ecosystem or biome, or for the entire Earth. It can be used as a measure of the health of an ecosystem, to indicate what has existed from past to present, and to use...
Book Chapter
Action projects are an invaluable way to engage students in authentic, real-life application of the concepts they have learned relating to the environment and a wonderful means of instilling a sense of environmental stewardship.This chapter offers su...
Book Chapter
The intent of this chapter is not to review the literature that justifies and rationalizes the implementation of field-based learning experiences for elementary and middle school students and teachers. The authors instead provide narrative statements...
Book Chapter
Making Mendel’s Model Manageable
Genetics is often a fascinating but difficult subject for middle level students. They can see the results of genes in every organism, but trying to visualize what happens at the level of genes is challenging for concrete thinkers. This activity prese...
Book Chapter
The impetus for this book and for much of the nation’s conversation during recent years about the impending “shortfall” of science teachers was the publication in 2007 of a National Academy of Sciences study, provocatively titled Rising Above t...
Book Chapter
How Did Teaching First Gain and Then Lose Its Professional Status?
There is widespread agreement that science teaching is more than a career—it’s a “calling,” and it’s the “discovery” that hooks teachers into doing science. This chapter presents “The Elements of the Profession” sidebar, and if one...
Book Chapter
The Long Shadow of No Child Left Behind
The No Child Left Behind Act was signed into law January 2002, and started a multistate effort to push for “accountability” in the nation’s locally controlled schools—all U.S. students needed to achieve grade-level reading and math proficienc...
Book Chapter
Ongoing Efforts to Elevate Teachers' Capability and Status
The publication of A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform in 1983, was more than just another report on the need for school reform. In this chapter, the authors examine the impact on teachers and teaching of some reforms, that, unlik...
Book Chapter
Engaging Science Teachers in the Wider World of Science
This chapter focuses on how secondary science teachers can remain connected—as professionals—to science and scientists. It features four programs designed to do this, all based on a similar rationale, namely, that secondary science teachers need ...
Book Chapter
Science Teaching Elsewhere: Spotlight on Finland
The United States competes with graduates from other countries. In this chapter, the authors pose the question: What can we learn from their systems, particularly with regard to science teaching as a profession? The chapter focuses on one European c...
Book Chapter
Empowering Science Teachers to Lead
For too long, teachers have allowed others to make work-related decisions for them. Science teachers need to see themselves as the key to the success of the educational enterprise. This chapter provides the first steps teachers need to take to be hea...
NSTA Press Book
More Chemistry Basics: Stop Faking It! Finally Understanding Science So You Can Teach It
Overwhelmed by orbitals? Terrified of thermodynamics? Agitated by acids and bases? Have no fear! This follow-up to the award-winning Chemistry Basics will clear up your chemistry woes. ...
By William C. Robertson, Ph.D.
NSTA Press Book
Inside-Out: Environmental Science in the Classroom and the Field, Grades 3–8
Teachers seeking new ways to integrate Earth science, chemistry, physical geography, and life science into a study of the environment should just step outside! So say the authors of Inside-Out: Environmental Science in the Classroom and the Field, Gr...
By Robert W. Blake, Jr., J. Adam Frederick, Sarah Haines, Stephanie Colby Lee
Journal Article
With the 2010 Winter Olympic Games prominent in the media, children were exposed to images of athletes skiing down snow-covered slopes, coasting furiously on bobsleds, and skating gracefully across the ice. Therefore, the authors capitalized on their...