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Journal Article

Science Sampler: Using science journals to encourage all students to write

It seems that everyone is using science journals or notebooks lately. As middle school science teachers, the authors use science journals as a tool to enhance students' knowledge and understanding of content and reinforce students' writing skills. He...

Journal Article

Project-Based Science Instruction: A Primer

Project-based science (PBS) instruction can simply be defined as a student-centered science teaching approach, in which students produce tangible learning outcomes by posing and answering research questions that are relevant to their own lives and co...

Journal Article

Becoming a Spider Scientist

In this integrated unit, third grade students become spider scientists as they observe spiders in their classroom to debunk some common misconceptions about these intimidating creatures. Charlotte’s Web is used to capture students’ interest. In a...

Journal Article

Learning to Write and Writing to Learn in Science: Refutational Texts and Analytical Rubrics

Most middle school science teachers are familiar with the idea of reading and writing across the curriculum. We, as science teachers, understand that our students need time, practice, and lots of encouragement in order to learn how to read and write ...

Journal Article

Science Sampler: Science SLAMS—A reading strategy for answering open-ended questions

The SLAMS (Sentence, Lines, Answer, Mechanics, Support) (Crowell and Kolba 2006) strategy is a basic and relatively simple technique used to guide students to answer open-ended questions when reading nonfiction. This strategy gives students the oppor...

Journal Article

Scientific Journals: A Creative Assessment Tool

The typical use of science notebooks is for students to record information as they complete an investigation, writing down their procedure, observations, data, results, graphs, and any other factual information pertaining to their experiment. The aut...

Journal Article

Safer Science: Building Safety with Engineering Controls

Before conducting any laboratory activities, science teachers need to be in the know about the OSHA-required hierarchy of defense in the laboratory. At the top of OSHA's list are engineering controls, which are designed to reduce exposure to a chemic...

Journal Article

Science 101: How do atomic clocks work?

You might be wondering why in the world we need such precise measures of time. Well, many systems we use everyday, such as Global Positioning Systems, require precise synchronization of time. This comes into play in telecommunications and wireless co...

Journal Article

Science Sampler: Science and literacy—Making connections through writing

In order to help students to make connections in science and literacy through writing, the authors present them with an open-ended question (OEQ), which is a divergent assessment in the form of a writing prompt (a situation), and directions for writi...

Journal Article

Integration With Integrity

Read! Read! Read! In first grade, language arts are such a driving force; and yet, we know the students love science and art! How can we integrate the subjects, maintain the integrity of each subject area, and authentically assess the students? The k...

Journal Article

Perspectives: Children’s Literature and the Science Classroom

Children’s literature, or trade books, address many scientific topics, both in narrative and expository forms. They provide a context for developing process skills (Monhardt and Monhardt 2006) and help create a sense of place (Wells and Zeece 2007)...

Journal Article

Science Sampler: Field Journals—Bringing the past to life

In this activity, students travel back in time as explorers to collect scientific information on plant and animal life during various geological eras. The author uses the book, The Deep Time Diaries as way to bring literature into the science classro...

Journal Article

Media and Science: Developing Skepticism and Critical Thinking

Science lessons can encourage students to view data with a scientists' skeptical eye—especially now that so much unrefereed information is online, in advertising, and in other media sources. In developing the skills of media literacy as part of sci...

Journal Article

The Thinking Machine: A Physical Science Project

Science projects can be a wonderful opportunity for learning and creativity, or a gigantic headache for teachers. After several years of implementation, experience, and revision, the author has put together a fun and engaging project centered on mach...

Journal Article

The Early Years: The Story of Corn

Corn is an interesting subject for young children to explore because it grows ears in many forms, the seeds are easy to see and handle, and it is familiar to most children in one food product or another. Therefore, science activities about corn are e...

Journal Article

The Prepared Practitioner: What Is an Experiment?

