All Resources

Journal Article

Science Sampler: Space moves—Adding movement to solar system lessons

Earth and space science figure prominently in the National Science Education Standards for levels 5–8 (NRC 1996). The Earth in the Solar System standard focuses on students’ ability to understand (1) the composition of the solar system (Earth, Mo...

Journal Article

The Prepared Practitioner: An Assessment Primer

Although the title of this month’s column may make your skin crawl—read on. Everyone should understand a few basics about the “A” word. Being able to distinguish formative from summative assessment and criterion-based from norm-referenced tes...

Journal Article

Collaboration at the Nanoscale

The Maine ScienceCorps is a project sponsored by the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Graduate Teaching Fellows in K–12 Education (GK–12 ) program. Through this program, the University of Southern Maine’s (USM) virology and transmission el...

Journal Article

Methods and Strategies: Keeping It Real

When teaching science, teachers must ensure that students have meaningful experiences outdoors where they use all their senses to better understand their local and easily observed environment and don’t fall into the habit of relying on computers an...

Journal Article

Perspectives: Societal Issues in Science

When students investigate local issues in science class, they gain research and critical-thinking skills while improving their attitudes toward science. However, since many societal issues are controversial, it is important to create a safe and risk-...

Journal Article

Editor’s Note: Scientists at Work in Earth Science

Working with outside resources almost always strengthens our classrooms. Whether it is taking a trip to a university lab or inviting scientists in, excitement builds as students experience the world of scientists. Whether partnering with scientists o...

Journal Article

Water You Engineering? An Activity to Develop Water-Quality Awareness

Water is one of our most precious resources. However, for many in the United States, having fresh, safe drinking water is taken for granted, and due to this perceived lack of relevance, students may not fully appreciate the luxury of having safe runn...

Journal Article

Science 101: Why are oceans salty and lakes and rivers not?

For starters, lakes and rivers do contain salt, just not as much as the oceans. A large portion of those salts and minerals washes downstream into other rivers, or through the outlet stream or river of a lake, and eventually winds up in the oceans. S...

Journal Article

Science Shorts: Word Wall Work—Supporting Science Talk

One goal of classroom teachers is for students to develop the ability to recognize and understand the vocabulary of science. Classroom teachers also understand that students “need to keep expanding their understanding of scientific terminology so t...

Book Chapter

What Is Inquiry?

If students develop an understanding of how science inquiry is done and how it contributes to understanding the natural world, they will be better prepared to analyze and interpret information throughout their lives. Merely telling students how knowl...

Journal Article

Research and Teaching: Are In-Class Peer Leaders Effective in the Peer-Led Team-Learning Approach?

Peer-led team learning (PLTL) has been widely adopted for enhanced learning in a variety of disciplines, mostly in introductory chemistry, but also in organic chemistry, as in this study (Tien, Roth, and Kampmeier 2002). This pedagogical approach for...

Journal Article

Developing and Implementing an Interdisciplinary Origins Course at a State University

A truly interdisciplinary course was successfully developed and taught that presented an overview of the historical sciences with an emphasis on the nature of scientific inquiry and its relationship to other ways of knowing. The course included contr...

Journal Article

Making the Connection

Secondary science teachers are faced with an increasing number of students whose first language is not English and charged with preparing them for federal- and state-mandated end-of-course exams. In many states, these high-stakes tests play a crucial...

Journal Article

Scope on the Skies: Star light, star bright

In astronomy, the brightness of a star is described in terms of a star’s magnitude. Stellar magnitude is expressed two different ways, using the terms apparent magnitude and absolute magnitude. For both magnitudes, the numbering scale is the same, ...

Journal Article

Classification and the Dichotomous Key

Classification is a vital science-process skill for all students to master. Understanding dichotomous keys as a means of classification enables students to better comprehend large amounts of information and understand how to organize, compare and con...

Journal Article

Science Shorts: About Form and Function

Humans have been classifying organisms since before recorded history, cataloging flora and fauna for our own species’ benefit. Recognition of particular forms—the bark of a tree, shape of a leaf, or color of a mushroom cap—could reveal importan...

Journal Article

Every Day Science Calendar: March 2009

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

Journal Article

The Prepared Practitioner: Multiple-Choice Season

Spring is almost here. Soon buds will appear on trees, and bubbled-in answers will appear on test response sheets all across America. Spring brings a spate of multiple-choice tests for many students—from SATs to AP exams to final exams to state and...

Journal Article

Idea Bank: Astronomy for Students With Sensory Impairments

The Space Exploration and Experience (SEE) Project and Yerkes Astrophysics Academy for Young Scientists (YAAYS)—both at the University of Chicago’s Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin—are designed to promote active learning in astrono...

