All Resources

Journal Article

Picture THIS: Taking Human Impact Seriously

Unfortunately, middle school students often view human impact as an abstract idea over which they have no control and do not see themselves as contributing to the Earth’s environmental decline. How better to uncover students’ ideas concerning hum...

Journal Article

Editorial: It’s Not Just You

Does the process of gaining tenure and promotion make your stomach lurch? If your answer is “yes,” you are not alone. In this month’s column, the author recounts her personal experience related to this grueling procedure and discusses a highly...

Journal Article

Scope on the Skies: March measurements

While science is certainly language based, it is also bilingual in the sense that mathematics is also “spoken” in science classes. There are many opportunities throughout the school year to integrate the language of mathematics with science lesso...

Journal Article

Health Wise: March 2010

How can you tell the difference between cold and airborne allergy symptoms?...

Journal Article

Science Sampler: Magic termites—Exploring scientific inquiry

The objective of the termite experiment is to walk students through the process of designing and conducting an experiment while allowing them to use inquiry-based methods to infer why, in this lab, termites follow the line of blue Bic or Paper Mate b...

Journal Article

Hurricane Proof This!

While learning about the types of weather events that occur in the local area, students in grades 4–6 were asked to consider how structures can be built to withstand extreme weather conditions. Teams of students designed, constructed, and tested bu...

Journal Article

Engineering for All

As calls for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education at the elementary level become more vociferous, elementary teachers may be wondering whether engineering is meant for all students. However, the authors assert that engin...

Journal Article

Speak Up! Mini Cases in Language

This is a series of short cases useful for a variety of courses, including physiological psychology, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, cognitive science, and cognitive neuropsychology/neuroscience. Each of these cases depicts a breakdown in languag...

Journal Article

Unlocking Academic Vocabulary

How can we teach science to English language learners (ELLs) when even our native English speakers have trouble reading the textbook? To help science teachers meet this challenge, this article presents six text-comprehension strategies used by Englis...

Journal Article

Safer Science: Getting Students in the Safety Zone

Students coming into science labs need initial and ongoing training about safety standards and best practices. They also need to develop good attitudes about their work and the health and safety of their teachers and fellow students. The School Chemi...

Journal Article

Photovoice: A Community-Based Socioscientific Pedagogical Tool

Situating instruction in a local context, socioscientific issues (SSIs) offers students an opportunity to become active participants in the community and has the potential to encourage them to authentically and critically participate and engage in un...

Journal Article

A Study of the St. Lawrence River Ecological Habitat

Save the River, a grassroots advocacy group established in 1978, lobbies for policies to preserve the upper St. Lawrence River and uses the community’s help to keep an eye on the existing habitats. Recently, they procured the Fresh Sound Foundation...

Journal Article

Outstanding Science Trade Books for Students K–12 (Books published in 2009)

What makes an outstanding book for a young reader? Although it would be hard to create a rubric for every book, experienced teachers recognize them quickly. They fascinate and captivate with both their content and style. Award-winning trade books ins...

Journal Article

Editor’s Note: STEM Careers

There is a new impetus for encouraging students to become more knowledgeable about science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and perhaps encourage them to choose a career in science-related fields. Several groups and individuals, inclu...

Journal Article

The Early Years: Building With Sand

Children playing in damp sand invariably try to make a tower or a tunnel. By providing experiences with a variety of materials, alone and together, teachers set up the conditions for children to learn through their senses and ensure that a class appr...

Journal Article

Outstanding Science Trade Books for Students K–12 (books published in 2009)

What makes an outstanding book for a young reader? Although it would be hard to create a rubric for every book, experienced teachers recognize them quickly. They fascinate and captivate with both their content and style. Award-winning trade books ins...

Journal Article

Outstanding Science Trade Books for Students K–12 (Books published in 2009)

What makes an outstanding book for a young reader? Although it would be hard to create a rubric for every book, experienced teachers recognize them quickly. They fascinate and captivate with both their content and style. Award-winning trade books ins...

Journal Article

Tried and True: Disrupted food webs—Exploring the relationship between overfishing and dead zones in the Chesapeake Bay

This inquiry-based activity provides a real-world example that connects to students’ everyday seafood choices. In fact, many students went home and insisted to their parents that they should only buy “green” seafood choices. It was also an effe...

