Big Books Have a Big Impact on Elementary Science Education

Journal Article | July 2023

Preservice elementary teachers are faced with the daunting task of learning enough about every subject to support their students’ development of foundational ideas. Teacher preparation programs and professional…

Crossing Linguistic and Cultural Borders

Journal Article | March 2021

Conducting Science Labs in a Virtual World

Journal Article | November 2020

Is It a Solid?

Lesson Plan | December 2022

The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about solids. The probe is designed to reveal the macroscopic and/or microscopic properties students use to decide whether a material is a solid.

Inquiry and Design

Journal Article | March 2020

Keep Space Scurvy Away With Ascorbic Acid a Day

Journal Article | January 2021

What’s in the Bubbles?

Lesson Plan | December 2022

The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about particles during a phase change. The probe is designed to find out if students recognize that the bubbles formed when water boils are the result of…

Where Did the Water Come From?

Lesson Plan | December 2022

The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about condensation. The probe is designed to determine whether students recognize that condensation comes from the water vapor in the air.

Arguing About a Chemical Change

Journal Article | February 2020

Use a sample ACT writing prompt in an explore-before-explain instructional sequence to a 9th-grade physical science class to promote student learning and demonstrate that mass is conserved in a chemical reaction

Growing With Phenomenon

Journal Article | May 2022

How Do Animals Brush Their Teeth?

Journal Article | December 2018

A Reflection on the Changing Reality of Science

Journal Article | April 2020

Advancing Alloys

Journal Article | April 2020

The manufacture of metal alloys is ubiquitous, yet infrequently discussed in high school coursework as concepts related to them are often too complex or abstract for beginning science students. However, earlier…

Is It Melting?

Lesson Plan | August 2020

The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about the physical process of melting. The probe is designed to find out if students recognize melting as a change in state from solid to liquid that…

A balloon that does not burn

Journal Article | September 2019

Using discrepant events to confront misconceptions