One tried-and-true way to hook students' attention and promote long-lasting understanding is to sequence science instruction in an explore-before-explain instructional sequence. In these lessons for the second through sixth grade band, elementary students investigate the interaction between "cold" and "hot" substances and…

In our experience, providing students with opportunities to explore outdoors has benefited them greatly in appreciating the outdoors and learning more about the environment. Similarly, researchers recognize that participants of outdoor schoolyard instruction have a more significant increase in cognitive understanding of ecological science concepts…

In this fourth and fifth grade activity, students become comfortable with the concept that light-years are a measure of distance, not time, and discover how we are looking back in time when we look at stars. Since the enormous distances in space can make astronomical studies even more confusing, students explore the meaning of a light-year by…

Students love learning about animals: how animals behave, what animals eat, why some animals are more dangerous than others are, and why animals look the way they do. In this 5E lesson, students investigate why some animals look the way they do--specifically, the advantages of camouflage and mimicry. What are an animal's advantages of being…

Discrepant events are often used by science educators to incite interest and excitement in learners, yet sometimes their results are farther-reaching. The following article describes how one such event--dissolving packing peanuts in acetone--led to a change in the course of a college-level elementary science teaching methods class and to the…

This investigation-based lesson is geared toward third through fifth grade students. The lesson presented in this article was the first of three lessons designed and taught by us for our first preservice teaching course. UTeach is a teacher preparation program for undergraduate STEM majors, which originated at the University of Austin, Texas. The…

A fifth grade life science lesson was implemented through a lesson study approach in two fifth grade classrooms. The research lesson was designed by a team of four elementary school teachers with the goal of emphasizing engineering practices consistent with the "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS) (Achieve Inc. 2013). The fifth…

"Prey Play" is an interactive role-play activity that provides fifth-grade students with opportunities to examine predator-prey interactions. This four-part, role-play activity allows students to take on the role of a predator and prey as they reflect on the behaviors animals exhibit as they collect food and interact with one another, as well as…

In this interdisciplinary and field-based activity, grade 5 to 9 students engage in a comprehensive scientific study of snow. Through a series of in-class and out-of-class structured interdisciplinary and team-teaching lesson progressions, students will collect data to be able to analyze and apply knowledge about weather, the physical properties…

The ocean provides humanity with many services and goods, including clean air, minerals, and food. Sustainable use and management of our marine resources are important to ensure that these resources are available for future generations. The turn-based activity presented in this article teaches students the challenges of managing a sustainable…

The implications of Earth's ocean being little explored may not be immediately evident to individuals who are not ocean literate. For this reason, initiatives to improve ocean literacy must articulate compelling reasons for ocean exploration. A lesson plan that addresses this issue has been developed as part of the education and outreach program…

Most people are familiar with the concept that animals come in all shapes and sizes and that the body plan of some animals can completely transform during their lifetime. Well-known examples of such complex life cycles of terrestrial animals include butterflies and frogs. Many people are unaware, however, that complex life cycles are exceedingly…

"Mineral Detectives!" is one of eighteen lessons in the "Private Whys?" integrated science unit, which uses a guided inquiry investigation to teach students in grades three through five about the role of minerals in our lives. The University of North Texas developed "Private Whys?" with funding from the Copper…

This activity is the result of a school-university collaboration among four educators (two intermediate classroom teachers, a vice-principal/teacher, and a university-based teacher educator/researcher) who worked together to improve the quality of learning in the classroom. The educators combined their teaching expertise to plan and co-teach an…