All Resources

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...

Journal Article

Science and Literacy: Tools for Life

This article describes three interconnected strategies to help form the structure of support that you and your students can use to reach both goals simultaneously: performance expectations for students, explicit teaching strategies that support inqui...

Journal Article

Idea Bank: The Encyclopedia of Earth

For reliable information on the environment, students and teachers can turn to the Encyclopedia of Earth (EoE). Based at Boston University (BU) and operated in partnership with the National Council for Science and the Environment (NCSE), the EoE is a...

Journal Article

Creative Soil Conservation

Take plant lessons outdoors with this engaging and inquiry-based activity in which third-grade students learn how to apply soil conservation methods to growing plants. They also collect data and draw conclusions about the effectiveness of their metho...

Journal Article

Editor’s Roundtable: Differentiated instruction to the rescue!

Differentiated Instruction (DI) is an ongoing practice: teachers intentionally and systematically discover and plan lessons around the strengths, needs, prior knowledge, and attitudes of their students. Teachers must routinely consider not just the �...

Journal Article

Career of the Month: An Interview with Food Policy Researcher Caitlin Boon

From safety to nutrition, food policy researchers work to improve what we eat. They examine evidence found by experts in food science, consumer behavior, taste perception, nutrition, and many other related fields. Using this information, these scient...

Journal Article

Editor’s Corner: Why Study Environmental Issues?

There are many compelling reasons to include environmental education (EE) in our science classes. Environmental issues are interdisciplinary—facilitating their inclusion in both physical and life science. They are also complex, providing students w...

Journal Article

The Urban Tree Project

Geospatial technologies have emerged over the last 15 years as one of the key tools used by environmental scientists (NRC 2006). In fact, educators have recognized that coupling geospatial technologies with environmental science topics and scientific...

Journal Article

Guest Editorial: Discovering life

In this editorial piece, the author shares how he spent over 20 years as a corporate manager for a financial printing firm. He further explains how bringing a company public or coordinating a corporate merger were difficult tasks, but they were child...

Journal Article

Differentiation Through Choice: Using a Think-Tac-Toe for Science Content

Differentiation can begin with a single lesson, expand to a unit, and finally grow to be a natural part of a teacher’s daily practice. The Think-Tac-Toe, described in this article, can evaluate students’ learning during and at the conclusion of a...

Book Chapter

Birds, Bugs, and Butterflies: Science Lessons for Your Outdoor Classroom

Among the wild animals that may travel through a school yard, birds, bugs, and butterflies are the most common—the focus of most of the lessons in this chapter. It offers a variety of activities to allow you to “tame” the wildlife to help you t...