As an introduction to sound and vibration, the authors wanted their first-grade students to plan and conduct their own investigations. In this article, the authors share a series of investigations to help students explore the relationship between sound and vibration. By planning, creating, testing, adapting, and reflecting on the outcomes of the…

Planning and conducting experiments require the application of the control of variables strategy (CVS). Research indicates that older children can learn the CVS by engaging in guided-inquiry activities. It has not been studied yet whether this is also the case for children as young as 6- to 7-years. 145 children aged 6-7 years participated in a…

This study focuses on investigating how students make use of their bodily experiences in combination with infrared (IR) cameras, as a way to make meaning in learning about heat, temperature, and friction. A class of 20 primary students (age 7-8 years), divided into three groups, took part in three IR camera laboratory experiments. The qualitative…

In this article, we analyze a first grade classroom episode and individual interviews with students who participated in that classroom event to provide evidence of the variety of understandings about variable and variable notation held by first grade children approximately six years of age. Our findings illustrate that given the opportunity,…

The Environmental Studies curricular area, taught at primary school level in Portugal, is a challenging context for curricular interdisciplinarity and the achievement of small-scale research and creative and innovative experiences, inside and outside the classroom. From that assumption, we present, under the master course of primary teacher…

To date, a number of studies have demonstrated the existence of mismatches between children's "implicit" and "explicit" knowledge at certain points in development that become manifest by their gestures and gaze orientation in different problem solving contexts. Stimulated by this research, we used eye movement measurement to…