All Resources

Journal Article

Leaves: Nature’s Solar Collectors

One of the most captivating things about plants is the way they capture the Sun’s energy, but this can be a difficult topic to cover with elementary students. Therefore, to help students to make a concrete connection to this abstract concept, this ...

Journal Article

Perspectives: Thinking About Thinking in Science Class

Self-regulated learners are able to set learning goals, find strategies that help them achieve those goals, and monitor their progress (Schraw, Crippen, and Hartley 2006). An important part of self-regulation is thinking about thinking, or metacognit...

Journal Article

Tried and True: Thinking spatially—taking observation, classification, and communication skills to a higher level of reasoning

When students classify, they embark on observing and identifying the properties of the object, and then they categorize, sort, group, organize, arrange, or grade objects into smaller and similar clusters or divisions. Therefore, observing and classif...

Journal Article

Rev Your Engines!

As part of the “Car Lab Project,” students constructed rubber band cars, raced them, and worked through a number of automotive activities. The students engaged in this project certainly had fun, but they also used high-tech gear such as motion se...

Journal Article

Health Wise—February 2009

With the increasing popularity of energy drinks, I wonder—are these drinks safe? How do they affect teens? ...

Journal Article

Safer Science: The Safety Legal Paper Trail

To avoid the potential for litigation, teachers need to be informed. They must know how to prevent accidents and should be proactive to protect both themselves and students from harm in the classroom. The following actions are recommended to help tea...

Journal Article

Honeybees, Butterflies, and Ladybugs: Partners to Plants

Honeybees, butterflies, and ladybugs all have fascinating mutually beneficial relationships with plants and play important ecosystem roles. Children also love these creatures. But how do we teach children about these symbiotic interactions and help t...

Journal Article

Inductive and Deductive Science Thinking: A Model for Lesson Development

Middle school students make great learning gains when they participate in lessons that invite them to practice their developing scientific reasoning skills; however, designing developmentally appropriate, clear, and structured lessons about scientifi...

Journal Article

Every Day Science: February 2009

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

Journal Article

Thinking, Teaching, and Learning Science Outside the Boxes

In both universities and K–12 schools, students leave one world and enter another as they attend classes in discipline-specific domains. But how can students gain the experiences necessary to make discoveries—for personal satisfaction, for academ...

Journal Article

Career of the Month: An Interview With Pharmacist Ken Thai

Medications prescribed by your doctor are designed to support your health. But if incorrectly prescribed, misused, or abused, these prescriptions can become dangerous and sometimes fatal. A pharmacist’s job is to ensure that your medications and do...

Journal Article

Teaching Through Trade Books: Secrets of Seeds

From a tiny radish seed to a giant coconut, seeds come in a multitude of shapes and sizes. They all share one amazing secret: the potential to grow into a new plant when conditions are right. In this month’s column, students observe a variety of se...

Journal Article

Scope on the Skies: The new Milky Way galaxy

When students are asked about the Milky Way galaxy and where our solar system is located, most will describe it as a spiral-shaped galaxy with the Sun located on one of the spiral arms. While this is essentially correct, data obtained with the Spitze...

Journal Article

Issues In-Depth: Advancing understanding of drug addiction and treatment

While most school districts utilize a drug abuse resistance curriculum, as science teachers, it is our responsibility to understand the science behind drug addiction in order to most effectively educate our students against drug abuse. In the last tw...

Journal Article

What’s So Big About Being Small?

An interdisciplinary approach to teaching involves leveraging the different perspectives of each discipline to better understand an issue or problem. The most ideal topics for interdisciplinary study are those whose very nature is also interdiscipli...

Journal Article

Science Sampler: Dr. Vermeij and The Cay

As an interdisciplinary exploration, middle-level students were reading The Cay (1969) by Theodore Taylor in their English classes, honing map skills in social studies, and learning the importance of making observations in science class. Then, inspir...