Scientific exploration can happen anywhere in a classroom full of eager learners. By dedicating time for reflection and planning, teachers can feel empowered to make small changes to classroom spaces to increase their students' scientific experiences. At the museum, teachers believe that by ensuring that the environment is richly stocked with a…

Pairing an inquiry lesson with a traditional reading activity creates a jarring philosophical mismatch between the interaction, deep thinking, and scientific reasoning that drives meaningful inquiry instruction and the "scan the text, copy the answers" response often obtained from elementary nonfiction readers. Realizing that there must be a…

The school the authors were working in had an established ethos of involving children in their own learning and allowed them to contribute their ideas to the planning of units of learning. Their planning was based on what the class teacher and children had previously begun in their food and nutrition topic. Although the children could not be…

In September 2010 the Wellcome Trust published a detailed report which, for the first time, gave an in-depth analysis of the learning experiences of children in England and Wales as they prepare for science assessment at the end of their primary education (key stage 2), and the children's ideas about how the experience might be improved. The…

The author believes that to truly engage children in learning, an imaginative approach with purposeful activities is very important. One way that this can be implemented is through simple "engineering projects" where science, design and technology (D&T), mathematics and information and communication technology (ICT) are combined,…

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of two strategies for negotiating the question for exploration during science inquiry on student achievement and teachers' perceptions. The study is set in the context of the Science Writing Heuristic. The first strategy (small group) consisted of each group of four students negotiating a question…

This research is a high-resolution analysis of grade 6 (ages 11-12) children's interview transcripts about the operation of power stations, before and after teaching. The focus of the study was on how children's conceptual development is built at a discursive level, namely how language is used to express changes in their thoughts. The theoretical…

This study investigated children's judgments of the epistemic status of justifications for causal claims. Twenty-six children (14 boys, 12 girls) between the ages of 8 and 10 were asked to help two story characters choose the "best reason" for believing a claim. The reasons included appeals to an authority, to a plausible causal mechanism, or to…

Habits of inquiry should be nurtured as early as possible. Elementary students must be challenged to ask good questions and develop inquiring attitudes. As a science teacher, educator, professional developer, and science program reviewer, the author has often observed that the default is to use "good" science investigations from…

The word "living" is commonly used throughout elementary science lessons that focus on the biological world. It is a word teachers often take for granted when teaching life science concepts. How similar the constructed meaning of a common word like "living" is to the meaning intended by the teacher or instructional materials depends on how a…

Science is more than learning a collection of facts. In the classroom, it is about creating a deeper level of understanding of the world and providing students with the tools to share that knowledge. One can share knowledge orally or in writing, in a variety of genres such as reports, arguments, and explanations. This article describes a unit…

The Science Teachers Learning from Lesson Analysis (STeLLA) project is a videobased analysis-of-practice PD program aimed at improving teacher and student learning at the upper elementary level. The PD program developed and utilized two "lenses," a Science Content Storyline Lens and a Student Thinking Lens, to help teachers analyze science…

Is light a ray, a wave, or a particle? Yes, yes, and yes. An article in this issue ("The Benefits of Scientific Modeling," p. 40) discusses the process of scientific modeling, and light is a great example of how modeling works. There are three viable models for light, each appropriate for different situations. The author will discuss the…

What is the quality of the Romanian biology textbooks? The article gives answers to this question by watching the evolution of a textbook and by suggesting an exercise for analyzing and assessing the alternative biology textbooks. The opportunity of this analysis has been offered to students, future teachers of biology, around the time when they…

The beginning of any science activity for young learners is "play." Exploration and investigation are the building blocks of science, especially in the foundation years, and well-planned play in a safe environment will provide a structure within which children can explore fruitfully. In this article, the author provides examples of how "play" acts…