We devised a half-day laboratory exercise for a group of 10th grade homeschooled students enrolled in an honors-level high school general chemistry course organized by a collective of homeschooling families associated with local Christian churches. Anecdotal evidence suggested that the students met the learning objectives of the exercise. The…

For students in biology, chemistry, or environmental science, diatoms offer excellent insight into watershed health and human impact on the environment. Diatoms are found globally in virtually every habitat that has sunlight and moisture, including polar seas, tropical streams, and on moist soils and mosses. Studying diatoms as biological…

This article describes the use of project-based instruction in activities and labs intended to develop higher-order thinking skills with high school students and pre-service teachers through the use of soap making.

Describes a unit of laboratory work which was unusual in that the teacher's purpose was to develop students' understanding of the way scientific facts are established with little expectation that they would understand the science content involved in the experiments. The unit was very successful from both a cognitive and affective perspective.…

This article presents an activity for early-in-the-year parents' night. The beginning of a new school year is an exciting time. The authors, as teachers, like to capture that excitement by engaging their 10th-grade biology students in an inquiry project demonstrating the nature of science and scientific inquiry. They developed the Next Step…

In the framework of a long term teaching experiment we present an Educational approach based on the use of a dynamic geometry software and a symbolic manipulator. Here we present the general ideas of the followed approach focusing on how meanings can originate from phenomenological experience and evolve under the guidance of the teacher. In…

We address the telling/not-telling dilemma in mathematics education. Telling is instructionally important, but has been downplayed because of (a) perceived inconsistencies between telling and constructivism, (b) increased awareness of the negative consequences of relying too heavily on telling, and (c) a focus on "non-telling" actions as…