JoinAll Resources
Journal Article
Realize Your Mentoring Success
How successful will you be in guiding a new teacher’s professional development? While your success will be influenced by how you and your mentee conceptualize teaching, learning, and the nature of science, research indicates that your success is al...
Journal Article
Every Day Science: August 2008
This monthly feature contains facts and challenges for the science explorer. ...
Journal Article
Because eighth-grade curriculum standards focus in part on systems analysis and graphing, a lesson was created to enhance students’ analytical skills with the introduction of a type of graph, the node graph, which can be used to represent the inter...
Journal Article
Teaching Through Trade Books: Growing a Garden
Many people look forward to planting their own garden and enjoying its fruitage throughout the summer months. Gardening can be an excellent learning experience in many ways because it offers opportunities to learn about plants and to observe changes ...
Journal Article
Focusing on Function: Thinking Below the Surface of Complex Natural Systems
Structure-Behavior-Function (SBF) thinking considers the different levels of a system in terms of structures, behaviors, and functions, and how these are interconnected (Goel et al. 1996). This article presents an example of helping middle school st...
Journal Article
ISS EarthKam: Taking Photos of the Earth from Space
NASA is involved in a project involving the International Space Station (ISS) and an Earth-focused camera called EarthKam, where schools, and ultimately students, are allowed to remotely program the EarthKAM to take images. Here the author describes ...
Journal Article
Science 101: How does wireless internet work?
Let’s see … first you head to a coffee shop and order a mocha caramel chai latte with an extra shot of espresso. Then you turn on your computer, hit the connect button, and start surfing the web. For those who want more detail, read on. To unders...
Journal Article
Scope on Safety: Middle school science labs—A safety audit
In August 2007, a report titled “The State of Middle School and High School Science Labs in the Kansas City Region” was issued by the Kauffman Foundation, which is committed to improving student achievement in mathematics, science, and technology...
Journal Article
Systems Concepts Effectively Taught Using Systems Practices
This article describes two lessons within the authors’ education module entitled, Ecological Networks, that successfully teaches introductory systems content to middle and high school students. To catch students’ attention when teaching these new...
Journal Article
Editor’s Note: We Resourceful Teachers
Many things have changed in education in recent decades. There is an obsession with standards and assessments, for example. But one thing hasn’t changed: Teachers rarely have the resources to do their jobs. One thing a resourceful teacher can do is...
Journal Article
Dubbed a “dialogue of life,” community immersion in preservice science-teacher education aims at providing a true-to-life and empowering opportunity for prospective science teachers (both elementary and secondary) to become active participants in...
Journal Article
Lights, Camera, Reflection! Digital Movies: A Tool for Reflective Learning
At the end of a biology course entitled Ecology, Evolution, and Genetics, students were asked to consider how their learning experience had changed their perception of either ecology or genetics. Students were asked to express their thoughts in the f...
Journal Article
Editorial: Why I Want to Slug My Neighbor
“So, are you enjoying your summer off?” This innocuous question can be a source of frustration for educators during the summer months. It implies that educators are tranced-out in their mp3 feed while munching on fair-trade chocolate if they are ...
Journal Article
The Prepared Practitioner: Learning Science Beyond the Classroom
Have you ever learned science outside of school, free of fact-based standards and tests? Were you at a museum, national park, or maybe in front of a TV? Science educators refer to this kind of learning as free-choice learning or informal learning. Th...
Journal Article
Safer Science: Making Adjustments for Mobility-Impaired Students
Students’ mobility impairments need to be addressed for access to and safety in science laboratories. Typical accommodations for mobility-impaired students include workstations, sinks, fume hoods, and safety eyewashes and showers, in addition to ot...
Journal Article
Career of the Month: An Interview With Oyster Wrangler Stephanie Reynolds
Did you know that oysters, simply by eating, filter the water they live in? An adult oyster can filter up to 225 L of water every day! In addition, oyster reefs play the important role of sheltering many fish and crab species. Today, the Chesapeake B...
Journal Article
You <em>Can</em> Get What You Want
Many teachers regularly use their own money during the year to pay for miscellaneous teaching materials or to help individual students in need. In this article, the author explains how to secure funds and resources for anything science teachers want ...
Journal Article
Perspectives: Mentoring New Teachers
Beginning teachers have much to learn about teaching (Odell 1990), including navigating their own classrooms and learning new school procedures and policies. Mentors can assist beginning teachers in making the difficult transition from student to tea...
Journal Article
Many resources are available to elementary teachers who wish to support science learning with literature. Unfortunately, somewhere between middle school and high school, the emphasis on using literature to teach science content—particularly the exe...
Journal Article
Research and Teaching: Implementing Inquiry-Based Learning in Teaching Serial Dilutions
The 5E model of inquiry-based learning was incorporated into a sophomore-level microbiology laboratory to increase student understanding of serial dilutions, a concept that is often difficult for most students to comprehend. Quantitative and qualitat...
Journal Article
Teaching Science Through a Systems Approach
Based on the recommendation of the AAAS and the NRC, middle level science is the rightful introduction for a systems approach, including the study of its parts, subsystems, interconnections, and interrelationships. Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax provides an...
Journal Article
Improving Preservice Elementary Teachers’ Writing in a Science Context
The authors investigated whether a series of mini prewriting assignments linked to a formal paper describing an original research project would improve preservice elementary teachers’ writing abilities in a science context. They compared 38 final r...