This column presents ideas and techniques to enhance your science teaching. This month's issue shares information about a unit promoting scientific literacy and the engineering design process. The integration of engineering with scientific practices in K-12 education can promote creativity, hands-on learning, and an improvement in students'…

We describe a range of practical activities that allows students to investigate the properties and applications of magnets. The activities can be used in isolation or used together to build a rounded understanding of the subject area. The activities include simple demonstrations using common or inexpensive equipment, hands-on experiments for small…

The strong humanistic and ethics-oriented philosophy of Confucianism tends to lead people influenced by these principles to undervalue the importance of hands-on practice and creativity in education. GreenMech, a science and technology contest, was implemented to encourage real-world, hands-on problem solving in an attempt to mitigate this effect.…

Reports on the attempt of a project called "Science: Parents, Activities, and Literature" to get parents productively involved in their children's hands-on science program. Illustrates that (a) parents will become involved and they find their involvement a positive experience; (b) teachers appreciate parents' contributions as an instructional…

Explains a series of laboratory activities which employ a microwave oven to help students understand word problems that relate to states of matter, collect data, and calculate and compare electrical costs to heat energy costs. (DDR)

Reviews literature on using a problem-solving approach in science instruction. Examines teaching strategies associated with such an approach and discusses a problem-solving approach that works in the traditional laboratory. Discusses implications of the approach and provides some suggestions for science instruction. Contains 17 references. (DDR)

The Wright State University Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) Franchise has developed a project to fill the need for direct, strong connections linking science, mathematics and technology to classroom curriculum and students' learning of integrated, relevant content. GLOBE is an international project that involves…

Explores the challenge of providing all future citizens with an appropriate quantitative literacy by means of teaching mathematics through useful applications with local and global perspectives. (Author/KHR)

Details a project in which students explore and study the poisons in their environment by asking and finding answers to their own research questions. Includes some suggestions for involving students successfully in inquiry-based learning. (DDR)

Presents a guide to the critical components of partnerships in Students/Scientist Partnerships (SSPs), a project-based instruction. Uses examples from the Forest Watch (FW) program to support the ideas. Focuses on access to experts, workshops, training sessions, student congresses, support materials and research protocols, science education…

Agrees with Alberts and Tuomi about the need for an experiential approach to science instruction but argues that science kits are too easily used in ways that do not significantly advance students' skills in problem solving and critical evaluation and that the kits too often seem to relieve the teachers from responsibility for their own continuing…

Shares perspectives on what is happening at the national level in science education reform, why reform is needed, and the role that environmental education can play in this reform effort. Contains a discussion of the recent changes in science content and instructional goals. (DDR)

From a science perspective, inquiry-oriented instruction engages students in the investigative nature of science. Inquiry involves activity and skills, but the focus is on the active search for knowledge or understanding to satisfy a curiosity. This digest further describes the distinguishing features of inquiry-oriented science instruction and…

From the late 1950s through today, hands-on science has been promoted as a method of science instruction. Currently, recent national science reform efforts seek to temper its role. However, no consensus has been reached on the relationship of hands-on science to student achievement, though this has been researched since the turn of the 20th…

Describes an educational program that asks students to attempt to prove that the earth is spherical and that it rotates. Presents tips to pique student interest and charts related to sensing the spin, nonrotation notions, flat earth fallacies, evidence that the earth is spherical and rotates, and the role of watersheds in proving that the earth…