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…

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…

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…

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…

While school field trips are valued as supplementary educational tools, Andersen and Zhang (2003) found that in practice field trips are often treated as one-off learning experiences and not furthered through connections to the classroom curriculum. Although students gain exposure to new phenomena and are able to participate in learning activities…

Using cross-grade peer mentoring as an integral component to field trip experiences can help educators realize the learning potential of nature-based experiences. When young students are paired with older students, Socratic peer dialogue deepens interest, investment, and ultimately ownership of new learning. Using peer-supported inquiry…

Students in the intermediate grades love to talk--but not necessarily about making sense of what they are learning. How do teachers design classrooms that cultivate productive discourse? How do they get out of the way and teach children to learn? First, let's give them something to talk about. Second, teachers need to teach them how to engage in…

In this article, the authors share how model lessons spaced throughout the year, connected by a single anchoring phenomenon, provided opportunities for teachers to build schema for complex science learning as they shifted between "learner hats" and "teacher hats." Descriptions of the authors' workshop sessions include…

Model Eliciting Activities (MEAs) are pedagogical approaches that allow teachers to integrate multiple subjects into creative multi-day learning experiences that captivate students' curiosity and engage them in real-life problem solving. MEAs are known in the fields of mathematics and engineering (Gilat and Amit 2014), but despite their ability to…

Dramatic inquiry is a teaching approach where students explore science through differentiated learning experiences, so that students can engage in learning in multiple ways (e.g., through gesture, song, written and spoken language). It positions students as competent problem solvers and draws upon students' strengths through collaborative learning…

In engineering, teachers can push even the youngest learners to think critically and create something that reflects the function of the real thing. When children create, they often make a representation of something--a crayon-drawn stick-figure family or a butterfly life cycle represented with pasta--that is based on appearance. Their questions…

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…

Research indicates that STEM-integrated curricula and pedagogies have the potential to support student learning, nurture interest in STEM disciplines, and prepare students for future careers (Apedoe et al. 2008). Through engagement in these fields, students can develop the ability to think critically, solve intricate problems, and drive…

The concepts of "culturally relevant pedagogy" and "culturally responsive teaching" have been interpreted and enacted in various ways for over two decades. Informed by this research, the author shares a critical approach to teaching and learning using "sociotransformative constructivism" (sTc). This framework merges…

This article describes how using a variety of differentiation strategies, such as listening to stories, visualizing scenarios, and performing tactile activities, can help fourth-grade students to conceive of and express examples of energy transfer.