All Resources

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? ...

Journal Article

Science Shorts: Experimental Error

One of the most challenging components of science inquiry is getting students to understand the fundamentally important concept of experimental error. While this concept can be tricky for children, there are straightforward lessons that can go a long...

Journal Article

Editor’s Roundtable: Sculpting the Earth’s surface

Our students need to know about the structure of the Earth and about the geological processes that shape its surface—both the long-term and the everyday processes, the abrupt shifts of faults, the sustained movements of tectonic plates, and slow up...

Journal Article

PREPping Students for Authentic Science

In this article, the authors describe a large-scale research collaboration, the Partnership for Research and Education in Plants (PREP), which has capitalized on publicly available databases that contain massive amounts of biological information; sto...

Journal Article

Scope on Safety: Safety and liability

In order to provide a level of awareness relative to liability, the NSTA Board charged a committee with the task of rewriting the NSTA Position Statement on Liability of Science Educators for Laboratory Safety. This article outlines four basic questi...

Book Chapter

Climate and Life

Climate is the state of the atmosphere over years or decades. Although climate is commonly defined as “average weather,” the term encompasses more than a simple mean. It also refers to variability, seasonality, and extremes in climate elements su...

Book Chapter

Cruel, Cruel Summer

Scientists expect that a warmer climate will cause more severe, more frequent, and longer heat waves. Heat waves pose a significant health risk to everyone, but especially to poor, elderly, and chronically ill individuals. In this open-ended inquiry,...

Book Chapter

Earth’s Changing Climate

In 1896, Svante Arrhenius published the first model of the effects of industrial carbon dioxide (CO2) on Earth’s climate. Since the days of Arrhenius, scientists have moved from pencils to supercomputers. Calculations take hours or days instead of ...

Book Chapter

Biological Effects of Climate Change

How important is climate change—something that has occurred throughout Earth’s history? Can ecosystems tolerate the magnitude and rate of future change? How will other conservation threats interact with climate change? How likely are widespread e...

Book Chapter

Quick Guide to Climate

This “Quick Guide to Climate” is a brief, student-friendly overview of Chapters 1 through 3. The overview is suitable either for introducing climate change to your students or for reviewing key concepts at the end of a unit. You can also use the ...

Book Chapter

Population Peril

Rising air temperatures have changed the extent and timing of sea ice formation in the Arctic, forcing some polar bear populations to go longer each year without food. In this activity, students assume the role of graduate students advising an intern...

Book Chapter

Carrion: It’s What’s for Dinner

The restoration of wolves to Yellowstone National Park after a 70-year absence created a natural experiment on the ecological effects of top predators. In this activity, students use mathematical models to explore how carrion from wolf kills can redu...

Book Chapter

Right Place, Wrong Time

Songbirds tend to breed at the same time their primary prey is most abundant. Climate warming appears to be disrupting this match, causing reproductive failures in some species. Scientists have detected the consequences of warming for birds primarily...

Book Chapter

Ah-Choo!

Pollen allergies are becoming more prevalent globally, in part because of the effect of climate on pollen-producing plants. In this problem-based learning activity, students assume the role of public relations specialists contracted to communicate th...

Journal Article

Investigating With Charles Darwin

Naturalist Charles Darwin made observations, conducted experiments, and kept detailed notebooks of his findings throughout his life. He was regularly transfixed by his observations of the natural world, whether in his early collecting days, during hi...

Journal Article

Teaching Through Trade Books: Pumpkins!

Walk through any elementary school in the fall and you are bound to see students learning about pumpkins. Kids of all ages are fascinated by these versatile, edible members of the gourd family. Pumpkins are interesting and inexpensive and can be foun...

Journal Article

Editor’s Corner: Let Us Now Praise Science Teachers

The science teacher is called upon to be scientist, educator, equipment manager, safety inspector, lecturer, child-care provider, coach, writing editor, mathematician, historian, counselor, and stand-up comedian—all at once. Given all this, we shou...

Journal Article

Perspectives: The Art (and Science) of Asking Questions

Questions serve as formative assessments that provide information to teachers about student learning in relation to curricular goals. In addition to helping students build science concepts, teacher questions can help develop scientific habits of mind...

Journal Article

Idea Bank: The Apple Genomics Project

Genomics is the study of an organism’s entire genome. Because genomics is a relatively new discipline, it can be difficult to find teaching materials, especially those that offer a variety of educational modalities. To address this need, researcher...

Journal Article

Science Sampler: Glacial ice action

Current news reports discuss the loss of glacial ice in the Antarctic and Greenland as examples of the effects of global warming. But what are glaciers and how do they work? An understanding of the process that causes ice to melt is important in unde...