All Resources

Journal Article

Using Sound Knowledge to Teach About Noise-Induced Hearing Loss

Throughout our lives we are surrounded by sounds in our environment. Our ability to hear plays an essential part in our everyday existence. Students should develop an understanding of the role technology plays in personal and social decisions. If we ...

Journal Article

Empowering Youth

The Gulf of Maine Institute (GOMI) is striving to empower youth to take on stewardship roles in their communities. Through its Community Based Initiative (CBI) program, GOMI addresses environmental degradation by working with teams of students, t...

Journal Article

Trash or Treasure?

Most children know they should not pollute but have never considered why. One elementary school teacher creates a lesson for third- through fifth-grade students that makes the connection concrete. In the lesson, students consider the possible effects...

Journal Article

Methods and Strategies: The Teaching-With-Analogies Model

Teachers often use analogies and are unaware of it—they are using them automatically. Whenever they begin an explanation with “It’s just like…,” “It’s similar to…,” or “Think of it this way…,” they are using an analogy to expl...

Journal Article

Firsthand Nature

It’s no secret that many school programs don’t give children enough opportunity to explore the natural world—i.e., to “mess about” and to have firsthand experience with nature and animals. Not so at the Muscota New School in New York City! ...

Journal Article

A WebQuest for Spatial Skills

The WebQuest is a four-step process integrated at appropriate points in the Animal Studies unit. Through the WebQuest, students create a series of habitat maps that build on the knowledge gained from conducting the various activities of the unit. The...

Journal Article

Editor's Note: Looking at Environmental Education

Science education must prepare students to make informed personal and political decisions. Many of those decisions will revolve around issues of the environment. We are drenched daily in reports about alarming environmental trends. The learning envi...

Journal Article

Ask the Experts—April/May 2007

The experts address the following question in this month’s column: What color is the blood in a person’s veins? I’ve heard it described as “blue,” but it looks to me to be dark red, as it appears when blood is drawn during a lab test....

Journal Article

Science Sampler: The DEP saves the beans—A Performance assessment task for acid rain

Using performance assessment tasks allows students to demonstrate conceptual understanding of the important ideas of science, use scientific tools and processes, apply understanding of ideas to solve new, draw on what was learned to form explanations...

Journal Article

Idea Bank: Learning Through Stories

While studying gas laws, high school chemistry students at Unionville High School in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, created children’s books about the properties of gases, geared toward ages 8-12, to display their understanding of the science conten...

Journal Article

The Early Years: The Sun's Energy

Understanding the connection between the Sun’s energy and sustaining life is difficult for preschoolers, but learning about these concepts through both long and short-term activities captures children’s short attention spans. Activities such as ...

Journal Article

Fires, Floods, & Hurricanes: Is ENSO to Blame?

Scientists have associated the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon with extreme climate events such as flooding in California, droughts in Australia, fires in Indonesia, and increased hurricane activity in the Atlantic Ocean. Because most...

Journal Article

Science Shorts: Energy in Motion

Children experience forces at work while on the playground, in gymnasiums, and in toy stores. Scooters, baseball bats, basketballs, and jump ropes all need pushes or pulls to make them move. When objects change shape as they are pushed or pulled, we ...

Journal Article

Commentary: The Cost of Teacher Turnover in Math and Science

Personnel turnovers can create instability for students, schools, and school districts. What are the costs of these changes? What are the causes of these changes? What information can research contribute to understanding the situation? In October 200...

Journal Article

The Many Faces of Inductive Teaching and Learning

Science courses are traditionally taught deductively. The instructor first teaches students relevant theory and mathematical models, then moves on to textbook exercises, and eventually—maybe—gets to real-world applications. Often the only motivat...

Journal Article

Tech Trek: In the eye of all beholders

Save for the subject of art perhaps, the teaching of no other discipline in K-12 schools is more reliant on vision than science. In fact, the core of science study involves observation in a controlled environment and the use of labs for observing nat...

Journal Article

Assistive Technology in the Inclusive Science Classroom

Assistive Technology (AT) can be any item, piece of equipment, or teacher-made product that is designed to improve a student’s functional capability or help a student succeed in accessing the general education curriculum. Lahm and Morrissette (1994...