When asked what scientists do, people generally respond with “experiments.” We often base critical decisions, such as those related to our personal health, on the results of scientists’ experiments. But what really is involved in how scientists...

Journal Article

Connections Charts and Book Talk Groups

Making connections is always an important task for teachers. Science teachers are encouraged to connect new learning with students’ prior knowledge, learning with student interests, learning with cultural experiences, and classroom activities acros...

Journal Article

Planning for Success

Inquiry, a prominent feature of the National Science Education Standards, is the instructional keystone that connects doing and learning science (NRC 2000). Because it is integral to the Standards, inquiry is also emphasized in science curriculum sta...

Journal Article

The Great Dinosaur Feud: Science Against All Odds

In the 19th century, the race to uncover dinosaur fossils and name new dinosaur species inspired two rival scientists, Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh, to behave in ways that were the antithesis of scientific methods. Subterfuge, theft,...

Journal Article

Worms Out of This World!

Many people think of earthworms as small, slimy creatures that belong in the garden. To teachers, however, earthworms are delicate animals that can help young students develop important science-process skills such as observation and data collection. ...

Journal Article

The Benefits of Scientific Modeling

When students are engaged in scientific modeling, they are able to notice patterns and develop and revise representations that become useful models to predict and explain—making their own scientific knowledge stronger, helping them to think critica...

Journal Article

A Useful Laboratory Tool

Recently, a high school Science Club generated a large number of questions involving temperature. Therefore, they decided to construct a thermal gradient apparatus in order to conduct a wide range of experiments beyond the standard “cookbook” lab...

Journal Article

The Better Boat Challenge

“On your mark, get set, go!” Elementary students love to hear these words as they participate in the annual Third Grade Better Boat Challenge. This highly motivational project started a few years ago as the author was developing the third-grade s...

Journal Article

The 23rd Annual Consortium of Geologists

Today’s scientific theories are the result of a long collaborative process, sometimes over centuries, among many different scientists from various parts of the world. To communicate this concept to middle school students and introduce them to the t...

Journal Article

Science Sampler: When do girls lose interest in math and science?

To determine when girls lose interest in math and science, the authors surveyed female students in grades 4 through 8 in several school districts in southwestern Ohio to try to answer three questions: (1) Do girls stop liking science? If so, at which...

Journal Article

Science Sampler: Chemical weathering—Where did the rocks go?

This lesson is part of a larger Earth science unit that combines the concepts of the rock cycle and the water cycle and how they interact to change landforms. The authors refer to it as the “make it and then break it” unit. They spend half the un...

Journal Article

After the Bell: Developing an awareness of pet stewardship

Given the commonness of pets in communities throughout the United States, Canada, and Australia, among other countries, pet stewardship should be a natural topic of study for the integration of science, mathematics, and technology. Therefore, the ter...

Journal Article

The Sea Ice Board Game

The National Science Foundation-funded Arctic Climate Modeling Program (ACMP) provides “curriculum resource-based professional development” materials that combine current science information with practical classroom instruction embedded with “b...

Journal Article

Networking Antarctic Research Discoveries to a Science Classroom

In 2006, a unique scenario transported eighth-grade Earth science students from the classroom into the cold, dry, pristine surroundings of Antarctica. The mission was to expose the students to hands-on science using satellite telephones, Contact 3.0 ...

Journal Article

Caught in Their Tracks

By allowing students to develop and conduct research on biological or environmental problems they identify themselves, students gain a higher level of understanding and appreciation for science. To this end, teachers should incorporate student-driven...

Journal Article

When Things Go Wrong—The results Can Turn Out Right

For several years, the author’s fifth-grade students raised and observed plants, kept journals, and analyzed the functions of the parts of a plant. But this year, a near disaster taught her a lesson and increased the value of the activity for her s...

Journal Article

Health Wise: October 2008

One of my students recently became a vegetarian. How is this different from being a vegan, and what can she do to continue getting the nutrients she needs? ...