The objective of the termite experiment is to walk students through the process of designing and conducting an experiment while allowing them to use inquiry-based methods to infer why, in this lab, termites follow the line of blue Bic or Paper Mate brand ballpoint pens. This experiment also reinforces the concept of observation versus inference…

By thinking about the concept of density and taking into account the research on children's ideas about this concept, the authors were able to unpack the typical sink or float activity and realize that it has students unscientifically making comparisons between objects by changing two independent variables (mass and volume) at one time. With this…

Roles can be assigned to occurrences of variables in programs according to a small number of stereotypical patterns of use. Studies on explicitly teaching roles to novices learning programming have shown that roles are an excellent pedagogical tool for clarifying the structure and meaning of programs and that their use improves students'…