JoinAll Professional Learning resources
NSTA Press Book
Creating Engineering Design Challenges: Success Stories From Teachers
If you’ve ever wished for advice you can trust on how to make science and math more relevant to your middle or high school students, Creating Engineering Design Challenges is the book for you. At its core are 13 units grounded in challenge-based le...
NSTA Press Book
Discovery Engineering in Biology: Case Studies for Grades 6–12
Show your students how amazing it can be to just “see what will happen” when they blend biology, engineering, and serendipity. Focusing on innovations sparked by accidental or unexpected observations, the case studies in this resource are a livel...
By Rebecca Hite, Gina Childers, Megan Ennes, M. Gail Jones
Blog Post
Bring STEM Practices Into the Secondary Classroom
STEM—Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics—is discussed in the news, politics, and education journals, yet what does it really mean for classrooms? The Council of State Science Supervisors (CSSS) works to support secondary science in ...
By Juan-Carlos Aguilar, Anne Petersen, Megan Schrauben
Blog Post
Ensuring All Elementary Students Have Access to Science Learning
Ensuring all students have access to science learning is part of the vision in A Framework for K–12 Science Education. Yet in many elementary schools, teachers have little time for science. This is such a disservice, as engaging in the science and ...
By Kathy Renfrew and Amber McCulloch
NSTA Press Book
Instructional Sequence Matters, Grades 3–5: Explore Before Explain
Instructional Sequence Matters, Grades 3–5 is a one-stop resource that will inspire you to reimagine how you teach science in elementary school. The book discusses two popular approaches for structuring your lessons: POE (Predict, Observe, and Expl...
By Patrick Brown
Blog Post
When informal science institutions (ISIs) offer professional learning opportunities to teachers to support science in schools, they create the potential for dynamic science educators and classrooms that can support high-quality science learning for s...
By Dr. Vanessa Lujan
Blog Post
The Wade Institute for Science Education has long valued the power of informal institutions to create precisely the kind of student-led inquiry-based learning and real-world problem solving envisaged by the three-dimensional learning of NGSS. Through...
By Angela Damery
Journal Article
Changing Mindsets Through Educator Training
MOXI, The Wolf Museum of Exploration + Innovation, is a new museum in Santa Barbara, California, designed to engage visitors of all ages in constructing understanding of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) topics through active engage...
By Ron Skinner, Danielle B. Harlow, and Kaia Joye Wesolowski
NSTA Press Book
Making Sense of Science and Religion: Strategies for the Classroom and Beyond
The authors of Making Sense of Science and Religion believe that addressing interactions between science and religion is part of all science educators’ collective job—and that this is the book that will help you facilitate discussion when the top...
By Joseph W. Shane, Lee Meadows, Ronald S. Hermann, Ian C. Binns
Blog Post
Arguing From Evidence to Discover the ‘Why’
In my science classroom, students look at evidence all the time. Sometimes it is in photos or videos; sometimes in charts and graphs; and sometimes we generate our own data through investigations. A more traditional approach previously used is asking...
By Rebecca Schumacher
Blog Post