Discusses the use of science process skills to help students think positively about writing assignments. Examines the four language arts skills of narration, description, explanation, and persuasion, as used in writing about hands-on science activities. (MDH)

Presents a series of science teaching ideas with the following titles: When Demonstrations Are Misleading, Lasers and Refraction, An Improved Stair-Step Model, Correcting Your Compass, Seeing Is Not Believing, Food Coloring: From the Kitchen to the Lab, Punny Business, Portfolios in Science, Feathers or Gold: A Case for Using the Metric System,…

Describes how science activities are integrated with reading and writing activities to teach reading to inner-city first graders in Portland, Oregon. Both explicit phonics and whole-language instruction are used, along with pocket charts, poetry, small-group instruction, leveled books, running records, jump-rope rhymes, and story writing. (SAS)

Over the past decade, "out-of-school time" and "after-school programs" have been identified as objects of research, funding, and policy initiatives across federal and state agencies as well as public, private, and nonprofit foundations. The increasing attention to and funding of programs that engage youth outside of the formal…

To confront some of the challenges faced by teachers beginning to implement Standards-based inquiry activities in their middle school classrooms, learning coordinators and teachers selected an inquiry-based set of courses and created a District Science Curricula Scope and Sequence, which overviewed the major units and showed teachers and parents…

Students have difficulty understanding ecosystem concepts. This article argues that the difficulty stems partly from not grasping the underlying causality that structures the concepts. We report on an intervention study designed to teach eight- and nine-year-olds to reason about domino, cyclic, and mutual causality by infusing causally focused…

The purpose of this study was to describe attitudes of first and second grade teachers in Benin, toward school science and their instructional preferences (inquiry-based and traditional noninquiry-based instruction), and determine some factors that could explain these attitudes and preferences. Three hundred (N = 300) preparatory classroom…

This book relates the personal and professional experiences of a nursery school teacher over the course of an entire school year, focusing on ways that early childhood educators can improve their teaching through self-reflection. Individual chapters address the end of summer and the preparation for the new school year, home visits, setting up the…

This paper focuses on the use of Gardner's (1985) Multiple Intelligence Theory (MIT) in the restructuring of the curriculum at elementary schools in Pawlet, Vermont. It discusses the state of education in Vermont, the need to restructure and improve assessment at the Pawlet schools, and the adoption of MIT to further this goal. The bulk of the…

This guide is one of a set of 10 science guides, each covering a separate grade in Manitoba, together covering kindergarten through grade 9. The guides have been designed to provide a framework for building scientific concepts and developing the learning of process skills. They replace an earlier set of guides dated 1979. Each guide is essentially…

Noting that parents are their children's first teachers, this book presents activities to help parents prepare their children for school. The chapters are: (1) "Getting Started," which discusses chores, hobbies, television viewing, socialization, preschool, learning styles, supplies, work area, and motivation; (2) "Reading,"…

This monograph is the first attempt to collect and share some of the teaching techniques, activities, and ideas of former recipients of the Outstanding Biology Teacher Award. The lessons are organized into topical themes to facilitate their incorporation into standard curriculum. The manual is divided into two main sections, "Labs" and "Ideas."…

A resource handbook for rural Alaskan teachers covers village science, to make basic science concepts relevant to the physical environment in villages. Material is intended for use as filler for weeks that come up short on science materials, to provide stimulation for students who cannot see the relevance of science in their lives, and to help…

The solid waste problem is so pervasive that it can no longer be ignored. The purpose of this set of materials is to encourage a lifestyle that includes the use of the three R's: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. It was designed to educate upper elementary and junior high school students who may educate their classmates, families, and community about the…

The two goals of this program were to increase the number of classroom teachers using the lab and to increase the amount of time that the science lab was used. The solution strategy chosen was a combination of peer tutoring, orientation presentations, small group discovery experiments and activities, and individual science experiment stations. The…