Students are naturally inquisitive and eager to learn. The NSTA K-12 journals for December have many ideas and suggestions for teachers to tap into these inquiring minds.

Science & Children: Scale, Proportion, and Quantity

” Young children work at macroscopic scales that are directly observable and move on to those that are too small, too large, too fast, or too slow to observe as they learn.” This issue continues a series that addresses each of the crosscutting concepts with “snapshots” of activities that include the concepts. Here are some additional SciLinks that provide content information and suggestions for additional activities and investigations related to this month’s featured articles:

• Formative Assessment Probe–Watermelon and Grape: An Intuitive Rule of Quantity and Proportion [Density, Buoyancy]
• The Early Years–The Building Blocks of Measurement [How Can Matter Be Measured and Compared?]
• Teaching Through Trade Books—Bigger Than a Breadbox? [How Can Matter Be Measured?, Describing Matter]
• Observing Life in a Square [Habitats; Populations, Communities, and Ecosystems]
• Gliding Into Understanding [Forces of Flight]
• Shrieks and Shrills [Sound]
• Bee-Wild About Pollination [Honey Bees, Pollination]
• Cinderella Separates a Mixture [Physical Properties of Matter, Mixture of Substances]

Both Science Scope and The Science Teacher feature engineering as a theme. Two other organizations have excellent resources for engineering projects and lessons: TeachEngineering and TryEngineering. Both of these have ideas for lessons that focus on authentic problem-solving. Here are some additional SciLinks that provide content information and suggestions for additional activities and investigations related to this month’s featured articles:

Science Scope: Medicine/Bioengineering

“In this issue, we explore health-related topics that are sure to engage students and reinforce the notion that the body is a system of multiple interacting subsystems.”

The sites described in SciLink’s Biomedical Engineering include lessons and investigations, as well as career information and descriptions.

• No Ordinary Coronary [Circulatory System]
• If it’s engineered, is it wood? [Raw Materials]
• Sickle Cell Disease [Sickle Cell Anemia, Inherited Diseases, Red Blood Cells]  
• The Big Break [Biomedical Engineering]
• Inspired by Real Science [Cancer]
• Building bridges with the NGSS [Science of Bridges, Bridge Structures] 

The Science Teacher: Engineering Design

Here are some additional SciLinks that provide content information and suggestions for additional activities and investigations related to this month’s featured articles:

• Catching the Wrong Species [Ocean Fisheries, Overfishing] 
• Engineering Design Challenge [Voltaic Cell, Electrochemical Cells] 
• Career of the Month: An Interview with a Biomedical Engineer [Biomedical Engineering]
• An Engineer Does What Now? and Make Room for Engineering [Engineer]
• Plants v. Pollutants [Polluted Ecosystems]

One of the benefits of being an NSTA member is having access to all of the journals online. Regardless of the grade level you teach, the journals have ideas for authentic activities and investigations that can be used, adapted, or extended for different levels of student interest and experience.