Working with second-grade teachers, the authors designed a six-day integrated science and language arts unit to investigate the structures that insects use to make their sound vibrations. They were inspired by "The Very Quiet Cricket" (Carle 1990), which was used as the focus text for the unit, as well as "Bug Music"…

Compare the sounds produced by a symphony with those produced by a high school orchestra, the notes produced by hitting a tympani with those produced by hitting a trash can lid, and the sounds produced by Al Green with those produced by Yoko Ono. Even though the pitch of a note (determined by the "frequency" of the sound wave) is the…

Sound propagation is not easy for children to understand because of its abstract nature, often best represented by models such as wave drawings and particle dots. Teachers Rebecca Hendrix and Charles Eick wondered how science inquiry, when combined with an unlikely discipline like drama, could produce a better understanding among their…

In this article, Tammy D. Lee and Jane L. Lubischer describe a classroom lesson designed to explore how animals use sound to communicate and how this communication affects their survival. Lee and Lubischer wanted to bring an awareness of how science is happening in students' own backyards. They developed a half-day 5E lesson integrating two…

Ask many elementary school teachers or principals, and they will say that science and music are not the top priority in their classrooms. Teachers need to know "how" they can incorporate the necessary mathematics and reading goals and objectives while still engaging students in the critical and aesthetic thinking developed through…