Social connections are crucial for today's middle and high school students. We address this social need through a 3-H Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Cycle. Through the Three Sisters Garden activity presented here, we teach secondary school students about biodiversity and sustainability as we integrate the arts into STEM (STEAM). Students…

The enrichment of plant foods with gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) is currently an interesting issue in the field of nutraceuticals and can be used as an experiment for upper-division undergraduate students. Here, an interdisciplinary hands-on experiment to produce GABA-enriched mung bean sprouts using common household reagents is described. Based…

Food security is one of the most pressing concerns of our times. Despite the vast opportunities, there is a shortage of skilled professionals in the food, agriculture, and plant sciences. Although most programs focused on addressing this concern have targeted students, we have often overlooked another critical group--the teachers. To address this…

Plants and plant products are key to the survival of life on earth. Despite this fact, the significance of plant biochemistry is often underrepresented in science curricula. We designed an innovative laboratory activity to engage students in learning about the biochemical properties of natural polymers produced by plants. The focus of the hands-on…

Systems thinking is highly desirable for re-imagining chemistry education, which will help in the development of an integrated and sustainable approach that takes into account the interdependence of a system under study with other components of the ecosystem rather than practicing a fragmented approach. Thus, to develop a systems' perspective into…

Next-generation sequencing (NGS)-based methods are revolutionizing biology. Their prevalence requires biologists to be increasingly knowledgeable about computational methods to manage the enormous scale of data. As such, early introduction to NGS analysis and conceptual connection to wet-lab experiments is crucial for training young scientists.…

The lichen is an ideal subject for student study because it is omnipresent in school yards, easily collected and observed year-round, a pioneer of evolution on land, and a bioindicator of air pollution. After doing fieldwork on this unusual composite organism as an apprentice with a team of lichenologists, Sarah Thorne developed Learning Lichens.…

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…

The practice of RNA isolation in undergraduate experimental courses is rare because of the existence of robust, ubiquitous and stable ribonucleases. We reported here modifications to our original protocol for RNA isolation from plant tissues, including the recovery of nucleic acids by ethanol precipitation at 0 degrees C for 10 min and the…

Taking objects apart including old electronics, product packing, and living plants, helps children understand how things work. Documenting this "unbuilding" or "deconstructing" encourages children to first consider the entire object, then the parts, and finally, the purpose of the parts. This article provides a lesson based on…

Allelopathy plays crucial roles in invasive plant viability and agricultural production systems. However, there is no well-established hands-on learning activity to teach the concept of allelopathy. Nor is there an activity which allows students to gain knowledge about glucosinolates and their corresponding enzyme, myrosinase, which are present in…

The increasing urbanization and alienation from nature reduce children's opportunities to interact with plants and challenge teachers to devise educational practices that contribute to learning botany. This study presents the results of activities developed in a Brazilian school through explorations, drawings, dried and pressed specimens, and…

The finding that under split-attention conditions students learn more from a picture and spoken text than from a picture and written text (ie, the modality effect) has consistently been found in many types of computer-assisted multimedia learning environments. Using 58 fifth-grade and sixth-grade elementary school children as participants, we…

Educators are increasingly looking to neuroscience for guidance to improve classroom instruction and to teach their students about the nervous system. Although materials to assist teachers are available, many educators still have misconceptions about the brain. Twenty-three middle school teachers were trained to use the Sowing the Seeds of…

The Arnold Arboretum Field Study Program provides outdoor experiences for children in order to develop authentic firsthand knowledge of life sciences. The Arboretum welcomes approximately 3,200 children (preK-5) from greater Boston annually. During the program called Explorations with Head Start participants, the children visit three times…