Establishing relevant applications for the science curriculum can be a challenge. However, the key that opens science for students is within a teacher's grasp: It is as simple as bringing science connections into his or her classroom through community resources and taking the students to the science that is available. The author encourages…

With a grant through Indiana University's Inner Asian & Uralic National Resource Center, the authors developed an online, five-week unit that discusses the cultural and ecological "worlds" of central Asia, specifically the countries of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. There are two main ideas…

Science teachers and graduate students have developed activities and assessment tools that begin to help students make the distinction between data and evidence. Two activities are covered in this article. (Contains 1 resource and 2 figures.)

Save the River, a grassroots advocacy group established in 1978, lobbies for policies to preserve the upper St. Lawrence River and uses the community's help to keep an eye on the existing habitats. Recently, they procured the Fresh Sound Foundation grant to support the development of new K-12 ecology curricula by local area teachers to educate…

This lesson was developed for middle school students using actual research on grass shrimp ("Palaemonetes pugio") to illustrate the process of a scientific investigation. The research was conducted at Savannah State University and funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Office of Education through the Living Marine…

"A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas" emphasizes that the practice of science is inherently a model-building activity focused on constructing explanations using evidence and reasoning (NRC 2012). Because building and refining is an iterative process, middle school students may view this practice…

This article describes two lessons within the authors' education module entitled, Ecological Networks, that successfully teaches introductory systems content to middle and high school students. To catch students' attention when teaching these new concepts, they decided to use a network that was familiar and fun for students--a cell-phone…

To confront some of the challenges faced by teachers beginning to implement Standards-based inquiry activities in their middle school classrooms, learning coordinators and teachers selected an inquiry-based set of courses and created a District Science Curricula Scope and Sequence, which overviewed the major units and showed teachers and parents…

Reports on a teacher's experience at the Wright Center for Innovative Science Education in developing an interdisciplinary curriculum unit that utilizes the community's close ties to the sea. (DDR)

Presents an overview of a museum teacher-in-residence program in which support is given for the development of curriculum materials relating to hands-on science instruction. (DDR)

Presents a strategy for implementing curriculum compacting in the middle school classroom and discusses how to administer a curriculum compacting test. Describes curriculum compacting pathways, contracts with student rights and responsibilities, and a compacting grading policy. Includes several planning worksheets. (SAH)

At the beginning of each year, teachers have the daunting task of deciding which concepts and skills to teach their students. Many teachers feel the pressure to teach "the whole book". This pressure comes in multiple forms. There is ever-increasing pressure to perform well on state, national, and international exams. An added pressure is the…

Presents a curriculum designed to infuse environmental concepts and attitudes into the middle school curriculum. Developed through an educational partnership with industry, this curriculum focuses on the establishment and maintenance of backyard wildlife habitats. (DDR)

Uses questioning techniques to teach about caloric consumption and weight gain. Starts with defining questions about calories and includes the stages of measuring calories, analyzing data, and conducting inquiry research. Includes directions for the experiment. (YDS)

Provides examples of ways to use the television show "Scientific American Frontiers" in the classroom. Outlines a range of approaches and discusses some motivational techniques to engage students. (DDR)