The article presents a 5E environmental science lesson to help students understand the major environmental factors that lead to acid rain. Students are supported to ask scientific questions to solve the mystery of how acid rain might impact historical buildings. This lesson can be used in a variety of settings both in person and online modalities.…

Each year, in middle and high school classrooms, secondary science teachers introduce their students to the periodic table of elements (herein the periodic table). According to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States, 2013), one of the performance expectations states that high school students should be able to, "Use the…

During the COVID-19 'lockdown', members of the Association for Science Education (ASE) primary science community worked together to develop a series of remote learning resources for the 2020 summer term. This article describes how the aim of making science, with embedded science enquiry activities, accessible to parents and children in their home…

Many physics learners take the specific mathematical representations they are using as part of their learning and doing physics for granted. The paper addresses this problem by highlighting two goals. The first is to show how a historical investigation from history of science can be transformed into a concrete lesson plan in physics, in a physics…

Light is a topic that is often taught in year 3 (ages 7-8) in English schools, where children learn that light is needed for us to see, that it can be reflected from shiny surfaces and that shadows form when light is blocked by an object. They may also have some experience of how the size of shadows changes when the distance between a light source…

Students often need to obtain, organize, clean, and analyze data in order to draw conclusions about a particular phenomenon (e.g., why tidal heights change). When conducting a science investigation in biology, chemistry, physics, or Earth science, data can be collected by the student or can be provided to them via secondary data sets. This article…

Each fall at harvest time, young students in the authors' part of the Midwest visit apple orchards to learn more about the life cycle of plants. This tradition is one part of a larger unit centered on apples, integrating life science with language arts and social studies. The authors partnered with kindergarten teachers at several schools to…

Sarah Bearchell is a science specialist working with primary-aged pupils and their families, with a passion for making science accessible for everyone. In this article she outlines how allowing children ownership of their hands-on activities leads to more engaged learning.

PEOE (predict, explain, observe, explain) is a strategy that supports conceptual change (Dial et al. 2009). "Conceptual change" is a process through which students can change their understandings, ideas, or beliefs (diSessa 1993; Konicek-Moran and Keeley 2015). This style of lesson allows students to express their scientific ideas…

In this article, year 6 teacher (ages 10-11) Rebecca Towner-Yates shares a case study where science led the way for learning in her class. Based on her experience, she concludes that science can offer opportunities for children who may otherwise switch off from learning to switch back on. Science can offer the disengaged a path back, a chance for…

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education, integrated STEM education, and integrative STEM education are all actively pursued teaching approaches currently being highlighted in the United States and abroad (Sanders, 2009; Semali & Mehta, 2012), and in recent years the increase in interest, engagement, and pressure to…

Understanding the nature of science has long been a focus of science education reform efforts, including the Next Generation of Science Standards. Students' views about the process of how scientific knowledge is acquired has been shown to affect their ability to learn scientific concepts. Integrating the nature of science into science lesson plans…

The purpose of this article is to detail the creation of an assignment, after Covid-19 moved our university's instruction online, that helped students make sense of how K-12 teachers were adjusting their own pedagogy. The assignment included two parts: 1) students conducted an interview of their cooperating teacher to understand how they had to…

Elementary teachers often avoid the struggle of matching a science activity to a specific standard by using a lesson planning process known as Understanding by Design (UBD) (Wiggins and McTighe 2005). A main tenet of the UBD model involves starting at the end rather than at the beginning of the planning process. By starting at the end and visiting…

Planning for and teaching somebody else's class can be a daunting process, especially for a trainee teacher like the author, who still has to gain all the knowledge and experience of managing a group of 36 10- and 11-year-olds. As part of her degree studies, the author had to plan, with a group of other trainee teachers, a series of lessons on…