JoinAll Resources
Journal Article
The Spiderrific curriculum unit is a great way to capitalize on student interest in spiders. This unit meets several national science standards, including characteristics of organisms, life cycles, and diversity and adaptations of organisms. In one a...
Journal Article
Students at one school first encounter Anton Von Leeuwenhoek in the first half of fourth grade when they begin a major study of microscopy. This article describes some successful microscope activities for students and a culminating celebration during...
Journal Article
With the help of coordinators from Louisiana State University—Louisiana Sea Grant College Program, this cross-curricular project in science, math, history, and environmental science resulted in an ongoing stewardship project at a historically impor...
Journal Article
Finding Science Past and Present: Universiteitsmuseum and Oude Hortus
Although the Universiteitsmuseum, Utrecht University Museum, was founded in 1936, its roots reach much deeper. The museum showcases the University of Utrecht from its beginning in 1636. Collections contain artifacts from education and research accomp...
Journal Article
On a bright spring day last year, high school environmental science students led third graders on a dynamic learning adventure as part of an annual Outdoor Ecology School. At a water-monitoring site in a nearby national forest, the elementary student...
Journal Article
In a rural Eastern North Carolina county, a team of students and teachers came together to explore the scientific dynamics of a historic millpond. The Bennett’s Millpond Environmental Learning Project immerses students and teachers in sustained con...
Journal Article
Science Sampler: Games that teach
Teachers spend a great deal of time trying to capture student interest because motivation is the beginning of learning. One effective way to do this is through the use of games in the classroom. Games can be used to introduce various presentation for...
Journal Article
Science Sampler: Making Connections Fun
Games are a great way to help students make meaningful connections between abstract science concepts and vocabulary. This article describes three games—Secrets, Connections, and Pairs of Opposites—that help students reinforce concepts, formulate ...
Journal Article
Science Sampler: The Octet Rules-- A dating game for atoms
To develop student interest in the periodic table, try incorporating this simple, but fun, role-playing activity that follows a game-show format into your science curriculum. This play is used after students have learned the basic structure of atoms ...
Journal Article
Career of the Month: An Interview with Radiation Therapist Robert Adams
Cancer encompasses over 125 diseases. In the United States alone, over 1 million people will be diagnosed with cancer this year. Approximately 70 percent of the cancer patients will receive radiation therapy. The goal of radiation therapy is to eradi...
Journal Article
SPF 30: Exposing Your Students to Science Inquiry
Students engaged in inquiry-based science are learning to solve problems, organize their own knowledge, and use higher levels of thinking. This unit begins with an exploration of the “fairness” of testing methodologies. Students devise their own ...
Journal Article
By getting lost in geospatial technology, a group of high school students discovered how to help members of the community find their way around. This was the result of collaboration between the author (a retired science teacher) and the computer teac...
Journal Article
Synthesizing Scientific Knowledge
Using the evolution of the universe as an organizing concept framework allows for a natural synthesis of all scientific knowledge. With this concept as a foundation, the author developed a curriculum that provides nonscience majors with a coherent sc...
Journal Article
The Don River watershed is located within Canada’s most highly urbanized area—metropolitan Toronto. To help assess the ecological health of the Don, biology students investigated the main Don River tributaries using macroinvertebrates instead of ...
Journal Article
To develop scientific literacy in today’s global era, it is important that students learn about interactions within the Earth’s systems worldwide. A unit exploring El Niño and La Niña—phenomena that can result in extreme weather events in loc...
Journal Article
Each Tuesday during the fall of 2002, teams of high school students from three South Carolina countries conducted a four-hour polymer institute for their peers at the local public library. In less than two months, over 300 students visited the exhibi...
Journal Article
After the Bell: Hazardous waste roundup
When most people think of hazardous waste, they generally think of materials used in construction, the defense industry, mining, manufacturing, and agriculture. Few people think of hazardous substances found in their homes. From flammable cleaning p...
Journal Article
Introducing students to metacognition, or thinking about one’s thinking, allows them to discover the value of reflection. Courses related to thinking theory are often included in the curriculum for high-achieving students, but these methods can als...
Journal Article
With the convenience of fast-food restaurants on almost every corner, many young people are consuming these foods too often. Therefore, a group of concerned high school students in Wichita, Kansas, studied ratios of omega-3 fatty acids to omega-6 fat...
Journal Article
Career of the Month: An interview with hurricane researcher Christopher Landsea
Do you find yourself gazing at the sky, curious about the forces of nature? Meteorologists’ curiosity drives them to understand Earth’s atmospheric phenomena and how it affects Earth and the life on our planet. The phenomena include everything fr...
Journal Article
In this month’s column, the following question is addressed: On very hot days when the Sun beats against the pavement, the light above the ground appears to waver and tremble. Is this the heat reacting with our eyes, or does intense heat actually a...
Journal Article
Science Sampler: Growth Potential
Students will enjoy carrying out this exciting and challenging research project that combines science with computers and mathematics to investigate how polyacrylate animals change in size over time when placed in water and aqueous salt solutions. The...
Journal Article
Idea Bank: The Human Population Game
The future of civilization and the biosphere depend partly on what is accomplished in the classroom today. Population, resource use, and population’s impact on the environment are often studied separately and passively. In life, however, these vari...
Journal Article
Science Sampler: Dilution, Concentration, and Flotation
Classroom teaching practice and literature show that many students have difficulties with science concepts such as density. These investigations identify the relationship between density and floating through experimenting with successive dilution of ...
Journal Article
Science Sampler: The eight-step method to great group work
Many science teachers already understand the importance of cooperative learning in the classroom and during lab exercises. However, many teachers shy away from group work because of the challenges associated with getting adolescents into groups that ...
Journal Article
Science Sampler: Representing Variability of Data
Measures of central tendency--mean, median, and mode--are often used as descriptive statistics when students conduct experiments in which they take repeated measures of the dependent variable or when class data are pooled for analysis. These measures...
Journal Article
Scope on Safety: The Eyes Have It, or Do They?
Laboratory accidents and near misses in schools are often caused by the lack of personal equipment, such as eye protection. Sophisticated acids and other corrosive chemicals are not the only substances that put eyes in jeopardy. A household item as s...
Journal Article
Investigating local watersheds presents middle school students with authentic opportunities to engage in inquiry and address questions about their immediate environment in an interdisciplinary context. This article describes a collabortive project de...
Journal Article
Science 101: What's the difference between frogs and toads?
Frogs and toads belong to a group of Amphibians known as Anura (Latin for "without tail"). Though different on many levels, frogs and toads share some basic similarities. Here are the basic facts about these animal favorites....
Journal Article
Skateboards or Wildlife? Kids Decide!
Using the Internet to help solve real-life problems is a great way to make science learning relevant to today's students. In this project, students investigated "playas", temporary local wetlands, and surveyed their local school grounds as potential ...