This study analyze data from three national contexts in which teachers worked with the same teaching materials and inquiry classroom activities, investigating teachers' use of strategies to promote interaction and scaffolding when participating in a professional development program. The data material is collected from three case studies from the…

The use of digital technologies as teaching and learning materials supports and enhances science learning, encouraging students to develop valuable inquiry skills and knowledge. In response, this paper seeks to explore digital inquiry-based learning as a useful aid for teaching the elementary school science curriculum on plants in Malaysia. There…

Life would not be possible without plants. Plants supply food to many organisms (including people), produce oxygen, absorb carbon dioxide from the air, provide products for human use, and homes for many other living things. It is not surprising, therefore, that plant growth is a familiar topic in the primary school science curriculum. This paper…

As plants and seed dispersal are common themes in primary science, the author thought that she would share an enquiry challenge activity that addresses many of the "working scientifically" objectives of the National Curriculum for England. Year 3 and 4 children had a whole afternoon made up firstly of "playing", planning and…

Because honeybees are so crucial to the ecosystems in which they exist, educating younger children on the usefulness and relative harmlessness of honeybees may be key to ensuring their survival among future generations. Described here is a unit that addresses the critical role of the honeybee in pollinating flowers using the 5E learning cycle…

Researchers examined how an inquiry-based instructional treatment emphasizing interrelated plant processes influenced 210 elementary pre-service teachers' (PTs) conceptions of three plant processes, photosynthesis, cellular respiration, and transpiration, and the interrelated nature of these processes. The instructional treatment required PTs to…

The diet of many students consists of on-the-go processed food. As part of a larger school garden project, the authors wanted students to consider the relevance of plants in their own lives, both as food sources for us and for the animals that we eat. In this article, they present a mini-unit they taught in a third-grade classroom that helped…

In this article, students examined how and why plants work through in-depth investigations. They performed scientific inquiry through questioning, developed models, constructed explanations, and communicated information of the structure and function and system models of plants, and then engineered a representation of their understanding. The…

Anthocyanins are a class of pigments responsible for the bright colors of many flowers, fruits, and vegetables typically resulting in shades of red, blue, and purple. Students were asked to perform an activity to enable them to identify which anthocyanin was present in one of several possible plant materials through a hands-on activity. Students…

"Soil, Seeds, and the Pumpkin Patch!" is an integrated unit designed to provide elementary school teachers with ideas for using hands-on activities, fostering inquiry and valuable discussion, and using technology as a learning tool. This unit integrates science with language arts, mathematics, literature, and technology. During this unit, students…

The authors' school's second-grade science curriculum has always focused on trees and their role in the ecosystem during the first half of the year. Curricular goals have largely emphasized what students ought to "know" by the end of the semester, such as identifying the parts of a tree, describing the process of photosynthesis, and…

The "Needs of Seeds" formative assessment probe can be used to find out whether students recognize that seeds have needs both similar to and different from plants and other living organisms (Keeley, Eberle, and Tugel 2007). The probe reveals whether students overgeneralize the needs of seeds by assuming they have the same needs as the adult plants…

When learning about plants, elementary students are typically given set directions on how to plant seeds and make their plants grow. To enable their class of first-grade students to build their own knowledge and encourage constructivism, the authors decided to take this set of prescribe activities and make them more inquiry-based. In traditional…

St. Martin's Church of England Primary School in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, enjoys a unique location, being approximately 10 minutes walk from a rocky shore and a similar distance from the University of Hull (Scarborough Campus) and its Centre for Environmental and Marine Sciences. A grant provided by the Royal Society (under their Education…

Computers have changed the landscape of scientific research in profound ways. Technology has always played an important role in scientific experimentation--through the development of increasingly sophisticated tools, the measurement of elusive quantities, and the processing of large amounts of data. However, the advent of social networking and the…