Today's youth are increasingly spending more time indoors and less time outside. As a result, many children have a "nature deficit" (Louv 2005) and little awareness of their role in nature. In this article, the first author describes how she shared her passion for nature with her sixth-grade students through nature journaling and how her…

Unfortunately, middle school students often view human impact as an abstract idea over which they have no control and do not see themselves as contributing to the Earth's environmental decline. How better to uncover students' ideas concerning human impact in their local community than to have them take photographs. With this objective in mind, the…

As educators we must ask ourselves if we are meeting the needs of today's students. The science world is adapting to our ever-changing society; are the methodology and philosophy of our educational system keeping up? In this article, you'll learn why web logs (also called blogs) are an important Web 2.0 tool in your science classroom and how they…

Describes the use of science interactive notebooks for recording information, figures, and data that promote student learning. Uses the right spiral page to record information provided by the teacher and the left spiral page to demonstrate the processing of that information. (YDS)

It seems that everyone is using science journals or notebooks lately. As middle school science teachers, the authors use science journals as a tool to enhance students' knowledge and understanding of content and reinforce students' writing skills. Here they share how they use science journals to motivate students to write about science in middle…

Points out old-dated information provided in textbooks and recommends using current events to close the knowledge gap between the real world and textbooks. Uses year-long journal writings in which students choose a science article and analyze it. Provides an example of the activity sheet. (YDS)

A local middle school requested that the Water Center of Advanced Materials for Purification of Water With Systems (WaterCAMPWS), a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center, provide an introduction to pH for their seventh-grade water-based service learning class. After sorting through a multitude of information about pH, a…