JoinAll Resources
Journal Article
Editor’s Roundtable: Monitoring and assessing student learning
An effective teacher never leaves a key part of a lesson without checking to make sure there is an appropriate level of mastery before moving on to the next lesson segment. Teachers must monitor and assess student learning and then adjust their instr...
Journal Article
Idea Bank: Convection in a Fish Tank
Understanding convection is fundamental for students to fully grasp the science behind large-scale events on Earth, such as global wind patterns, plate tectonic movement, ocean current patterns, and hydrothermal vent dynamics. Convection can also hel...
Journal Article
Science Sampler: Validating assessment—Teacher study groups
Teacher study groups are a valuable method of examining the validity of classroom assessments and determining how well the assessments align with student learning goals. The implementation of teacher study groups is based on a model from the Schools ...
Journal Article
Teaching Through Trade Books: A Closer Look
Give a child a hand lens or a microscope and they quickly become fascinated with the hidden worlds these tools reveal. The lessons in this month’s column provide opportunities for students to take a closer look at the properties of objects and orga...
Journal Article
Detecting Landscape Change: The View From Above
This article will demonstrate an approach for discovering and assessing local landscape change through the use of remotely sensed images. A brief introduction to remotely sensed imagery is followed by a discussion of relevant ways to introduce this t...
Journal Article
The experts address the following questions in this month’s column: What would a compass do on the Moon? and Where in our solar system can an object achieve the greatest terminal velocity? ...
Journal Article
Science Shorts: Stretched to the Limit
Children need to explore as many different materials as possible in order to make sense of their world. Understanding how materials behave in their natural state and under certain conditions will help them understand why objects are made of specific ...
Journal Article
Science Sampler: Reflecting on the test
The author created a reflective “minds-on” activity that would challenge students to accept responsibility for their own learning and performance (NRC 1996). The end result is a simple and useful activity called the science-test reflection. The s...
Journal Article
If you need to move something heavier than yourself, a basic understanding of physics is invaluable. If you find yourself lost, cold, and hungry in the wilderness, a little creativity and some basic understanding can keep you comfortable and alive. K...
Journal Article
Science 101: Why do we classify things in science?
Each year, in thousands of classrooms across the country, students classify animals, rocks, and other things as part of their science studies. Each year, thousands of students no doubt ask, “Why in the heck are we doing this?” Classifying things ...
Journal Article
Assessing student-led, open-ended scientific inquiry holds a unique problem for classroom teachers because of the diverse skills and content that emerge from student work. This article provides tangible strategies for teachers to assess divergent stu...
Journal Article
Teacher’s Toolkit: Facilitating an inquiry-based science classroom
Despite recommendations from the National Science Education Standards and best practices for teaching science through inquiry-based methods, many teachers continue with traditional teaching methods citing management issues as the central obstacle. Th...
Book Chapter
Crime scene evidence can include strands of human hair, an unidentified animal pelt, or animal hair on the ground near a suspected poaching. Hairs that look alike with the naked eye can become distinctly different when viewed under the microscope. In...
Book Chapter
What Is Inquiry? A Framework for Thinking About Authentic Scientific Practice in the Classroom
In this chapter, a framework is suggested for organizing teacher thinking about inquiry and prioritizing the wide assortment of activities teachers typically use to familiarize their students with the processes of science. This framework articulates ...
Book Chapter
Assessing Science as Inquiry in the Classroom
Assessments of inquiry should align with what we know about learning and should be balanced and authentic. That is, they should include all the important features of inquiry, not just those easy to assess. This approach helps ensure that all students...
Book Chapter
Inquiry and Scientific Explanations: Helping Students Use Evidence and Reasoning
This chapter describes the importance of scientific explanation in inquiry, common difficulties students have in justifying their claims, and a suggested instructional approach for supporting students in writing scientific explanations. It then discu...
Book Chapter
Historical Development of Teaching Science as Inquiry
This chapter examines four periods in the history of science education. In particular it looks at how societal pressures brought about the teaching of science as inquiry in each period and how educators, cognitive psychologists, and scientists have r...
Book Chapter
Inquiry experiences in the Earth sciences are often indirect, because direct experimentation, such as is used in the physical sciences, is typically not possible. To support inquiry in the Earth sciences it is important to consider the components of ...
Book Chapter
Inquiry in the Chemistry Classroom: Perplexity, Model Testing, and Synthesis
Lavoisier's theory of combustion is used as a context for a set of interrelated, inquiry-fostering investigations in a high school chemistry class. Further, this example of chemistry inquiry is used to develop some central ideas about inquiry pedag...
Book Chapter
Field Studies as a Pedagogical Approach to Inquiry
By designing and conducting their own field studies, students learn science in a meaningful context, apply scientific knowledge to local environmental issues, use resources within and around the school, and link classroom science to real-world issu...