Journal Article

Teaching With Multiple Methods in Mind

Teachers know what a daunting job it can be to ensure that all students in a class learn effectively. In addition to the usual difficulties of gaining everyone’s attention at once, instructors also run into the issue of preferred learning styles. I...

Journal Article

Health Wise—March 2009

My students are on their cell phones all the time! Do cell phones really harm the brain? And what about the teen brain? ...

Journal Article

Scope on Safety: Safety in the Science Classroom—An online resource from NSTA

NSTA’s Science Safety Advisory Board has developed a new online resource for science teachers, Safety in the Science Classroom. The document introduces the Standards of Student Conduct in the laboratory and in the Field (SSCLF)—a list of behavior...

Journal Article

Reflective Writing

Your students successfully completed a lab session, correctly filled in all of the worksheets, and collected the required data. Yet, as a science teacher, you still find yourself wondering—what did my students actually learn? And, can they apply t...

Journal Article

Teaching Through Trade Books: Pondering Popcorn

When most people hear the word, popcorn, they think of a tasty treat enjoyed at the movies. In this month’s column, popcorn takes center stage as students engage in investigations relating to observations and predictions, as well as conducting an e...

Journal Article

Science Sampler: Plastics in our environment—A jigsaw learning activity

In this lesson, a ready-to-teach cooperative reading activity, students learn about the effects of plastics n our environment, specifically that certain petrochemicals act as artificial estrogens and impact hormonal activities. Much of the content i...

Journal Article

Society for College Science Teachers: “What? Professors Evaluating Themselves? Are You Out of Your Mind?” In Defense of Faculty Self-Evaluation

Self-assessment is a win-win evaluation system. Evaluees, not the department or university, control the process by selecting the evaluation criteria. Self-assessment also eliminates the uncomfortable and burdensome task of peer evaluation. Self-evalu...

Journal Article

Ecohydrology as an Undergraduate Degree: Challenges in Developing an Interdisciplinary Major

In the new ecohydrology major at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), students learn about the relationships between hydrologic mechanisms and ecological patterns and processes in watersheds and aquatic systems. The curriculum provides students with...

Journal Article

Designing Peer Review for Pedagogical Success: What Can We Learn From Professional Science?

This article compares peer review in professional versus education settings, summarizing key aspects of scientific peer review and reflecting on how these relate to the process as experienced by students. Consideration of professional peer review ben...

Journal Article

Classifying Classification

This article describes the experience of a group of first-grade teachers as they tackled the science process of classification, a targeted learning objective for the first grade. While the two-year process was not easy and required teachers to teach ...

Journal Article

Challenges and Solutions for ELLs

Preparing students for high-stakes testing presents a constantly increasing challenge for science teachers. Not only do students vary greatly in their science knowledge and backgrounds, but also English Language Learners (ELLs) are often placed in ma...

Journal Article

Favorite Demonstration: The Internet-Telephone Interview as a Classroom Teaching Tool

The in-class telephone interview is discussed as a teaching tool that adds an additional active-learning dimension to a classroom environment. Students can actively engage in dialogue with the interviewee using high-speed internet and low-cost servic...

Journal Article

Editor’s Corner: Our Patchwork Heritage

Enriching the classroom experience for all learners will contribute fabric to the great patchwork heritage that is our nation’s strength. Therefore, in recognition of the need to include all types of diverse learners, this issue of The Science Teac...

Journal Article

Perspectives: Helping Students Understand the Nature of Science

An important goal of science teaching is to help students understand the “nature of science”—what science is and how science works. The nature of science addresses the importance of creativity and imagination in scientific work; how scientists ...

Journal Article

Big Macs and Healthy Teens? Exploring Fast Food as Part of a Healthy Adolescent Lifestyle

In the set of activities, explorations, and discussions described here, students apply healthy eating information when they make nutrition choices both at home and when eating out. These lessons introduce considerations such as portion size and calo...

Journal Article

Shark Teeth Classification

On a recent autumn afternoon at Harmony Leland Elementary in Mableton, Georgia, students in a fifth-grade science class investigated the essential process of classification—the act of putting things into groups according to some common characterist...

Journal Article

Libros de Ciencias en Español: A selection of recent science trade books in Spanish (March 2009)

Simple, lively, and easy-to-understand science books in Spanish for the very young are the new reality in the publishing world. In contrast to previous years where there has been a wider selection of books for beginning, middle, and advanced readers,...

Journal Article

Roadkill Data Analysis: Using Spreadsheets to Integrate Math and Science

The process of inspiring students into framing authentic questions and then providing them structured support in answering the questions through scientific research is widely recognized as a key element, if not the heart and soul, of inquiry-based sc...