To combat environmental apathy, the authors seek to help students develop environmental knowledge, ethics, and "critical-thinking skills that will prepare them to evaluate issues and make informed decisions regarding stewardship of the planet". This article describes scientific, place-based investigations of local species and their…

In this challenge, the authors wanted to support students' knowledge of light and the ways in which it interacts with other materials through a series of connected learning experiences. These experiences are related to "NGSS standard 1-PS4-3 Waves and Their Applications in Technologies for Information Transfer. Plan and conduct investigations…

In this kindergarten lesson about pushes and pulls, the authors used the SHARE strategy to embed effective questions throughout each phase of the 5E learning cycle (Engage, Explore, Explain, Evaluate, Elaborate). The thoughtfully worded and open-ended questions shared in this article can help students generate ideas and focus their thinking…

Science centers provide an engaging way for young learners to explore related concepts. The hands-on nature of each exercise secures the stimulation necessary to maintain focused attention. In this article, the authors describe a multi-day 5E (Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, Evaluate) lesson on nocturnal and diurnal animals with science…

Children can see the Moon with the naked eye and often are curious about the Moon and other objects in the sky, like the Sun and the stars. However, there is sometimes disagreement in early childhood about whether studying space is appropriate for young children. This activities described in this article engaged children who had different learning…

In this article, the authors discuss finding teaching the standard on the apparent brightness of the Sun (5-ESS1-1) to be a challenging and frustrating experience due to the abstract nature of the standard and generally low interest of their fifth-grade students. They had previously used hands-on learning activities involving flashlights to model…

The "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS Lead States 2013) have placed a special emphasis on engineering, raising engineering design to the level of scientific inquiry. Therefore, it is important for teachers to integrate engineering processes into their teaching. Students should experience engineering design in their science…

Recently, many students experienced a sudden shift to virtual learning. During this abrupt transition, Jennifer Hoffman helped her students adapt to online learning by employing user-friendly tools to best support students' digital literacy and science learning. In this article, she explains an instructional module that she created for fifth-grade…

Although the "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS) have three dimensions, the crosscutting concepts are often the forgotten dimension. One reason teachers may not emphasize the crosscutting concepts might be because they are broad, domain-general constructs that can be difficult to conceptualize in a meaningful way. Yet, when taught…

This article describes one participating teacher's reflections on the generalizable strategies and structures from the professional development (PD) sessions that enabled her sensemaking, and how she translated these generalizations into her own second-grade classroom. Readers will be able to make their own useful generalizations from these…

In this article, the author describes an activity using physical models -- each a clear plastic box enclosing a miniature coastal town, complete with real water in the "ocean." This activity shows students a natural cause-and-effect relationship that is scientifically simple, yet even many adults don't grasp the worldwide implications:…

Science and engineering practices (SEPs) and crosscutting concepts (CCs) constitute a significant part of "A Framework for K-12 Science Education" (NRC 2012). As teachers, the role of the authors is to highlight the pivotal role that both scientific knowledge and the practices used to generate knowledge play in learning. This article…

Representation in science is anything that stands for something else--drawings, pictures, graphs, or other representational forms (Danish et al. 2020). Representations serve as public displays of phenomena that make aspects of those phenomena explicit (Gilbert 2008). They can serve to make the invisible visible, communicate ideas, display…

Visual data--or visual sources of information--are a crucial part of helping students understand STEM concepts, improve their reading skills, and engage in science and engineering practices (Finson and Pedersen 2011). Indeed, many science and engineering practices require students to make meaning from visual data. When students are developing and…

Multilingual children learning English often receive inequitable curriculum, instruction, and assessment opportunities in preK-5 schools where English is the dominant language of instruction. There is an even more prevalent gap when also considering access to high quality STEM learning opportunities. Why is STEM enrichment for multilingual…