JoinAll The Science Teacher resources
Journal Article
Educators and educational researchers alike are discovering that inductive methods—in which learners start with specific observations, problems, or cases and infer general laws from these instances—are more effective when higher-order thinking is...
Journal Article
The New Teacher’s Toolbox: Making the Most of “Lost Days”
In a given school year, one or two weeks of class time are inevitably eaten up by the calendar. There are the days before Thanksgiving, winter break, and spring break—when some students have left for early vacations, those left behind seem off the ...
Journal Article
“A Tale of Four Electrons” is a creative writing assignment used with 10th-grade Honors Chemistry students. The project helps students consolidate their learning about bonding—an important unifying theme in chemistry—and answers questions suc...
Journal Article
One Fish, Two Fish, Redfish, You Fish!
The recreational fishing activity presented in this article provides a hands-on, problem-based experience for students; it unites biology, math, economics, environmental policy, and population dynamics concepts. In addition, the activity allows stude...
Journal Article
Science 2.0: Picture This Assessment
If a picture is worth a thousand words, imagine the power of an image-filled science test! In a world rich with drag-and-drop, copy-and-paste digital imaging, today’s teachers have a number of options to create visually rich assessment tools for th...
Journal Article
The Green Room: Teaching About Energy
Winter is the perfect time to get students thinking about their energy use and introduce them to conservation methods. Students can monitor the energy use of a classroom appliance and even compete in a nationwide energy conservation challenge! Read T...
Journal Article
To help students learn and apply science content, teachers can embed content literacy instruction within science instruction. This involves teaching the content and the literacy skills students need to learn that content, such as vocabulary and compr...
Journal Article
The New Teacher’s Toolbox: Homeless Not Hopeless—Tips for the Traveling Teacher
In a world of expanding class sizes and shrinking budgets, it’s rare to find a new teacher with his or her own classroom. New teachers often juggle multiple sections of multiple preps in different rooms—sometimes teaching back-to-back classes on ...
Journal Article
The Affective Elements of Science Learning
Student attitudes can have a positive or negative effect on learning. According to Duschl, Schweingruber, and Shouse, “[students’] goals for science learning, their beliefs about their ability to do science, and the value they assign to science l...
Journal Article
Safer Science: Building Safety in Foreign Language
A school is about to undergo major renovations and new construction to handle a growing student population. So some science classes and labs are assigned to other parts of the building temporarily. Most teachers are excited about the opportunity to h...
Journal Article
The Concept Attainment Strategy
The concept attainment lesson, recommended by Joyce, Weil, and Calhoun (2004), is designed to give students practice in analyzing data and developing critical-thinking skills—without a complicated lab setup. The inductive lesson structure leads stu...
Journal Article
How Much Carbon Is in the Forest?
At the start of an integrated Algebra I and Environmental Science class, students were presented with the following challenge: “How much carbon is stored in the Normanskill Preserve?” They were told they had one month to investigate and present t...