JoinAll Resources
Journal Article
A Land-Use-Planning Simulation Using Google Earth
Google Earth (GE) is proving to be a valuable tool in the science classroom for understanding the environment and making responsible environmental decisions (Bodzin 2008). GE provides learners with a dynamic mapping experience using a simple interfac...
Journal Article
Sheltered Instruction Techniques for ELLs
The suggestions described here to adapt instruction for English Language Learners (ELLs) are based on the concept of sheltered instruction, a model of language-support methods for instruction for ELLs derived primarily through the Sheltered Instructi...
Journal Article
Outstanding Science Trade Books for Students K–12 (Books published in 2008)
Today’s classrooms have no real walls! Students explore the world on field trips, during virtual journeys on the world wide web, and through the books they read. These pathways help them fly to the ends of the universe to satisfy their scientific c...
Journal Article
Safer Science: Lifesaver Resources for Chemical Selection
High school science teachers, supervisors, and chemical hygiene officers (CHO) can turn to a number of internet resources for help when making decisions about hazardous chemical use. Before considering these resources, it is important to research loc...
Journal Article
Some may argue that gifted children have many education options, but these options do not always help gifted students learn science. Unfortunately, gifted students often do not reach their full academic potential—they are frequently less motivated ...
Book Chapter
Ethology—the study of animal behavior—combines the observational skills of a natural historian with modern insights from ecologists, geneticists, and especially evolutionary biologists. In this unit, students discover more of the behavior reperto...
Book Chapter
The ultimate function of most physiological processes is to help organisms maintain overall homeostasis, while letting them adapt to changes in internal and external environments. In this unit, heart rate is the model for studying homeostasis. The st...
Book Chapter
Students will use weight potometry to estimate the basal rate of transpiration for bean plants. For the exercise, they will estimate the soil salinity necessary to stop transpiration by mung bean seedlings. Subsequently, students will have the opport...
Book Chapter
Metabolism and Oxygen Consumption
In this unit, students first conduct an experiment to determine if there is a relationship between environmental temperature and rate of metabolism in crayfish (Orconectes). Students also look at whether there is any effect of body size on specific m...
Book Chapter
In this unit, students compare allocation strategies among plant species and within a species under different abiotic conditions. Students will quantify how seedlings of several common crop plants allocate their carbon and nitrogen resources by measu...
Book Chapter
In this unit, students explore how biotic and abiotic factors affect population growth. They explore the effects of competition on growth of different species of molds. Students have actively growing cultures with which to make an inoculation mix of ...
Book Chapter
Measuring Biological Diversity
Biological diversity is a hallmark of life on Earth. In this unit, students estimate biological diversity in two different aquatic ecosystems. They collect water and bottom detritus from two locations and make field notes about the locations. Each wo...
Book Chapter
Designing Scientific Experiments
In this unit, students learn about designing sound, testable hypotheses and experiments. A testable hypotheses is one that is stated in a way that makes predictions that can be tested. The goal of the unit is for students to unravel a simple biologic...
Book Chapter
In a typical Mendelian genetics lab, students cross flies or other organisms of known genotypes, score phenotypes of the offspring, and determine if their results are significantly different from expected phenotype ratios. For this unit, the traditio...
Book Chapter
In this unit, students will isolate DNA suitable for sequencing and other analyses. Students use bioinformatics software to find differences between normal and mutant DNA sequences, then use DNA restriction mapping to confirm the differences. In orde...
Book Chapter
Enzymes are specified proteins that catalyze chemical reactions in biological systems without being permanently changed or used up. This unit was developed to help students gain a more functional, intuitive understanding of how enzymes work, what fac...
Book Chapter
This unit focuses on properties and functions of enzymes. Students will discover for themselves how enzyme concentration, environmental conditions, and potential inhibitors affect enzymes. The unit is more challenging for students as they must apply ...
Book Chapter
The process of photosynthesis is the key to life on Earth. In this unit, students will learn to make an enriched chloroplast preparation from spinach leaves. They will measure relative redox activity by mixing them with DCIP, an indicator dye that c...
Book Chapter
In this unit, students look at the signal transduction pathways that let cells sense and respond to their external and internal environments. The model organism is the free-living unicellular algae, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. Chlamydomonas is extrem...
Book Chapter
In this unit, students explore hormonal regulation of insect development. Students look at fruit flies—Drosophila melanogaster—in various stages in their life cycles and expose larval flies to a range of concentrations of juvenile hormone. Final...
Book Chapter
In this unit, students learn about the neuromuscular system by dissecting the sciatic nerve and gastrocnemius muscle from the leg of a frog and connecting them to a force transduction apparatus. Then they learn to record myograms from the muscle prep...
