All Resources

Journal Article

The Ozone Show: Using a talk show format as an authentic assessment

Instructors are constantly searching for more authentic ways of assessing student work. Authentic assessments model activities students might perform in the outside world. As a concluding activity of a unit on the hole in the ozone layer, the environ...

Journal Article

Students Make the Grade: By evaluating their peers in graded discussions, students learn key discussion behaviors

Teachers who have attempted classroom discussions have experienced a number of scenarios and still long for the perfect constructivist discussion—one in which each student is engaged, the class directs the course of the discussion, and all students...

Journal Article

Projecting the Scientific Method: Introducing students to the scientific method and the gas laws

Teaching and training students to use the scientific method as a series of steps and as a way of understanding chemical and physical changes is best done in context. This article features an activity using gas laws as an excellent vehicle for introdu...

Journal Article

Learning from Landfills: Students learn an environmental lesson as they investigate conditions necessary for decomposition of garbage

As part of a unit on energy conservation, students suggested creating a landfill in the classroom. For the experiment students constructed nine clear plastic shoebox landfills. Students were provided visual evidence that certain inorganic items will ...

Journal Article

Editor's Corner: Experiencing Emotional Science . . .

The Science Teacher’s editor shares thoughts on the current issue....

Journal Article

Idea Bank

The Idea Bank provides tips and techniques for creative teaching, in about 1,000 words. In this month’s Idea Bank find out about filling a void with music—physics mood music—and find out the answer to this question, "Do your hands get wrinkly i...

Journal Article

Switch on Student Interest: Learning to derive the equation for resistors in parallel

In this lab activity, traditional parallel circuit problems were used to evaluate students' understanding of the relationship that exists among resistors in parallel. But the students now "owned" the equation that they needed to use to find the answe...

Journal Article

Commentary: What it Means to Belong

An opinion piece about why you belong to a professional organization....

Journal Article

Isopod Inquiry: Students learn experimental design by studying sowbug food preferences

For any science teacher who has ever used slugs or snails for behavioral studies, sowbugs—also known as isopods or pillbugs—are a welcome alternative. This inquiry-based activity is an investigation of sowbugs' preferred food sources. In this inv...

Journal Article

Commentary: The Changing Nature of Science

An opinion piece about the current science education reform....

Journal Article

Teaching to the Power of 10: Microscopic & macroscopic scaling activties for the classroom

Traditional scaling activities put students through the paces of the exercise but do not provide relevant associations with the idea of size and how greatly size varies in our universe. The traditional scaling was rethought and these activities were ...

Journal Article

STS Simulations: Engaging students with issues-based scenarios

Science-Technology-Society (STS) issues-based simulations present science education in an appropriate context for all students. In STS issues-based simulations, students are presented with a controversial issue to investigate from a variety of perspe...

Journal Article

Editor's Corner: Kool Konversions

The Science Teacher’s editor introduces a wonderful teaching tool she found at the grocery store—Kool-Aid packages....

Journal Article

Nature Transects

Scientists commonly use transects as a method of gathering information about a particular area, including studying the distribution of organisms across an area or seeing transitional changes between habitats. Transecting involves observing an area, c...

Journal Article

Recycle Used Oil on America Recycles Day

Motor oil doesn’t wear out—it just gets dirty. Students and the general public may not know that used oil can be reused or recycled. The fact is, used oil can be re-fined, blended with additives, and used again. When you consider that 1.4 billion...

Journal Article

Fuel Your Curriculum: Processing environmentally friendly fuel engages an entire school in an interdisciplinary project

In this article two teachers, one from the science department and one from the industrial technology department, paired up in a newly developed course called "Science and Technology." In the course students turned an old volkswagen beetle into an ele...

Journal Article

Box Up Your Habitat

The Envirobox Project involved a total of six classes (first- through fifth-grades) from around the United States sending each other a shoebox containing six to ten environmental samples. The boxes contained items such as pressed leaves and flowers, ...

Journal Article

Good Science Begins With Good Questions

Students in a large, active-learning, freshman biology class learned to ask better questions with the aid of a new taxonomy for student questions. The taxonomy provided a tool that helped them (and the instructors) to evaluate their questions and pro...

Journal Article

Commentary: Mass and Weight—Explaining the Difference

An opinion piece about two of the most commonly confused words in science class—mass and weight....

Journal Article

Fact or Fiction?

This article describes how to use the radio broadcast of H.G. Well’s War of the Worlds as a backdrop to studying the planets and how they differ from our planet. This approach can serve as a powerful force to motivate students to understand our sol...

Journal Article

Commentary: Developing Professionals

An opinion piece about having access to and participating in ongoing, quality, professional development programs....

Journal Article

A New Paradigm in Integrated Math and Science Courses

This article describes an interdisciplinary curriculum designed by the authors that connects math, science, and technology with the lives of their students. Changing students’ understanding of science required building connections across discipline...

Journal Article

Scavenger Hunts: Chasing Down Scientific Answers

Describing a scavenger hunt activity that stimulates active learning, the authors present objectives, examples, pitfalls, grading methods, and an evaluation based on their course experiences with the technique. Although the method was used in lower-d...

Journal Article

Buffer Biology: A design-your-own lab for chemistry

This article presents a buffer investigation to learn about the buffering capacity of household products such as shampoo and hand lotion. Students design and perform their own chemistry lab to gain a better understanding of the scientific process whi...