The Visual-Spatial Chemistry Specific (VSCS) assessment tool was developed to test students' visual-perceptual skills, which are required to form a mental image of an object. The VSCS was designed around the theoretical framework of Rochford and Archer that provides eight distinct and well-defined visual-perceptual skills with identified problems…

Large curricular changes of the 1960s brought about by the ChemStudy and Chemical Bond Approach initiatives were generally successful, but they also created learning problems. These were well recognized by a series of surveys in 1971. Recent surveys (2008) show that the same chemical difficulties for learners are still present in most "modern"…

Geology is not something that people tend to think about in their day-to-day lives; at least, not until it is time to dig out the dusty old rock collection from the back of the science cupboard and teach the rocks and soils unit again! Geology is very much part of people's lives. Geology is about so much more than just looking at rocks and…

One of the major focuses of biochemistry courses is metabolic pathways. Although certain aspects of this content may require a rote approach, more applied techniques make these subject areas more interesting. This article describes the use of an assignment, "Design Your Own Disease" to teach students metabolic regulation and biosignaling…

We introduce students to dimethylsulfoxonium methylide (DMSY) epoxidation of aryl and nonconjugated aliphatic aldehydes and ketones without revealing that DMSY cyclopropanates enones by Michael-initiated ring closure (MIRC). Each student performs the reaction of DMSY with one of nine carbonyl compounds, including four enones, and then analyzes the…

Even in the face of a recession, great careers are currently available in many technical fields, and throughout the nation efforts are under way to grow the workforce in those jobs through greater diversity. In this article, the author describes a weeklong, free summer camp offered by Calhoun Community College, Decatur, Alabama, which gets high…

Although science is a creative endeavor (NRC 1996, p. 46), many students think they are not encouraged--or even allowed--to be creative in the laboratory. When students think there is only one correct way to do a lab, their creativity is inhibited. Park and Seung (2008) argue for the importance of creativity in science classrooms and for the…

How can a teacher simultaneously teach science concepts through inquiry while helping students learn about the nature of science? After pondering this question in their own teaching, the authors developed a 5E learning cycle lesson (Bybee et al. 2006) that concurrently embeds opportunities for fourth-grade students to (a) learn a science concept,…

Watching a radio-controlled car zip along a sidewalk or street has become a common sight. Within this toy are the basic ingredients of a mobile robot, used by industry for a variety of important and potentially dangerous tasks. In this challenge, students consider modifying an of-the-shelf, radio-controlled car, adapting it for a robotic task.

Weather, with its built-in atmospheric laboratory, is a natural source of inquiry. The ever-changing nature of weather provides a constant source of questions to investigate and connects to a multitude of physical science concepts. The question, "How accurate are homemade weather instruments in measuring air pressure, rainfall, wind speed and…

With the range of conflicting ideas about issues such as climate change and global warming, it has never been more important to let our students outside--beyond the classroom door--to evaluate the validity of such claims by observing nature, collecting data, and providing evidence. The good news is that it has never been easier for students to…

On a recent autumn afternoon at Harmony Leland Elementary in Mableton, Georgia, students in a fifth-grade science class investigated the essential process of classification--the act of putting things into groups according to some common characteristics or attributes. While they may have honed these skills earlier in the week by grouping their own…

This manual provides guidance and documentation for users of the longitudinal kindergarten-second grade (K-2) data file of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010-11 (ECLS-K:2011). It mainly provides information specific to the second-grade rounds of data collection. Users should refer to the "Early Childhood…

The main goal for the current study was to investigate whether individual differences in domain-general thinking dispositions might affect learning from multiple-document inquiry tasks in science. Middle school students were given a set of documents and were tasked with understanding how and why recent patterns in global temperature might be…

Designed around a practical "practice-what-you-teach" approach to methods instruction, "Your Science Classroom: Becoming an Elementary/Middle School Science Teacher" is based on current constructivist philosophy, organized around 5E inquiry, and guided by the National Science Education Teaching Standards. Written in a reader-friendly style, the…