Four General Chemistry instructors investigated the use of ChatGPT-4 to improve their lessons plans for the historical experiments of Thomson, Millikan, and Rutherford. The instructors varied in their prior knowledge for these experiments and their initial lessons addressed somewhat different learning objectives. This led to different…

Many teachers have a level of discomfort with planning inquiry-based science lessons for students with complex needs. Science instruction typically includes teaching discrete skills with a focus on vocabulary acquisition (Knight et al., 2020). Because science is universal and thus important for all learners, many states have adopted the Next…

Each year, in middle and high school classrooms, secondary science teachers introduce their students to the periodic table of elements (herein the periodic table). According to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States, 2013), one of the performance expectations states that high school students should be able to, "Use the…

In this paper, we discuss what creativity may look like in the science classroom and what we learnt from teaching with student-generated diagrams to promote creativity in Year 7 Science lessons. As a result of this study, most students were able to communicate a deeper understanding of complex phenomena and were able to apply this knowledge both…

Charles Darwin would be pleased to know that elementary school children in states that have adopted the "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS) are expected to demonstrate their understanding of several core evolutionary concepts, including trait variation and inheritance, fossils and extinct organisms, common ancestry, natural…

High school students are very seldomly, if at all, taught that race is a social rather than biological construct, and this pedagogical omission has led to biological essentialism. Biological essentialism is the belief that race can be used in predictable ways to determine intellect and/or behavior. Biological essentialism can result in the belief…

This lesson focuses specifically on teaching concepts of speed and its impact on energy, as well as providing a basic introduction to potential and kinetic energy to fourth-grade students. "Next Generation Science Standards" ("NGSS") 4-PS3-1 states that students should be able "to use evidence to construct an explanation…

Many physics learners take the specific mathematical representations they are using as part of their learning and doing physics for granted. The paper addresses this problem by highlighting two goals. The first is to show how a historical investigation from history of science can be transformed into a concrete lesson plan in physics, in a physics…

Researchers have typically identified and characterized teachers' knowledge bases (e.g., pedagogical content knowledge and subject matter knowledge) in an effort to improve enacted instructional strategies. As shown by the Refined Consensus Model (RCM), understanding teacher learning, beliefs, and practices is predicated on the interconnections of…

Animals depend on their surroundings for their survival. In consuming their food, animals are consuming energy. This cycling of matter and the accompanying flow of energy within an ecosystem occurs because of interactions among and between organisms. To guide students in modeling how ecosystems function, the authors share "Ecosystem…

Light is a topic that is often taught in year 3 (ages 7-8) in English schools, where children learn that light is needed for us to see, that it can be reflected from shiny surfaces and that shadows form when light is blocked by an object. They may also have some experience of how the size of shadows changes when the distance between a light source…

There is a wide variety of ways for instructors to seek to improve diversity, equity, inclusion, and respect (DEIR) in chemistry through their instruction. One way is to talk with students explicitly about equity and injustice in science. We propose a curricular framework for teaching about equity as a way to improve DEIR in science classes at the…

To improve understanding of identities and inverses, and to provide a stronger foundation for future mathematics, Sandra Miles designed a two-part lesson that makes the relationship between identities and inverses explicit. This article illustrates Miles' teaching of the first part of the lesson, focused on addition and subtraction, and then gives…

Preschoolers are fascinated with dinosaurs, and they often have a wealth of knowledge about numerous dinosaur species. The authors capitalized on this interest by creating a three-dimensional 5E lesson (Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, Evaluate; Bybee 2014) to introduce them to the science practice of modeling. Models are important as tools of…

All teachers know that the opening few minutes of any lesson can be the critical part. It is the chance to set the scene, to establish order and sense of purpose, to enthuse and grab attention and perhaps to establish boundaries. It launches the learning. Bob Kibble discusses ways of setting out the shape and direction of lessons without using a…