What if you could challenge your fourth graders to create a minimally invasive, highly efficient dam? With this volume in the "STEM Road Map Curriculum Series," you can! "Hydropower Efficiency" outlines a journey that will steer your students toward authentic problem solving while grounding them in integrated STEM disciplines.…

Water is a meaningful context for children to engage in inquiry, and to acquire and use science and engineering practices, such as developing spatial thinking and early concepts of water dynamics. This book shows teachers how to provide children with opportunities to engineer water movement through pouring and filling containers of various kinds…

Curriculums for STEM education programs have been successfully implemented into numerous school systems for many years. Recently, the integration of arts education into such programs has proven to be significantly beneficial to students, resulting in a new method of teaching including science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics.…

This volume contains the following papers: (1) Beyond Computer Literacy: Supporting Youth's Positive Development through Technology (Marina Umaschi Bers); (2) Educational Technology, Reimagined (Michael Eisenberg); (3) Children as Codesigners of New Technologies: Valuing the Imagination to Transform What Is Possible (Allison Druin); (4) Content…

The impulse to investigate the natural world is deeply rooted in our earliest childhood experiences. This notion has long guided researchers to uncover the cognitive mechanisms underlying the development of scientific reasoning in children. Until recently, however, research in cognitive development and education followed largely independent…

This book presents essential learning approaches. It introduces educational and training activities, as well as various innovative methods aiming at the development of practical skills, in order to strengthen the continuous process of environmental education, and in particular the education for sustainable development (ESD). In doing so, it…

The definition of "English language classroom" is changing. When students have the opportunity to learn content and language at the same time, disciplinary boundaries overlap. Teachers are rethinking how they design courses, plan lessons, assess students, and collaborate with colleagues to support student learning and facilitate their…

This document introduces the Edible Schoolyard Project (ESP) in which students create a garden, watch it grow, and develop a bond with nature. Chapters include: (1) "Implications of the Edible Schoolyard Project" (Wes Jackson); (2) "A World of Possibilities" (Alice Waters); (3) "The Garden Experience" (David Hawkins);…

This guide contains 30 technology learning activities. Activities may contain all or some of the following: an introduction, objectives, materials and equipment, challenges, limitations, notes and investigations, resources and references used, and evaluation ideas. Activity titles are: (1) Occupations in Construction Technology; (2) Designing a…

This volume of 66 promising practices in mathematics and science education developed by the 10 regional educational laboratories funded by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Research and Improvement. The laboratories' collection of programs emerged from a broad-based search, nomination, and review process reaching educators…

Learning activities that introduce new twists to teaching such basic subjects as mathematics, social studies, reading comprehension, music, science, creative writing, and spelling are described. (CB)

This teaching unit on using shadows in science instruction and other class activities explains how to set up and equip a "super private sleuthing box" where students can solve mysteries such as where to find shadows and how to shrink or enlarge them. Ideas for making silhouettes and shadow plays are also given. (PP)

This document presents a set of 12 science activity collections (a total of 144 activities) gathered from periodicals and other sources in Australia. The content areas commonly covered in elementary school science lessons are represented by such activity topics as: what you can do with a leaf; climbing liquids; silkworms; shadows; chemical force;…

Education has traditionally studied the world by bringing it into the classroom. This method can result in situated learning that appears to students to have no relevance outside the classroom. Students acquire inert, decontextualized knowledge that they cannot apply to real problems. The obvious solution to this shortcoming is to reverse the…

Described are five physics activities including two superconductor projects, synchronizing video camera movements, electrical analysis of a bicycle, and apparatus for the measurement of thermal conductivity. (YP)