All English Language Learners resources
Blog Post
First-Graders Modeling Day and Night: Making Sense of a Phenomenon
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 elementary teacher, Christa Have...
By Cindy Workosky
Blog Post
Modeling in Science Instruction
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 that involves revisiting the sam...
By Cindy Workosky
Blog Post
How Teachers Are Retooling Lessons Using the EQuIP Rubric
Sometimes finding the right book or article can be the key to opening our minds to new ideas. A few years back, NSTA published a special journal series on the NGSS, and I recently re-read a few of them. Three in particular highlighted teachers’ exp...
By
Blog Post
A Learning Trajectory for Sensemaking in Science
The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) offer teachers the opportunity to consider teaching science in a new way. We help students engage with, wonder about, and make sense of natural phenomena, which closely resembles how scientists perceive th...
By Cindy Workosky
Journal Article
Engineering Encounters: The Paper Airplane Challenge
This column presents ideas and techniques to enhance your science teaching. In this month's issue students learn about variables and trials while designing an investigation....
Journal Article
Teacher's Toolkit: Interactive word walls: Visual Scaffolds That Transform Vocabulary Instruction
This column provides how-to strategies and practical advice for the science teacher. This month’s issue describes how middle school teachers can use interactive word walls to increase their students’ ability to learn and effectively use the langu...
Blog Post
Introducing Crosscutting Concepts in the Elementary Grades
Four years ago, I moved from teaching middle school science to teaching grades 2–5 STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics) labs. One of the biggest challenges I faced was limited lab time in our elementary school. Because we ...
By Cindy Workosky
Journal Article
Methods and Strategies: Using Argument-Based Inquiry Strategies for STEM Infused Science Teaching
This column provides ideas and techniques to enhance your science teaching. This article focuses on an argument-based inquiry (ABI) approach to a fourth-grade unit on waves. A fourth-grade teacher included multiple opportunities for students to rea...
Journal Article
Methods and Strategies: Put Your Walls to Work
This column provides ideas and techniques to enhance your science teaching. This month’s issue discusses planning and using interactive word walls to support science and reading instruction....
NSTA Kids
This lively book’s title makes the perfect motto for young scientists: Look and see! With the help of charming text and bright pictures, you learn just how much you can use your sense of sight. Toys and tools, birds and bugs, flowers and fish, and ...
NSTA Kids
Fragrant as a Flower: I Wonder Why
Follow your nose! This book invites you to learn what your sense of smell can teach you as you amble around town. Go along as a little boy listens to his dad’s tale about taking in the deliciousness of a pastry shop, the woodsy smells of a lumberya...





