This study aimed to develop, introduce, and conduct an inquiry-driven creative drama activity. The activity, for elementary students, related to the transmission of light and full shadow. In the activity, which consisted of a warm-up, dramatization, and evaluation stages, two inquiry-based experiments were added to the dramatization stage. Thus,…

The goal of this study is to present and evaluate a different way of teaching concepts related to the reflection of light (incident beam, reflecting beam, angle of incidence, angle of reflection, surface, regular reflection, and diffuse reflection). The participants were 42 sixth-grade students (between the ages of 11 and 12) attending a public…

Although research and new technologies have introduced different ways of observing microorganisms, including scanning and electron microscopy, these methods are expensive and require equipment that is typically not found in a middle school classroom. The transmission-through-dye technique (TTD; Gregg et al., 2010), a new optical microscopy method…

The Australian Curriculum: Science for Year 5 includes "recognising that the colour of an object depends on the properties of the object and the color of the light source". This article shows how much more can be done with color in the science laboratory. Activities include using a prism to explore white light, using a hand lens to…

The aim of the present article is to focus on the operational aspects referring to the actions--strategies and on the defined modalities of establishing educational objectives/competences. In the achievement of our work a special attention has been paid to the operational aspects of the learning process of the optical phenomena. There were carried…

"Why are the seas blue?" is a huge question that may reach far beyond the middle school level. However, our objective is to bring "simple" tools into the classroom to explain science without tampering with its essence and complexity. The experiment described in this article is only concerned with teaching the subject of absorption as related to…

The main goals of these activities are to help students learn how a convex lens can serve as a magnifying lens and how light travels and creates images. These explorations will introduce middle school students to different types of lenses and how they work. Students will observe and describe how lenses bend light that passes through them and how…

"How Students Learn: Science in the Classroom" builds on the discoveries detailed in the best-selling "How People Learn." Now these findings are presented in a way that teachers can use immediately, to revitalize their work in the classroom for even greater effectiveness. Organized for utility, the book explores how the principles of learning can…