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  • Investigating Students' Ideas About the Flow of Matter and Energy in Living Systems

    Journal Article |

    In this article we describe strategies for eliciting student thinking, common responses to elicitation prompts, and implications for moving students' thinking forward.

  • Sound Ecology

    Journal Article |

    Problem-based learning is a powerful tool that motivates students to learn problem solving through investigation and research. The problems should be applicable to real life, messy or undefined, and require students to…

  • Point of View: Dissecting Motivation—The Will-Skill-Thrill Profile

    Journal Article |

    Teaching is not talking. Teaching is creating an environment where learning happens. Effective teaching is creating an environment where maximum learning happens for every student. This requires acknowledging the…

  • Everyday Engineering: A little flash (of) light

    Journal Article |

    The flashlight is a simple device that is composed of a lightbulb, usually two cells connected in series, a housing, a switch, and a reflector for the light. All flashlights essentially use these parts to complete a…

  • Point of View: Do Academic Research Costs Drive up Undergraduate Tuition?

    Journal Article |

    This column shares reflections or thoughtful opinions on issues of broad interest to the community. This month’s issue focuses on the tuition and fee increases for colleges and universities.

  • Tried and True: Looking for Questions

    Journal Article |

    During the first day of school, eighth-grade students often receive hour after hour of specific rules and classroom procedures. However, the author takes a different approach in science class. Here she describes an…

  • Cooperative Learning in the Science Classroom

    Journal Article |

    To help high school science teachers make sense of the extensive cooperative learning research over the last two decades, this article summarizes the major ideas behind the cooperative learning teaching model, provides…

  • Case Study: Cooking Under Pressure—Applying the Ideal Gas Law in the Kitchen

    Journal Article |

    This case study uses a daily cooking scenario to demonstrate how the boiling point of water is directly related to the external pressures in order to reinforce the concepts of boiling and boiling point, apply ideal gas…

  • Tech Trek: Celestial observation tools

    Journal Article |

    This activity—where students estimate the orbits of the four innermost moons of Jupiter through direct observation—represents a practical example of how teachers can use technology to explore celestial objects.

  • Green Science: In the hot seat—Analyzing your heating options

    Journal Article |

    When winter rolls around, keeping yourself and your home warm is of the utmost importance. Heating your home seems like a simple subject to tackle, but there are many heating systems available, requiring different fuels…

  • Editor's Note: Reading Strategies for Science

    Journal Article |

    In recent years, the increased attention to standards and achievement in reading has pushed the pendulum back towards incorporating reading within science content knowledge. Teachers are looking for ways to integrate…

  • Inventors in the Making

    Journal Article |

    This article describes an “inventors workshop” in which second-grade students used Lego and Robolab computer software to create and test their own inventions. After exploring Legos and their history, students created…

  • Editor's Corner: Teaching Science for All

    Journal Article |

    Diversity comes in many flavors. Achievement gaps have been identified with respect to race and ethnicity, but also regarding gender, limited English ability, socioeconomic status, and learning differences. The Science…

  • How Much Popcorn Will Our Classroom Hold?

    Journal Article |

    How much popcorn will our classroom hold? This intriguing question sparked a terrific integrated science and math exploration that the author conducted with fifth-and sixth-grade students. In the process of finding…

  • The Case Study: Using Novels as Bases for Case Studies -- Michael Crichton's State of Fear and Global Warming

    Journal Article |

    Science teachers don't always have to write their own case studies; after all, there are plenty of books that feature science in their plots. This case study uses the book State of Fear as the basis for a discussion of…

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