All Science Scope resources

Journal Article

Scope on Safety: Digging up the dirt on soil safety

Should middle school science teachers be concerned about students bringing in unknown sources of soil to work on in class as the activity suggests? The science is well intended, but is it safe? What are some possible safety issues that might be of co...

Journal Article

Scope on the Skies: End of the line for a star like ours

Stars of different masses have varying life spans, with the more massive stars “burning out” more quickly than stars of lower masses. How or what they do when they burn out also varies, depending on the mass of the star. All stars are called main...

Journal Article

Science Sampler: Visual formative assessments—The use of images to quickly assess and record student learning

Visual formative assessments (VFAs) allow more free more time for direct instruction. VFA’s guide students in using simple images to demonstrate the essential learnings within a unit to themselves and the teacher. VFAs are powerful because they eng...

Journal Article

Tried and True: The view at the zoo—Using a photographic scavenger hunt as the basis for an interdisciplinary field trip

Most educators have a love-hate relationship with field trips. On the one hand, field trips are a great way to get students out of the building, enhance learning, and have some fun. On the other hand, field trips are a lot of work and worry. Especial...

Journal Article

Getting Students to be Successful, Independent Investigators

Middle school students often struggle when writing testable problems, planning valid and reliable procedures, and drawing meaningful evidence-based conclusions. To address this issue, the author created a student-centered lab handout to facilitate th...

Journal Article

Editor’s Roundtable: A world of data to explore

Middle-level students can analyze existing data as well as collect it firsthand so that they can better understand natural phenomena and the methods we use to study them. Use the activities described in this issue of Science Scope to relate data coll...

Journal Article

Science Sampler: SSSNOW Project—Helping make science cool for students

In the atmosphere or on the ground, snow provides students with unique opportunities to discover winter weather patterns. Traditionally, when students study weather, it is limited to the collection of data one would see on a weather report. However, ...

Journal Article

Tech Trek: Cell phones for science

Although in some schools cell phones have to be turned off or perhaps kept in lockers to avoid misuse, the authors hope to demonstrate in this article how they can be used under supervision to assist learning. This ubiquitous device can be a powerful...

Journal Article

Science Sampler: Is knowledge random? Introducing sampling and bias through outdoor inquiry

Sampling, very generally, is the process of learning about something by selecting and assessing representative parts of that population or object. In the inquiry activity described here, students learned about sampling techniques as they estimated th...

Journal Article

How Middle School Students Come Face to Face With Down Syndrome Research

This article discusses how real research on Down syndrome, being done in a lab at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), was incorporated into a laboratory activity for middle school students. The activity asked students to evalua...

Journal Article

Scope on Safety: Common sense and chemicals

This month’s column features two true stories about the use of chemicals in the middle school science classroom. The lesson of these stories is simple. Certainly, it is prudent to have age-appropriate experiences in science, given the developmental...

Journal Article

Predicting The Timing And Location of the Next Hawaiian Volcano

The wealth of geologic data on Hawaiian volcanoes makes them ideal for study by middle school students. In this paper the authors use existing data on the age and location of Hawaiian volcanoes to predict the location of the next Hawaiian volcano and...