The activity described here was designed to center on the observation of circadian rhythms in plants through the example of growing beans. The aim was to develop students' skills of systematic observation of various variables in the long-term. Our study took place at a Science and Arts Center with 17 gifted students in the third and fourth grades…

This research aims to design and apply a lesson plan to satisfy 3rd-grade inclusive education students' individual learning needs on the subject of plant life cycle, and to develop three instruction materials based on this lesson plan. In the first stage of this three-staged research, visually impaired students' individual learning needs were…

It has been speculated that most people have plant blindness, meaning plants go unnoticed by the majority of the population. This study sought to combine the knowledge of multiple disciplines to determine evidence of plant blindness through children's drawings. To do this, third-grade students were introduced to native prairie and wetland plants…

Learning is mainly based on the students' mental activities. If they can learn spontaneously, it will help increase their interest and the effectiveness of the learning. Learning through playing will make it easier for students to learn spontaneously. The balance between gameplay and education in educational games is a key issue in designing such…

Against a backdrop of advocacy for interdisciplinary STEM curricula, this paper explores the design principles underpinning a three-year longitudinal research project that develops and evaluates interdisciplinary mathematics and science learning sequences involving multiple teachers and student cohorts across the primary school years. The research…

Learning about heredity is important across the K-12 continuum. However, these ideas may be challenging for students. We examined third-grade students' ideas about heredity in the context of a new, six-week, model-based science unit that uses corn as a model organism to support students' ideas about heredity. We analyzed data collected during…

To develop scientific literacy, elementary students should engage in knowledge building of core concepts through scientific practice (Duschl, Schweingruber, & Schouse, 2007). A core scientific practice is engagement in scientific modeling to build conceptual understanding about discipline-specific concepts. Yet scientific modeling remains…

The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of the context-aware ubiquitous learning (u-learning) approach versus traditional instruction on students' ability to answer questions that required different cognitive skills, using the framework of Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives, including knowledge, comprehension, application,…

Elementary students should have opportunities to develop scientific models to reason and build understanding about how and why plants depend on relationships within an ecosystem for growth and survival. However, scientific modeling practices are rarely included within elementary science learning environments and disciplinary content is often…

Elementary science standards emphasize that students should develop conceptual understanding of the characteristics and life cycles of plants (National Research Council, 2012), yet few studies have focused on early learners' reasoning about seed structure and function. The purpose of this study is twofold: to (a) examine third-grade…

The study examines the interests and attitudes of school students toward biology: through their interest in out-of-school activities and their attitude towards lessons as measured by interest, importance and difficulty. Biology lessons were relatively popular with the greatest preference found among students learning zoology. Girls showed…

This article presents the first results of an investigation in a scholastic context aimed a determining the conditions that favour the acquisition of knowledge in biology within interactions in groups of 4 pupils. There were three work sessions in small groups, and some sessions in class groups. The pupils' conceptions were assessed at the…