One way to develop a cross-curricular lesson is to select the most common mathematical formulas used in science and carefully develop and implement tasks that allow students to make connections between the mathematical representations and theoretical/physical science concepts. The slope-intercept formula, which is used to study relationships…

In an effort to clean up the Chesapeake Bay, Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) members use hands-on experiential learning opportunities to train teacher ambassadors throughout the bay's jurisdictions. Teacher ambassadors use the skills they learn to develop a Meaningful Watershed Educational Experience (MWEE) for their students to raise awareness of…

Researchers have demonstrated a correlation between personal value, enjoyment and interest, and sustained engagement in science (Ainley and Ainley 2011). This article presents pedagogical strategies that use drama and discussion to explore students' everyday encounters with science by engaging the body and emotion. Drama-based discussions in…

Thanks to the development and deployment of federally funded satellite-, buoy-, and aircraft-based remote sensing instruments, continuous streams of Earth and space data are publicly available via online databases. This accessibility provides flexibility to explore geoscience data that are interesting and relevant to students--keystone components…

As a high school AP Physics 1 and 2 teacher, Sean Crumley wanted to create a curricular unit that would authentically connect literacy, opportunities for writing, and science standards while engaging a 21st-century student. This article provides an example of how Crumley incorporated writing into one of his AP physics units, and it could serve as…

Although the existence of and access to clean water are essential for sustaining life on Earth, multiple studies have demonstrated students' nascent understanding of basic water principles. Students have misconceptions related to the water cycle (Ben-zvi-Assarf and Orion 2005), groundwater (Dickerson and Dawkins 2004; Covitt et al. 2009), and the…

Approximately 1 billion metric tons of food are lost each year due to mycotoxins (FAO 2013), secondary metabolites produced by fungi (Marin et al. 2013) that contaminate crops (Placinta, D'Mello, and MacDonald 1999) and threaten the health of domestic animals and humans (Sobrova et al. 2010). The fungus "Fusarium graminearum" produces…

With the widespread adoption of the "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS Lead States 2013), science teachers now aspire to integrate engineering into science instruction, as the standards suggest, yet many do not know how. The first steps are to define engineering and identify tasks that incorporate engineering, which can be…

Science students should use mathematical and computational thinking to explain phenomena, but few examples of teachers engaging students in this important scientific practice have been found. This article describes a strategy for enhancing a lesson in which students use a mechanistic model to explain friction by adding mathematical and…

Molecular storytelling combines three-dimensional (3-D) structure visualization, chemical and biological knowledge, and multidisciplinary functional information from various bioinformatics data resources to generate new knowledge. It prepares students for independent and interdisciplinary learning, facile navigation of public databases to gather…

Thousands of students around the country have participated in activities using the Data Jam model, creating poetry, songs, videos, or sculpture to improve their data literacy, gain knowledge of local science research, and creatively express their findings. This article introduces the Data Jam model and describes how teachers can use it in…

This article describes an interdisciplinary unit in which students explore biological "ice nucleation"--by particles that cause water to freeze at temperatures above -38°C--through the lens of the microbial ice nucleator "Pseudomonas syringae." Such This activity, which aligns with the "Next Generation Science…

This article describes a nuclear chemistry unit on the Manhattan Project, a research effort that led to the development of the world's first nuclear weapons during World War II. The unit is appropriate for an introductory high school chemistry or physics course and takes from four to six weeks. The unit poses this essential question: "Over…

In the fall of 2008, Stacy McCormack's students were caught up in the presidential election, and she began to wonder how she might harness this passion for politics in her high school physics classroom. At about the same time, a friend recommended the book "Physics for Future Presidents" (Muller 2008), which led her to develop a year…

Every year, high school students hunch over microscopes and peer at a plethora of tiny creatures. Swimming single-celled protists and whirling multicellular rotifers often steal the show, preventing students from noticing the static algae. However, these frequently overlooked, ordinary algae are inspiring research all over the world as scientists…