Growing up in a small coastal town, students spend a great deal of time outdoors and at the beach. Given the many learning opportunities that such an environment can provide, engaging students in a sustained, environmental service project seemed like a natural complement to lessons focusing on the interaction of organisms within a habitat. This…

While there is consensus in the science education community on the importance of crosscutting concepts (CCCs) for all students, teachers have been given limited guidance on how to integrate CCCs into science instruction. In this article, the authors propose that teachers view CCCs as resources that students use in their everyday lives to make…

Investigating stars can be difficult. The five-day unit presented in this article is designed for fifth graders to work toward Next Generation Science Standard (NGSS) performance expectation 5-ESS1-1, with each lesson lasting about 30 minutes. Students investigate the relationship between the brightness of light and distance, apply their…

This article demonstrates how the authors used a 5E lesson about food webs as a context to embed speaking and listening standards. This 5E lesson partially addresses 5-LS2-1 in the "Next Generation Science Standards" and focuses primarily on predator/prey relationships. Future lessons focus on decomposition and other relationships. To…

In an ever-increasing technological society, teachers have now, more than ever, a vast offering of educational technologies made available for classroom use. However, the time necessary for vetting and developing rigorous lessons with the usage of such technologies can be overwhelming for a classroom teacher. Still, teachers need the opportunity…

One of the guiding principles highlighted in "A Framework for K-12 Science Education" (NRC 2012) states that "children are born investigators," claiming that students construct their own understanding of the natural world even before they learn about it in formal learning settings. Even if students lack a thorough…

Citizen science projects have been found to increase scientific knowledge and awareness among the participants who engage in these collaborative efforts. Providing elementary students the opportunity to collect, share, and analyze data is an effective way to help them develop a deeper understanding of scientific concepts and gain competency in…

When people were forced to isolate themselves physically during the pandemic, many new connections sprung up through the Internet. In order to promote this newfound global oneness and to facilitate global education, this article examines a STEAM activity that promotes a holistic approach to education and make way for a global citizenry as students…

The activity presented in this article is an engaging engineering challenge that has been conducted with third- through fifth-grade students in school classrooms and during after-school programs. This article describes the hands-on activity as appropriate for fifth graders that supports the "Next Generation Science Standards." This…

This article describes a force and motion unit that spanned four weeks (50 minutes a day) in a fifth-grade classroom. The inquiry-based learning progression mirrors Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development (1952) because it allowed students to manipulate materials and ideas as they actively constructed and reconstructed their knowledge of motion…

Interactions with forces and energy can range from a toddler dropping toys repeatedly for someone else to pick up to a group of fifth graders playing soccer at recess. In addition, students may have observed the power of water to move physical objects by seeing news footage of rising floodwaters, experimenting with a garden hose, or spending a day…

Access to drinking water is becoming more limited as drought persists across continents. This article highlights a particularly impacted group of students due to increasing drought conditions and upstream river pollution near their reservation. While there are related water and modeling standards across the K-12 Next Generation Science Standards…

Space exploration is intrinsically interesting to young learners. Children gaze at the stars and marvel at what it might be like to live "out there!" With the July 2020 launch of the Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover mission, and its landing in 2021, there is no better time to capitalize on engineering and science in the news. This mission is…

Because students have often been conditioned as passive learners and receivers of knowledge, it can be difficult for them to persevere in solving authentic problems. Nevertheless, teachers must persist in preparing students as problem solvers and critical thinkers. In an urban inner-city neighborhood school in the southeast, students embarked on a…

Science and engineering practices (SEPs) and crosscutting concepts (CCs) constitute a significant part of "A Framework for K-12 Science Education" (NRC 2012). As teachers, the role of the authors is to highlight the pivotal role that both scientific knowledge and the practices used to generate knowledge play in learning. This article…