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Book Chapter
PISA: An Introduction and Overview
For most science teachers, the term PISA evokes images of a leaning tower in an Italian city, but PISA also is an acronym for a major international assessment of students. In 2006, the primary assessment domain of PISA was science. This chapter provi...
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Book Chapter
This simple but engaging activity about texture is for students in grades K–4. Textures are all around us, and they are important to our everyday activities—consider a piece of sandpaper, a cheese grater, or the soles of your shoes. As students b...
Book Chapter
Investigating the Properties of Magnets
In this activity, younger students encounter, discuss, and apply the basic characteristics of magnets and magnetism as they explore and elaborate on their experiences. Student groups implement some of the terminology and concepts appropriate to the s...
Book Chapter
Applying Simple Chromatography
This activity involves chemistry, mystery, colors, and measurement. Students observe the composition of various inks by separating them via water-based chromatography. Students use what they learn about chromatography to solve a mystery involving a s...
Book Chapter
Investigating Surface Tension and Soap
You students encounter soap and water every day and the activity in this chapter helps them learn something new about both substances. Students find out why water can actually overfill a cup without spilling and why soap makes dust or dirt particles ...
Book Chapter
Learning About Acids and Bases
The chemistry of acids and bases is a fundamental area of study in the physical sciences. The following activity is really two exercises in one. First, students learn to distinguish between acids and bases using various color-changing indicator solut...
Book Chapter
For this Earth science investigation, students examine the composition of soil samples taken from three different depths at the same location. Students answer questions such as “How do the three samples compare? How does the soil feel? Look? Smell?...
Book Chapter
In this activity, students examine garden variety rocks, classifying them based on observable properties. This lesson teaches students not only about rocks but also about how to take a closer look at objects and materials that they encounter every da...
Book Chapter
Students learn what evaporation is and how various factors—time, heat, surface area, and wind—affect it. They also discover that water does not always evaporate at the same rate and saltwater leaves something behind when it evaporates. Finally, s...
Book Chapter
Examining Colors, Color Perception, and Sight
Students of all ages are fascinated by color and how we perceive it. For the main activity in this chapter, your class explores colors and visual perception by mixing colors in several ways. Students learn more about colors, light, vision, and color ...
Book Chapter
Exploring the Mysteries of Fingerprints
This activity combines a variety of processes and skills into an investigation of something near and dear to your students—their fingers. Math and science blend seamlessly as students observe, compare, and apply their ideas about fingerprints....
Book Chapter
Making Prints From Fruits and Vegetables
Students may be familiar with eating fruits and vegetables, but have they ever taken a really close look at the anatomy of those specimens? In this activity, students have an opportunity to explore aspects of the internal and external anatomy of prod...
Book Chapter
What Do You See? Visual Observation
The famous New York Yankee catcher Yogi Berra once said, “You can observe a lot just by watching.” This activity helps strengthen students’ skills in a fundamental aspect of mathematics and science: visual observation. Students carefully examin...
Book Chapter
Examining Serial Sections of an Apple
In this activity, students make serial sections of an apple. Students make cross-section prints of the top portion of the apple, then another print further into the apple, and so on until they get to the bottom of the apple. This serial sectioning te...
Book Chapter
Science and Math on Television
Students certainly enjoy watching television, and they traditionally favor shows about science, mathematics, and technology. Consider the popularity of MythBusters, Bill Nye the Science Guy, National Geographic Explorer, and, of course, the old favor...
Book Chapter
A One-Sided Paper Loop—The Möbius Band
What can you make from a sheet of paper that has only one side, where inside equals outside? The answer is a Möbius band, of course, the one-sided paper loop. In this activity, students in grades 3 and 4 explore a mathematical conundrum: How do we d...
Book Chapter
Students constantly notice the world around them, and to help make sense of it all, they attempt to group and categorize objects and experiences they encounter. In science, the study of classification is referred to as taxonomy. To make this subject ...
Book Chapter
Your Very Own Museum—Making Collections
Much more than childish pastimes, collections form the basis for museums of natural history, found object art projects, and personal hobbies. Furthermore, many notable scientists—Charles Darwin, for example—began their lifelong investigations wit...
Book Chapter
Creating Art Projects From Recycled Materials
Why not challenge students to design a collage, mosaic, or shadowbox entirely from “found objects”—recycled, natural, and discarded materials? The aesthetic nature of the art of salvage connects students not only to ancient, creative roots, but...
Book Chapter
Experimenting With Force and Motion Using Origami Frogs
Objects in motion and the forces that move them are the subjects of this lesson. This practical series of activities offers students a dynamic understanding of Newton’s three laws of motion. In particular, the third law is investigated as students ...
