JoinAll Phenomena resources
Blog Post
Elementary Science—Best Practices for All Students
Envision a room filled with noise, excited whispers, and students shouting across tables. Piles of tinfoil, plastic cups, scissors, string, and tape are scattered around the room. Paper, pencils, and notebooks filled with sketches are strewn across g...
By Cindy Workosky
NSTA Press Book
Have you been wanting to learn more about what your students know (or think they know) about major concepts in matter and energy? Have you been wishing for formative assessment tools in both English and Spanish? Then this is the book you’ve been wa...
By Page Keeley, Susan Cooper
Blog Post
Using Toxic Algal Blooms to Teach Structure and Function
Young children often experience a developmental stage in which they question everything. Why aren’t there dinosaurs anymore? Why do cats purr? Why are some potato chips green? They go from simply observing their surroundings to analyzing, experimen...
By Rebecca Brewer
Journal Article
The Early Years: Begin With Open Exploration
This column discusses resources and science topics related to students in grades preK to 2. This issue discusses ways to encourage children to engage in open exploration to learn about living organisms....
Journal Article
This column provides background science information for elementary teachers. This issue discusses phenomenon-based learning and activities to use in the science classroom....
Blog Post
First-Graders Modeling Day and Night: Making Sense of a Phenomenon
As a first-grade teacher in Detroit with predominantly Latinx students and English language learners, I worked for several weeks at the end of last school year with a doctoral candidate in science education and former elementary teacher, Christa Have...
By Cindy Workosky
Blog Post
Recently, my colleagues and I had an exchange with some teachers in one of our professional development programs. One teacher said, “I think I do a lot of modeling in my class. I have my kids draw pictures of the science ideas they are learning all...
Blog Post
Modeling in Science Instruction
With the shift toward three-dimensional teaching and learning that the Next Generation Science Standards requires, the Crosscutting Concept of Modeling has become a major focus of my instruction. I use a process that involves revisiting the sam...
By Cindy Workosky
Blog Post
What Does 3-Dimensional Space Look Like
When transitioning my classroom instruction to three dimensional learning, I decided to start with one or two areas in each unit or lesson set where I felt the most need. I was already purposeful in selecting activities that I carefully sequenced to ...
By Korei Martin