Creating charts and graphs is all about visual abstraction: the process of representing aspects of data with imagery that can be interpreted by the reader. Children may need help making the link between the "real" and the image. This abstraction can be achieved using symbols, size, colour and position. Where the representation is close to what…

This interdisciplinary activity promotes science, technology, and language arts and is well suited for upper elementary grade students. In the activity, students' research about a teacher-assigned weather phenomenon facilitates their study of the weather. When they have completed their research, students word process a paper summarizing their…

Because density is unobservable and must be inferred from knowledge about weight and size, it is a difficult concept to teach and learn. Even after traditional instruction, many students still have an undifferentiated concept that mixes characteristics of both weight and density. In this study, researchers tested the effectiveness of a unit they…

Density is the first intensive physical quantity students encounter that can be understood in terms of an underlying model, the particulate theory of matter. Learning about density provides students with explanations for a range of phenomena such as sinking and floating, and changes of state. Teachers report, however, that density is a difficult…