Journal Article
Factors Influencing Undergraduate Student-Teacher Interactions
A survey was conducted with undergraduate students, ranging from freshmen to seniors, who are currently enrolled at Philadelphia University to identify variables affecting classroom interactions. Data were examined using a commercially available stat...
Journal Article
College Students’ Opinions of Engaging Approaches in a Physical Science Course
Physical science courses have historically been taught from a variety of perspectives or emphases. In many cases, the instructor decides on the perspective and textbook for nonscience majors, so students rarely have a voice in the decision. This top-...
Journal Article
Class Research Projects in Ecology Courses: Methods to “Un-can” the Experience
Research-like experiences range from relatively “canned” labs that are highly controlled by the instructor (such as those described in Lord and Orkwiszewski 2006) to more individually designed projects (e.g., Switzer and Shriner 2000; Wyatt 2005)...
Journal Article
Assessment is an important component for quantifying learning in higher education. With the current trends at the state and federal level, what’s now merely encouraged may soon become a mandate. This article contains concise guidelines with example...
Journal Article
Learning Science While Constructing Learning Teams
Many science educators are proponents of cooperative learning, but struggle to find equitable and effective ways to build groups. In this article, the author describes her method for forming heterogeneous cooperative learning groups that is not only ...
Journal Article
Research and Teaching: What Do Help Sessions Accomplish in Introductory Science Courses?
Students who attended every help session earned significantly higher scores on corresponding exams than students who attended no help sessions. Students who attended some help sessions earned intermediate exam scores, and their exam scores after atte...
Book Chapter
Everyday Conceptions Across the World
In the initial phases of the process of developing items for the PISA 2006 assessment of scientific literacy, efforts were made to develop a smaller number of units called focus units. In addition to contributing to the measures of scientific literac...
Book Chapter
A Perspective on U.S. Science Teaching and Learning
This chapter presents a sketch on how PISA 2006 assessed conditions of teaching and learning in science classrooms. With selected findings from PISA 2006, similarities and differences are shown between approaches taken toward science teaching and lea...
Book Chapter
Improving Science Teaching and Learning
In this chapter, attention is drawn to the issue of quality instruction and level of student achievement. The chapter begins with a review of the findings of the McKinsey report (Barber and Mourshed 2007) about the importance of providing effective i...
Book Chapter
Windows Into High-Achieving Science Classrooms
For most science teachers, the vision of science instruction has been limited to what transpires in their own classrooms and possibly those of a few select colleagues. Rarely do they have the opportunity to examine learning environments outside their...
Book Chapter
The Importance of Aligning Teaching and Assessment
This chapter focuses on the relation that is desirable between assessment and teaching activities in order to keep coherence with teaching goals and help all students to understand this coherence. The PISA 2006 assessment is discussed with respect to...
Book Chapter
PISA 2006 Assessment of Attitudes Toward Science
Science teachers want students to develop interest in science and value in learning science. Attitudes toward science play an important role in students' decisions to develop their science knowledge, pursue careers in science, and use scientific conc...
Book Chapter
What Science Do Students Want to Learn
A major innovation in PISA 2006 was that many of the science units contained one or two questions designed to assess students' attitudes toward science—in particular, students’ interest in learning about specific science topics. In addition, the ...
Book Chapter
Teaching and Learning Science: PISA and the TIMSS Video Study
Scientific literacy was the main focus of PISA in 2006, and a number of items on the student questionnaire asked students how frequently they experienced certain teaching and learning activities, or teaching styles, in their science classrooms. This ...
Book Chapter
Seeing the U.S. Education System Through the Prism of PISA
For some countries, results from PISA have been disappointing but at the same time, PISA also shows that strong performance, and improvement, is possible. Many countries display strong overall performance while some countries show that success can be...
Book Chapter
Teaching Science to Achieve Scientific Literacy
Historically, the study of the sciences as part of schooling was first introduced in the senior or last years of secondary schooling for the express purpose of assisting those students who wished to embark on science-based courses of study at the uni...
Book Chapter
PISA 2006: An Assessment Framework for Scientific Literacy
The PISA 2006 definition of scientific literacy had its origin in the consideration of what 15-year old students should know, value, and be able to do as a preparedness for life in modern society. The results of PISA Science 2006 provide important in...
Book Chapter
Designing a Science Curriculum to Enhance Students' Scientific Literacy
Over the past two decades or so, the term scientific literacy has become prominent in discussions of the school science curriculum and proposals for improving it. If improving students' scientific literacy is to become the central aim of the school s...
Book Chapter
Assessing PISA 2006 Scientific Competencies
This chapter begins by considering what is meant by scientific literacy and how the PISA 2006 scientific competencies encompass basic components of scientific literacy. Then it describes some examples of how these competencies are assessed in PISA 20...