Book Chapter
Creating Coherent Inquiry Projects to Support Students Cognition and Collaboration in Physics.
This chapter presents an inquiry template that involves three phases: (1) students observe and reflect on phenomena and make predictions about underlying mechanisms, (2) students gather data to investigate these mechanisms as they build and refine th...
Book Chapter
Inquiry-Based Science Instruction for Students with Disabilities
Students with disabilities often are struggling readers who cannot successfully access and use print information. As a result, they usually experience difficulties with traditional science instruction, which typically relies on textbooks and other pr...
Book Chapter
Scientific Inquiry: The Place of Interpretation and Argumentation
Secondary school students typically believe that scientific inquiry begins with a direct observation of the natural world and that scientific laws and theories become apparent from these observations. In reality, observation provides only highly infe...
Book Chapter
In Praise of Questions: Elevating the Role of Questions for Inquiry in Secondary School Science
If scientific inquiry is to be part of the focus in secondary school science, teachers must develop learning situations in which question posing is essential and they must help students learn how to pose scientifically oriented questions. In focusing...
Book Chapter
Educational Technology in the Science Classroom
Each year billions of dollars are invested in establishing an effective infrastructure for employing information technology in schools. Almost all classrooms have been wired for internet access, computers have been installed, and inservice sessions a...
Book Chapter
Essentially, technology use in the science classroom is most effective when it encourages deeper student engagement with science content, when it is used to support rather than replace what we know about effective science instruction, and especially ...
Book Chapter
Digital Images and Video for Teaching Science
New technologies have revolutionized our ability to see and learn scientific phenomena. Reasonably priced digital still and video cameras have recently become popular additions to many classrooms, and teachers use them regularly to document student l...
Book Chapter
Using Computer Simulations to Enhance Science Teaching and Learning
Technological advances have increasingly brought instructional digital technologies into the science classroom. Teachers may have greater access to Internet-connected classroom computers, wireless laptop carts, computer projectors, and interactive wh...
Book Chapter
Probeware Tools for Science Investigations
Probeware is the general term used for probes and software that can be used with microprocessors (computer, calculator, palm device, etc.) to make scientific measurements. The characteristics of rapid data collection, nearly instantaneous display of ...
Book Chapter
Acquiring Online Data for Scientific Analysis
As you seek to provide more opportunities for your students to engage in scientific inquiry, you may find data collection to be time consuming and expensive. The internet, which provides immediate access to numerous data sets from government agencies...
Book Chapter
Online Assessments and Hearing Students Think About Science
This chapter examines online assessments and explores how they might be useful in your science classroom. Although there is a wealth of computer-based assessment tools (such as homework and exam generated programs that accompany many science textbook...
Book Chapter
Virtual schooling offers students the opportunity to enroll in a science course not taught at their home school or school district, interact with expert instructors in a particular field, and gain access to subject matter they may have otherwise miss...
Book Chapter
A Teacher's Perspective: Science Talks
What are science talks? And what are the benefits of including them in the science curriculum? Mary Rizzuto, a science curriculum instructional specialist at the Needham Science Center in Needham, Massachusetts, shares her perspective. ...
Book Chapter
Essay: Creating a Foundation Through Student Conversation
This essay discusses a pedagogical practice called Science talks. Science talks allow students to use their diverse language practices and life experience to understand scientific phenomena and allow teachers to see new connections between students�...
Book Chapter
What is culture? How does it figure into learning and teaching? What can educators do to make their classrooms sites of deep learning for all children? This essay examines the concept of culture, exploring how this concept has evolved historically an...
Book Chapter
Case Study: Using Students' Cultural Resources in Teaching
Teachers often want to incorporate their students’ cultural resources into the curriculum but do not know how. This case study describes what teachers participating in the Funds of Knowledge for Teaching Project, based at the University of Arizona,...
Book Chapter
A Teacher's Perspective: What Is Culture?
In her chapter, “What Is Culture?,” page 89, Norma González explains how the concept of culture has evolved historically and how it has affected education over time. As anthropologists continue to define culture in more dynamic ways, educators a...
Book Chapter
Essay: Learning a Second Language
What challenges face students who are learning a second language at the same time as they are learning science? This essay considers some of the difficulties associated with learning to speak, read, and write in a second language. Although the princ...
Book Chapter
Case Study: Using Two Languages to Learn Science
Often teachers ask their English language learners to confine themselves to using English as they explore ideas, frequently because the teacher does not know the child's first language. This case study tells the story of Jean-Charles who uses both hi...
Book Chapter
A Teacher's Perspective: Learning a Second Language
In “Learning a Second Language,” page 107, Ellen Bialystok explains the ways in which reading a science text in a second language makes learning more challenging. She explains that language is the core of science learning because it “is the pri...