Book Chapter
A Brief Introduction to Inquiry
When the term inquiry comes up in conversations about science curriculum reform and improvement, it usually is shorthand for inquiry-based learning and, by extension, inquiry-based instruction. But, what exactly is meant by inquiry-based learning? In...
Book Chapter
An Outcomes-Oriented Approach to Implementing Inquiry
This chapter provides a short overview of the process of curricular planning with special emphasis on inquiry-based instruction. It outlines a validated method that curriculum designers and coordinators can use to establish program goals, select inst...
Book Chapter
Assessing Inquiry-Based Instruction
Assessment encompasses more than just exams and papers. It also involves informally assessing student learning in progress, formally assessing students to determine their learning gains, and assessing whether the current instructional practices and c...
Book Chapter
Teaching Techniques for Inquiry Labs
Chapters 1-3 described general principles of inquiry and processes for developing and assessing an inquiry-centered course. This chapter examines the process in greater detail by outlining specific behaviors and practices that instructors can use to ...
Book Chapter
The Relationship Between Teaching and Learning
This chapter introduces a summary of research about learning and discusses the implications for teaching. The characteristics of professional development are described that can help transform teaching beliefs and practices in ways that address curren...
Book Chapter
How to Use Collaborative Learning in Your Classroom
Educators have been conducting research about the relative effects of cooperative, competitive, and individual learning for several decades. The research shows that collaborative learning experiences tend to promote higher achievement in learners tha...
Book Chapter
How to Use Science Notebooks in Your Classroom
Science notebooks can take many different forms. The important thing to remember is that they should provide a place where student experiences, data, and language can come together to form meaning. This can happen when daily entries lead to conceptua...
Book Chapter
How to Help Students Make Meaning From What They Read
Students need opportunities to develop "reading to learn" strategies. Although many students may have the ability to read text, some lack the ability to comprehend and react to it. The strategies provided in this chapter are designed to support stude...
Book Chapter
How to Help Your Students Evaluate Information
Every day, we are bombarded with information on many issues from a wide variety of sources. Today's students are especially adept at accessing information through the internet. They likely are much less adept at accessing the intent, relevance, and v...
Book Chapter
How to Help Students Construct Their Understanding of Science Concepts
Conscientious biology teachers continually strive to improve their instructional practices to enhance student learning. At the heart of this goal is a focus on making sure that students understand the biology being taught. One important way to increa...
Book Chapter
How to Promote Scientific Conversations Among Your Students
Helping students develop skills for scientific conversation has many benefits. Engaging in scientific conversation elicits students' prior knowledge, enables students to construct their understanding of science concepts, encourages all students to pa...
Book Chapter
How to Use Assessments to Improve Student Learning
The ability of students to “do” biology and to understand biology concepts is essential. Developing biology lessons and assessing for an understanding of biology skills and concepts go hand-in-hand. Well-designed biology lessons result from well-...
Book Chapter
How to Select Programs for Your Inquiry Classroom
Besides teachers and students, the most consistent presence in school science is the instructional materials. BSCS, in collaboration with the K-12 Alliance of WestEd, developed a process and set of tools to help teams of science teachers analyze inst...
Book Chapter
BSCS's Influence in Biology Education
This chapter describes the dominating concerns in science education over the past 50 years. It also discusses the way BSCS has addressed those concerns through curriculum and professional development and through research and evaluation. The chapter i...
Book Chapter
A BSCS Perspective on Contemporary Biology Education
This chapter arises from an opportunity to pause and reflect on biology education in the past and what it will be in the immediate future. Four themes are featured that address the topic of biology education—implementation of fundamental biological...
Book Chapter
This chapter outlines three major areas that play a role in equity in the science classroom—addressing issues of bias, making connections between science and society explicit, and helping students cross the border into the culture of science—each...
Book Chapter
Unifying Principles of Biology
This chapter outlines six unifying principles educators can use to organize biological concepts, thus helping to unify the otherwise disparate facts of biology. These unifying principles represent a comprehensive foundation for the biological science...
Book Chapter
Attending to Conceptual Challenges
This chapter examines some of the conceptual and reasoning difficulties commonly encountered within each unifying principle of biology, as well as those iinherent to understanding the nature of science. Suggestions are provided for teachers to uncove...
Book Chapter
Getting Started With Inquiry: Six Invitations
Student participation in inquiry serves two objectives—first, students discover that science is something more than merely learning what others already know—and second, students develop skills in interpreting data and in understanding scientific ...