One of the many blogs I subscribe to is Not Exactly Rocket Science from Discover magazine. It’s good reading about science (Bad Astronomy is also published here). A recent entry Eight-year-old children publish bee study in Royal Society journal describes how a class of students in Devon, England, designed and conducted a study of what factors bees use when selecting which flowers to visit. The results of their study, complete with their pencil drawings, was published in Biology Letters by the UK’s Royal Society (there’s a link to the publication from the blog). The students did have guidance from a scientist and their teacher, but the work is theirs. What an exciting accomplishment! I’m sure these students learned much about insect behavior and scientific inquiry. (You might also be interested in the related entry, Turning secondary school children into research scientists).

It’s not common for student work to appear in a peer-reviewed professional publication such as this. But I’ve heard of various opportunities (both print and online) for students to publish their work. The one that I’m most familiar with is Classroom BirdScope from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. If anyone has had experiences with others, please let us know in a comment!
Sharing what is learned and creating new knowledge is part of scientific inquiry. How can students share the results of their investigations? A class blog or wiki? Press releases to local media? The school website? A locally-published journal? Presentations to their classmates?
Insects are a common unit in the elementary grades. I’ve created a collection of some articles in NSTA publications related to Bees and SciLinks has collections of websites related to

• Honeybees  K-4 5-8 9-12
• Pollination  K-4 5-8 9-12

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/124330160/23764566/#/