JoinAll Resources
Journal Article
The experts address the following question in this month’s column: How do solutes reduce the vapor pressure of a solvent?...
Journal Article
Professional Development for You
No Child Left Behind’s emphasis on accountability and demands for a quality teacher in every classroom has spawned a cottage industry of providers of professional development. How can educators begin to sort through them all to find the right choic...
Journal Article
The medieval Spanish custom in which blind storytellers went from town to town telling stories (sung as mantras) of murder, impassioned love, and pestilence to the villagers as a means of sustaining themselves were known as Coplas de Ciego, or Bli...
Journal Article
Moderation, or the interactive analysis of student work by small groups of teachers, can help to qualify student understanding and increase teacher sensitivity to student progress with difficult concepts. This article describes how the process of mod...
Journal Article
Science 101? What Causes Rainbows?
If you look at a rain cloud with the Sun behind your back, the sunlight and water drops may interact just right, revealing the familiar arc of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Many of us have been pleasantly surprised to see a r...
Journal Article
Scope on Safety: Essential First Aid for Science Teachers
From a practical standpoint, science teachers should be trained to respond to incidents involving burns, bleeding, chemical exposure, swallowed poisons, penetrating objects, lacerations, and shock. Basic training is required to properly handle these ...
Journal Article
Science Sampler: Digital Field Trips
"Take only photographs. Leave only footprints." This is the author's motto as she bubbled forth with ideas and images after taking a digital camera along on trips to Utah, Yellowstone National Park, the Rocky Mountains, and other sites. She collected...
Journal Article
Society for College Science Teachers: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly—Introductory Biology Textbooks
As editions of textbooks age, we are all forced to reexamine the universe of books and select one to use for three to four semesters. After 30 years of selecting textbooks, the author is still confronted with the fundamental question: Why is it so di...
Journal Article
Teaching Through Trade Books: Water Wherever
Whether rain, sleet, or snow, February weather across the country provides students with opportunities to observe the many different ways the water cycle affects our daily lives. This month's trade books that focus on the water cycle include The Snow...
Journal Article
Many ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) students are in classes primarily devoted to improving English language skills at the expense of other disciplines, such as science. The authors designed a project that brought ESOL students into a ...
Journal Article
AIM for Professional Development
Instructional materials help guide both what and how teachers teach and what and how students learn. Most educators, however, are not aware that the selection of instructional materials can serve as energizing, engaging professional development. This...
Journal Article
Chemistry as a Second Language
Chemistry is a unique language in and of itself that can be difficult for students to understand. As a result, the basic curriculum approach described in this article was designed to make chemistry more accessible to students, especially those who ar...
Journal Article
The universality of the genetic code has allowed DNA isolated from a specific organism to be transferred and incorporated in another organism, transforming bacterial, yeast, plant, and animal cells. This transformation ability is the essence of recom...
Journal Article
This article provides a number of practical strategies for teaching science to English Language Learners (ELLs). The strategies were developed by educators participating in science/ELL workshops and through the author’s own experience as a science ...
Journal Article
Students read an article about a study of the effects of intercessory prayer on cardiac patients published in a renowned medical journal. After reading the case and discussing the questions in small groups, students evaluate the study for its scienti...
Journal Article
Using Easy-Bake Ovens to Teach Chemistry
After participating in an internship at the American Institute of Baking, the author developed an innovative way for students to explore basic chemistry concepts through bakery science. An Easy-Bake Oven is a quick and safe oven that is perfect for t...
Journal Article
In this case, students speculate on what may have caused a major fish kill in an estuary in North Carolina. In the process they explore how land runoff and excess nutrients affect aquatic communities and learn about the complex life cycle of the dino...
Journal Article
The term inquiry has been used to form curriculum goals, design instructional strategies, and assess learning. The term also describes what scientists do. Within the science classroom, inquiry is used to promote activity-oriented learning that ref...