Climate change is a contemporary global crisis that necessitates pedagogical innovation for the middle school dance classroom. This article describes an integrated design for a dance and science unit. Building on students' kinesthetic abilities, teachers are able to create a unit comprising a series of lessons on bird migrations effected by…

With the enormous reliance on plastics in the world today, bisphenol A, an additive used in the synthesis of many plastics, such as polycarbonate, has been found almost everywhere in our environment including in soil, in natural waters, and inside organisms including humans. A multidisciplinary experiment is presented that involves using flatworms…

Philosophy is concerned with fundamental questions about knowledge, truth, reality, experience, justice and what is right and wrong. In this article, the authors discuss how philosophy and science can be taught together in the primary classroom.

We provide a protocol for rapid DNA extraction from spiders suitable for undergraduate practical sessions. Students who were previously naïve to the theory and laboratory technique of DNA barcoding were successfully able to extract and recover 29 DNA sequences from 16 species of small spiders in the family Linyphiidae. We anticipate that with…

In today's dynamic global economy, integrated units of study are particularly important. Students who are fluent in several disciplines and comfortable moving among them can make meaningful connections and maintain enhanced understandings (Sias et al. 2016). This article shares an integrated STEAM unit that is grounded in the science disciplinary…

This paper reports on a transdisciplinary approach to science with a Year 4/5 class incorporating citizen science through the Birds in Backyards project. This transdisciplinary approach created opportunities for student engagement through science, mathematics, design and technology, humanities and social sciences (HASS), arts and English, while…

Information literacy is an essential skill for biologists; however, most biology curricula do not intentionally integrate information literacy into classroom and laboratory exercises. There is evidence that developing information literacy skills in undergraduates improves their research skills, writing, and GPAs. Our objective was to integrate…

Many university and high school introductory physics courses include a laboratory portion where students follow a manual to conduct "cookbook" experiments. Here, we present an authentic research project for introductory physics students that focuses on kinematics that can be done outside a formal laboratory space. This experiment can be…

Principal component analysis (PCA) is one of the most important and powerful methods in chemometrics as well as in a wealth of other areas. Running a PCA results in two main elements, the score plot and the loading plot; the score plot provides the location of the samples, and the loading plot indicates correlations among variables, the trends in…

For many years teachers have been planning cross-curricular lessons to develop children's knowledge and understanding in two or more subjects at the same time, with the aim of showing children how to transfer skills from one subject to another and give greater purpose to their learning. However, following the revisions to the National Curriculum…

This math activity focuses on experimental design while connecting math with life science. It is important that the science and engineering practices (SEPs) are not taught as a separate "unit" but integrated within the curriculum wherever possible. The focus is on experimental design to teach animal behavior. Students predict and test…

In this article , the authors describe an activity in which students in Savannah, Georgia, use handheld GPS devices to record the sightings of bottlenose dolphins, examine spatial data from five pairs of dolphins in the study, and then form hypotheses about the spatial patterns they observe. In the process, they learn not only about the ecology of…

Biological flight mechanics is typically taught in graduate level college classes rather than in secondary school classes. We developed an interdisciplinary unit for advanced upper-level secondary school students (ages 15-18) to teach the principles of flight and applications to biological systems. This unit capitalised on the tremendous…

Visual databases are increasingly important resources through which individuals and groups can undertake species identification. This paper reports research on the collaborative processes undertaken by pre-service teacher students when working in small groups to identify birds using an Internet-based taxonomic resource. The student groups are…

This practical article features an arts-integrated science unit on fossils of the Burgess Shale for fourteen elementary/middle school students at a weeklong summer day camp. The day camp had a theme of recycling, reduction and reuse; all of the fossil models had substantial recycled components to support this theme. Next Generation Science…