Journal Article

Career of the Month: An Interview With AIDS Vaccine Researcher Chris Parks

The search for an AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome) vaccine is truly a global effort, with university laboratories, biotech firms, pharmaceutical companies, nonprofit research organizations, hospitals, and clinics all working together to dev...

Journal Article

Science Sampler: Project Citizen—Students practice democratic principles while conducting community projects

Project Citizen is a program sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education’s congressionally funded Center for Civic Education, which sponsors both domestic and international programs. The Center for Civic Education’s Civitas International Progra...

Journal Article

Research and Teaching: Transfer of Knowledge in Science Courses for Elementary Education Majors

In this article, the authors report the results of a preliminary study of preservice teachers’ ability to transfer their knowledge between their chemistry and Earth science courses. They examined whether they could answer the transfer questions cor...

Journal Article

Increasing Scientific Literacy About Global Climate Change Through a Laboratory-Based Feminist Science Course

The authors have developed and implemented a novel general education science course that examines scientific knowledge, laboratory experimentation, and science-related public policy through the lens of feminist science studies. They argue that this a...

Journal Article

Integrative Metabolism: An Interactive Learning Tool for Nutrition, Biochemistry, and Physiology

Metabolism is a dynamic, simultaneous, and integrative science that cuts across nutrition, biochemistry, and physiology. Teaching this science can be a challenge. The use of a scenario-based, visually appealing, interactive, computer-animated CD may ...

Journal Article

Science Shorts: Science Rocks!

It all began one Monday morning. Raymond could not wait to come to large group. In his hand, he held a chunk of white granite he had found. “Look at my beautiful rock!” he cried. The rock was passed around and examined by each student. “I wonde...

Book Chapter

Air Mass Matters: Creating a Need-to-Know

Air has weight and exerts a pressure of 10 N/cm2 (or 14.7 lbs/in2) at sea level. Gases are not “no thing.” Gases have mass, occupy space, exert pressure, and are composed of molecules separated by truly “empty” space. Inertia, or the tendency...

Book Chapter

The Essentials Under Siege

This chapter discusses what the United States has long believed are the essentials with regard to teacher compensation: pay, tenure, and the presence or absence of unions in determining teachers' compensation and working conditions. The chapter also ...

Journal Article

Science Sampler: Helping the environment helps the human race—Differentiated instruction across the curriculum

This set of lessons is designed to be carried out in all of the subject-area classes. Science lessons are expanded and taught in social studies, math, and language arts classes. This highlights the far-reaching impact that science has on other worldv...

Journal Article

Meet Us Outside!

Environmental education “is a process that aims to develop an environmentally literate citizenry” (NAAEE 2004). It is an effective way to engage students of all levels and has improved learning outcomes and achievement in science and other subjec...

Journal Article

The Dirt on Worms

What better way to bring students “down to earth” than by studying worms? Worms are inexpensive creatures that can be used to create rich science experiences that relate to the National Science Education Standards. This article describes a succes...

Journal Article

Science 2.0: Create a Classroom Blog!

Science education blogs can serve as powerful digital lab notebooks that contain text, images, and videos. Each blog entry documents a moment in time, but becomes interactive with the addition of readers' comments. Blogs can provide a realistic exper...

Journal Article

The “Green” Root Beer Laboratory

No, your students will not be drinking green root beer for St. Patrick’s Day—this “green” root beer laboratory promotes environmental awareness in the science classroom, and provides a venue for some very sound science content! While many sci...

Journal Article

Science Sampler: Commercial video games in the science classroom

There’s no denying that middle school students are interested in video games. With such motivation present, we as teachers should harness this media in a productive way in our classrooms. Students today are much more technologically advanced than e...

Journal Article

Shake It Up

If scientists know where earthquakes are most likely to occur, then architects and engineers can design safer buildings for such areas and potentially prevent some of the devastating aftereffects. Engineers have met this challenge through the design ...

Journal Article

Science 101: Can we protect our communities from natural disasters?

There are two ways one might protect communities from natural disasters. One is to minimize the damage from disasters, and the other is to prevent the disasters in the first place. However, preventing disasters is another matter, and in trying to do ...

Journal Article

Every Day Science Calendar: February 2010

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

Journal Article

Teacher’s Toolkit: A framework for facilitating equitable discourse in science classrooms

In traditional classroom discourse, the teacher controls the discussion, asking most of the questions and calling on students to respond. This model does not work well for the inquiry-based classroom, which depends on engagement, peer interaction, an...