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Book Chapter |
In this activity, students identify the scientific names of items they have around the house.
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Medical Metaphor Mixer: Modeling Infectious Diseases
Book Chapter |
This model-building activity helps learners visualize SI’s base-ten relationships; the connections between the meter, liter, and gram; the real-world relevance of mathematics to science; and the somewhat abstract…
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Cookie Mining: A Food-for-Thought Simulation
Book Chapter |
In this activity, various brands, sizes, and textures of chocolate chip cookies are “mined” as an edible analogy for natural resource management and conservation.
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Book Chapter |
Teachers (or students) are asked to generate and discuss a list of the Top 10 Crazy Ideas in Science and a related list of Top 10 Challenges of Learning Science. This brainstorming activity focuses on science as a…
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Book Chapter |
In this activity, the wording and validity of the scientific and economic claims for compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) are critically examined. Their environmental impact relative to standard incandescent lightbulbs…
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A Terrible Test That Teaches: Curriculum-Embedded Assessment
Book Chapter |
In this activity, a “terrible test” appears to be impossible to pass. However, it is intentionally designed to include common errors in item construction that, if noticed, allow the test-wise learner to ace the test…
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Diagnostic Assessment: Discrepant Event or Essential Educational Experiment?
Book Chapter |
In this activity, learners are asked to complete sample diagnostic assessments that model how nongraded, preinstructional “tests” support learner-centered curriculum and instruction. These kinds of tests, the specific…
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Dual-Density Discrepancies: Ice Is Nice and Sugar Is Sweet
Book Chapter |
Seemingly identical crystalline cubes (ice versus halite crystals) are observed to either sink or float in two seemingly identical clear, colorless liquids (ethanol and water). Also, a handful of sugar cubes are…
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Inferences, Inquiry, and Insight: Meaningful “Miss-takes”
Book Chapter |
The Nature of Science (NOS) includes making scientific inferences based on available empirical evidence (observation) and logical arguments (e.g., prediction based on pattern recognition). Making and learning from “miss…
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Pseudoscience in the News: Preposterous Propositions and Media Mayhem Matters
Book Chapter |
The nature of science (NOS) is to rely on empirical evidence, logical argument, and skeptical review, versus pseudoscience (e.g., astrology), which falsely claims scientific validity and credibility despite the weight…
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Scientific Reasoning: Inside, Outside, On, and Beyond the Box
Book Chapter |
Direct observation, measurement, indirect evidence, and inferential reasoning are used to uncover nature’s patterns and their underlying logic. Scientists use both data interpolation and extrapolation, as well as new…
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Magic Bus of School Science: “Seeing” What Can’t Be Seen
Book Chapter |
Scientists use direct empirical and inferential evidence, logical argument, and skeptical review to formulate and evaluate hypotheses and tentative, provisionally accepted theories. In this activity, a simple line-…
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Reading Between the Lines of the Daily Newspaper: Molecular Magic
Book Chapter |
Although there is no single scientific method, scientists use the triple tests of empirical evidence, logical argument, and skeptical review to discover patterns in nature and explain their underlying reasons in terms…
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Pondering Puzzling Patterns and a Parable Poem
Book Chapter |
Students and teachers need playful experiences where they can develop the scientific inquiry skills of observation, pattern recognition, and inferential reasoning and prediction, as well as discover some of the…
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Science and Art: Dueling Disciplines
or Dynamic Duo?Book Chapter |
A mixer activity (supplemented by “scientific” art, music, and optional demonstrations) is used to catalyze a conversation on the similarities and differences between the sciences and the arts.
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