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Ed News: The Case for (Quality) Homework
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The Case for (Quality) Homework Do math worksheets and book reports really make a difference to a student’s long-term success? Are American students overburdened with homework? In some middle-class and affluent…
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Ed News: There Are Many More Female STEM Teachers Now Than 20 Years Ago
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This week in education news, new analysis reveals that the percentage of female STEM teachers has dramatically increased from 43 percent in 1988 to 64 percent in 2012; Code.org report shows that 44 states have enacted…
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Anyone who teaches middle school students knows they have a lot of energy, and a lot of hot air. Why not put it to use? In this activity, students will be challenged to modify a simple plastic balloon racer to travel…
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First Graders Become Corn Experts: Using Questions to Drive Instruction
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First graders love when fall comes to Kansas. It’s a magical time when lots of events are occurring in their environment, and I take full advantage of their natural curiosity. We begin the school year with a mini…
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Scaffolding the Practice of Asking Questions and Defining Problems
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With the adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), teachers are wondering how to teach their students to do the science and engineering practices (SEPs). Some SEPs, such as carrying out investigations…
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NSTA recently issued a position statement calling for greater support for science educators in teaching evidence-based science, including climate science and climate change. The statement promotes the teaching of…
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First-Graders Modeling Day and Night: Making Sense of a Phenomenon
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As a first-grade teacher in Detroit with predominantly Latinx students and English language learners, I worked for several weeks at the end of last school year with a doctoral candidate in science education and former…
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Modeling in Science Instruction
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With the shift toward three-dimensional teaching and learning that the Next Generation Science Standards requires, the Crosscutting Concept of Modeling has become a major focus of my instruction. I use a process…
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Global Thinking Inside and Outside the Classroom
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Dynamic Equilibrium. These two words represent what is essential in teaching Earth science: the idea that forces are constantly working against one another, but often do so in ways that nearly counteract one another.…
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Cereal to Stream Tables: Putting Stability and Change in Students’ Hands
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Stability and Change is one of the seven Crosscutting Concepts (CCs) that can be difficult to convey in a lesson. Other CCs like Patterns, Cause and Effect, and Systems and System Models can be easily incorporated in…
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Kindergarten Citizen Scientists: Taking Action to Save the Earth
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My kindergarten students recently became citizen scientists as they investigated their big questions about the natural world around them. The snow finally melted, the critters have made their appearance, and the plants…
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I had eagerly anticipated a session at the NSTA National Conference in Atlanta called How Do We Make NGSS Storylines Work by Pushing Students to Go Deeper?—presented by Michael Novak and Brian Reiser—and I was not alone…
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Scaffolding the Crosscutting Concepts: Graphic Organizers in Action in the Middle School Classroom
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The crosscutting concepts have great potential to help students connect their learning across grade levels and science disciplines, but they can easily become the forgotten “third dimension.” Last May, we wrote about…
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Using Primary Sources as Anchoring Phenomena
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I think the best part of attending NSTA’s national conferences is having the opportunity to learn so much from every person you meet. The sheer number of so many likeminded educators in one place can seem overwhelming,…
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Cultivating Every Child’s Curiosity in the Natural World
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At the NSTA National Conference in Atlanta, I was honored to give the Mary C. McCurdy lecture on young children and their natural curiosity about how the world works. Anyone who has ever spent time with them knows they…
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