Inclusion

Journal Article

Science Sampler: Connecte2d Teaching—A comprehensive resource for teaching science using earthquakes

The Connecte2d Technology website is an all-inclusive web resource linking the study of earthquakes and engineering design to middle school science, mathematics, and technology. Through the use of interdisciplinary activities and hands-on projects, s...

Journal Article

Spring Into Energy

Maria lifts up a book from the table. Dietre eats cereal for breakfast. Akisha winds up a toy robot. Jacob puts batteries in a flashlight. These seemingly dissimilar events demonstrate various ways children experience energy daily. You can help prima...

Journal Article

Science for ELLs: Rethinking Our Approach

Many educators feel ill-prepared to meet the academic needs of students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. As educators, we strive to guarantee science education opportunities for all students. Although much remains unknown, cu...

Journal Article

Favorite Demonstration: The School Dance, According to Le Chatelier

When teaching science, or any other topic, an example of the concept being taught taken from students’ past experiences is often valuable. A familiar situation can reduce the anxiety of an unfamiliar or intimidating subject and can make it more man...

Journal Article

A Solar Energy Cycle

In sixth grade, students understand that Earth gets visible light from the Sun, but students may also believe the Earth gets heat from the Sun. This last part is incorrect because the Sun is too far from the Earth to heat it directly. So, how does t...

Journal Article

Perspectives: Assessing for Science Learning

Often the word assessment conjures up the notion of tests or quizzes that occur at the end of a lesson or a unit. These summative assessments take place when an instructional sequence is completed, providing a summary of what students learned. The su...

Journal Article

Schoolyard Inquiry for English Language Learners

This article presents outdoor inquiry activities to help English Language Learner (ELL) students learn life science concepts. Through inductive outings, nature journaling, and multicultural gardening, beginner and intermediate students gain science-i...

Journal Article

Libros de Ciencias en Espanol (2007)

From eye-catching introductions to planets, animals, food, and the senses for the very young, to little-known aspects of dinosaurs, to the importance of food chains, these recently published books in Spanish are sure to engage and inform young Span...

Journal Article

Career of the Month: An interview with Honey Bee Scientist Eric Mussen

It’s common knowledge that honey bees collect nectar from flowers to make honey. But did you know honey is the only food we consume that is produced by insects? In addition, bees pollinate (fertilize) a staggering one-third of what we eat every day...

Journal Article

Every Day Science Calendar: March 2007

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

Journal Article

Outstanding Science Trade Books for Students K—12: Books Published in 2006

Apples and oranges … and lychees and loquats—how can one compare? That’s the challenge when a team of NSTA’s best science educators attempt to select the best of each year’s science trade books. It’s been 34 years since NSTA joined forces...

Journal Article

Idea Bank: A 50-Cent Analytical Spectroscope

“How do we know all that we know about the stars, since they are so far away and no one from Earth has ever visited them?” A fair question to be sure. While astronomers believe they have decent estimates of the mass, temperature, size, and compo...

Journal Article

Integrating Bibliographic Software, Database Searching, and Molecular Modeling in an Introductory Biology Course: A Collaboration Between the Biology Department and the Science Librarian

Librarians instruct students where to find information, but rarely demonstrate its management, while faculty have difficulty incorporating real-time laboratory experience with library research. This paper focuses on the development of a hands-on biol...

Journal Article

Science 101: What exactly is energy?

It isn’t an easy task to explain what energy is. For that simple answer, let’s head to your average science textbook and retrieve the following: “Energy is the ability to do work.” Okay, but what does that mean? What do we mean by work? Even ...

Journal Article

Scope on the Skies: Total lunar eclipse

On March 3, 2007, the Moon will be at its descending node, crossing the Earth’s orbital plane, moving southward. The Moon will also be at 100% illumination, or at full Moon, during the node crossing. These are the requirements for a lunar eclipse t...

Journal Article

Scientific Discovery for <em> All </em>

The scientific discovery process comes alive for 70 minority students each year at Uniondale High School in New York where students have won top awards for “in-house” projects. Students develop projects from an original idea that interests them, ...

Journal Article

Science Sampler: Earthweek in the classroom—Students monitoring a dynamic planet

Exploding frogs in Germany, new volcanic islands emerging in the Pacific Ocean, Avian Influenza spreading worldwide—these are just a few of the stories in Earthweek, an online log of natural events. The weekly report chronicles events around the w...