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Methods and Strategies: Developing Investigative Skills Purposefully
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Members of a team of educators and university students participating in the project, Pittsburgh Partnership for Energizing Science in Urban Schools, addressed the issue of helping students develop investigative skills…
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A partnership brought a community together for a science night that included a planetarium, telescopes, and science activity centers.
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Science Sampler: Periodic Table
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Teaching the periodic table can be a mundane task filled with repetition and rote memorization. The techniques for engaging activities outlined in this article will help students become familiar with the periodic table…
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Plants play an essential role in daily life, making them a natural subject of study for a standards-based unit in the elementary science curriculum. One creative way to give students direct experience with living plants…
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The science education community has embraced no idea more widely than “inquiry,” or “inquiry-based instruction.” In fact, developing an inquiry-based science program is the central tenet of the National Science…
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Astrobiology is a relatively new field of study in science, one that has found a home in the curriculum of many universities. At the middle level, this multidisciplinary field is an exciting mix of topics and questions…
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Editor's Note (September 2006)
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Investigation skills are taught for several reasons--to help students become better thinkers and problem solvers; to help them be better versed in the nature of scientific work; and to help them remember content and…
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Science Sampler: Collecting artifacts
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A new science teacher commissioned students to help build a collection of artifacts related to science. As the project evolved, the teacher was able to cover material across the curriculum and show how closely different…
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The New Teacher’s Toolbox: Conquering the “So What Now?” Moment
Journal Article |
The first years of teaching can be tough: Getting to know a new school, new students, and what really works in the classroom can be a lot to handle! In this new column, Michael Romano shares some insight from his first…
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Scope on Safety: Dissection—Don’t cut out safety
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In June 2005, the NSTA Board of Directors adopted a revised position statement, Responsible Use of Live Animals and Dissection in the Science Classroom. Under the “Dissection” section, NSTA calls for more research to…
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Commentary: Interdisciplinary Does Not Mean Intimidating
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According to the author of this month's Commentary column, "Interdisciplinary units are not superhuman feats, but natural extensions of good teaching practice and conversations among colleagues." She recounts how her…
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A Case-Based Approach Improves Science Students’ Experimental Variable Identification Skills
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Incorporation of experimental case studies into the laboratory curriculum increases students’ abilities to identify experimental variables that affect the outcome of an experiment. Here the authors describe how such…
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Science Sampler: Giants don’t exist in the real world—Challenges of teaching scale and structure
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Issues that relate to the unifying theme of scale, as defined by the National Science Education Standards (NRC 1996) and Science for All Americans (AAAS 1989), are common in both science and everyday life. Until…
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Investigating an Aerial Image First
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Conventional instructional routines used to introduce optics concepts can be ineffective at developing an in-depth conceptual understanding that allows students to apply optics concepts to simple, but real, optical…
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Students engage in inquiry science to solve the mystery of bones.