All Science Scope resources

Journal Article

Practical Ways to Assess and Change Students’ Perceptions of Scientists

One exercise that challenges students’ stereotypical perception of scientists is the Scientist Match-Up Activity. In this interactive lesson, students are asked to match a person to a profession based on three sets of clues. These clues include a p...

Journal Article

A Method for Understanding Their Method: Discovering Scientific Inquiry Through Biographies of Famous Scientists

Mendel and his peas. Goodall and her chimpanzees. Bentley and his snowflakes. Pasteur and his sheep. Not only do these stories intrigue students, but they also demonstrate the trials and tribulations associated with scientific inquiry. Using scientis...

Journal Article

Tried and True: Teaching the practice of science, unteaching the “scientific method”

Many teachers continue to teach the scientific method not only because they too were taught to believe in it, but also because it is still emphasized in many textbooks. However, it was just such mechanical teaching of science that prompted education ...

Journal Article

Science Sampler: Introducing 21st-century research and information literacy skills—a yearlong process

The phrase “21st-century skills” suggests that our students will need a new batch of skills and tools in order to be prepared for the next century. However, many teachers would say that they already incorporate these skills in their lessons, such...

Journal Article

Editor’s Roundtable: Reading is fundamental—to science

A student’s reading level is one of the predictors of his or her overall academic success in middle school and afterwards. Science teachers, however, do not need to be reading experts to help students develop close-reading skills and effective scre...

Journal Article

Visual Literacy in Science

While diagrams make the text more visually appealing and provide an image of the text, they also do much more. Subsequently, the authors designed a series of lessons for students to discover the many purposes of graphics in science. A particular util...

Journal Article

Science Sampler: Annotated reading

In order to make reading assignments a more meaningful instructional strategy, the author created MP3 audio recordings of the textbook, which included commentary that was interspersed in the recording. At the start of every recording, he also modeled...

Journal Article

Tech Trek: Hang up and learn—Cell phones in the science classroom

In some schools, cell phones have to be turned off or perhaps kept in lockers to avoid misuse. But the authors hope to demonstrate in this article how they can be used under supervision to assist learning. There is no question that the uninitiated wi...

Journal Article

Scope on Safety: Administrators say the darndest things!

Science teachers are licensed professionals and therefore are held to a higher standard by the court when it comes to “duty of care” of students and fellow employees. Remember, most courts today rely on the teacher to determine if a lab is safe�...

Journal Article

Science Sampler: The Plant Feastival

The Plant Feastival is a celebration of the plants we use as food. It is a culminating activity for the plant unit, during which students participate in the “Great Plant Race” and prepare a research project on a food plant. The research project i...