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Interpreting evidence
Our students may be used to using evidence to answer questions, but in Elk Habitat: A Case Study of Scientific Inquiry, the authors describe an activity in which students ask questions, examine...
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Observations and data from nature
The word “data” for some people conjures up pages of numbers or a dreadful experience in statistics class. But get rid of the deer-in-the-headlights look and dig into lessons focused on forensics,...
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Peering into students’“private universe”
Photo uploaded to Flickr.com’s Creative Commons by marcusrg In the award-winning documentary A Private Universe, education researchers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics sought to...
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The scoop on science notebooks
Karen Wood I’ve been hearing a lot about science notebooks lately, so I went to the Education Development Center’s Pathway Session on Establishing Science Notebook Habits and Skills. It was interesting...
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Losing your marbles over data
Improving Your Students' Graphing and Graph Interpretation Practices Tony Bartley (from Thunder Bay, Ontario) and Mike Bowen (from Halifax, Nova Scotia) discussed how to improve students’ data...
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Spend a little, gain a lot
Ted Koehn with his arsenal of inexpensive/free materials Last year in New Orleans, I attended the session Sixty Labs You Can Do with Little or No Budget (see related posts below). Last year, so many...
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Weather
Click here for the Table of Contents Everyone talks about the weather, but the articles in this issue show students doing more than talking. Just look at the action words in the titles: blog, cruise,...
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I like to think of science as the process of discovering or creating knowledge. Sure it has many other definitions, but to me, in its most basic form science generates information, and that information...
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Using data to get the big picture
I’m a new teacher at a new school. I’m applying for a spot on the principal’s cabinet. One of the questions he’s asking is “What data should we review when we are planning and checking in on existing...
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Putting the “teacher” in NSTA
Congratulations to all of the teacher-presenters at NSTA—to those who were willing to share their ideas and experiences. It’s a quantum leap from the classroom to the national stage, but in the...
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Basic Data Literacy: Helping Your Students (And You!) Make Sense of Data
We are surrounded by data. When you read, watch, or listen to the news, you are presented with the conclusions drawn from data someone else has collected. And they’ve collected that data to understand...
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What science teachers are reading February 2014
From lessons on writing in science class to exploring and debating socioscientific issues to translating NGSS for classroom instruction, take a look at what science teachers are reading in February on...
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The Feedback Loop
There’s a lot of talk about using data to drive teaching and learning, but what data and how should these numbers be used? Are you confused? So were the authors of NSTA Press’ new book, The Feedback...
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Weather watching and phenology support using evidence to state a claim
Noticing changes in the growth and habit of plants is part of the science of phenology. We do this casually when we comment on the buds swelling on the maple tree (yay! not as many branches are dead as...
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Big learning from short observations of birds: February 17-20, 2017
Walk outside with your children, watch and count birds for 15 minutes while recording the names of those you know, and report your bird count to be part of a world-wide citizen-science project to...
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Enhancing Google Sheets for the Classroom
Among the most commonly used tools in the science classroom are those that allow students to collect and manipulate data, including Microsoft Excel, Graphical Analysis, and Google Sheets. This month,...
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Redesigning the Science Fair
For the STEAM Fair at Doane Academy in Burlington, New Jersey, upper-school students “complete projects in any field as long as they [relate] in some way to science concepts,” says Michael Russell,...
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