Today's students live within a world filled with complexity, uncertainty, and misinformation; thus, educators need to help all learners, including students with learning disabilities, how to comprehend complex information about the natural world and make credible evidence-based claims. Our study is a first step in making this possible. In this…

Many of today's adolescents have little to no connection to their environments or the native plants and animals that share their spaces. This is primarily due to a significant decrease in the amount of time children spend outdoors now, compared with children in the mid to late 20th century, compounded by a lack of natural history and outdoor…

This study explores disciplinary literacy instruction integrated within an elementary engineering unit in an urban classroom. A multidisciplinary team of university literacy and engineering educators and classroom teachers served as the research team for this case study. A social semiotic language theory (systemic functional linguistics) and a…

Teacher-made teaching and learning resources are an effective way to facilitate relevant and appropriate curriculum content, values and attitudes for students. This is particularly significant when the context is rather unique, as was the case in the remote developing Pacific Island Country of Nauru. Such resources can be deployed in accompaniment…

For over two decades, there has been increasing concern regarding the science learning of disadvantaged students such as indigenous or disabled students. The academic achievement of students with hearing impairment has been seen as relatively low. This low achievement has been mainly due to students' poor literal ability and not because of…

In the following article, Dr. Seuss's children's books are creatively integrated with science activities through the creation of take-home activity kits. The kits provide families an opportunity to read at home while connecting the enjoyable experience to science content and skill development through associated activities. The kits should be…

Through play and physical activities (PAs), children have many opportunities to develop gross motor skills that require the use of large muscles for movement and control. Young children use gross motor skills as they engage in daily tasks such as sitting upright, maintaining control and balance while seated, walking down the hallway, moving…

Demographic factors are among those that influence environmental literacy and, particularly, environmentally responsible behaviours, either directly or due to an aggregation effect dependent on other types of variables. Present study evaluates a set of demographic variables as predictors for environmental literacy among 9th grade students from…

During the preschool years children develop many new skills, including gross motor abilities, which serve as a foundation for school readiness skills in areas such as language, socialization and cognition. Like other domains, motor skill development does not happen without practice opportunities. That is, it requires multiple opportunities whereby…

Almost by definition, resisting the insidious convenience of the mainstream food supply requires persistence. This is especially true for food projects requiring fermentation--projects that unfold over days or weeks and require day-to-day science in kitchens where variables can be hard to control and where some degree of periodic failure is almost…

The Plate Tectonics Project is a multiday, inquiry-based unit that facilitates students as self-motivated learners. Reliable Web sites are offered to assist with lessons, and a summative rubric is used to facilitate the holistic nature of the project. After each topic (parts of the Earth, continental drift, etc.) is covered, the students will…

In this article, the underlying logic of experimentation is exemplified within the context of a photoelectrical experiment for students taking a high school engineering, technology, or chemistry class. Students assume the role of photochemists as they plan, fabricate, and experiment with a solar cell made of copper and an aqueous solution of…

In this article, the author reports on findings of second and third graders' science writing about Jupiter in order to describe their expressive fluency with scientific discourse. The students' artifacts were created within a setting of integrated science/literacy instruction in which students participated in hands-on science activities, engaged…

This study offers important insights into the coexistence of multiple discourses and the link between these discourses and science understanding. It offers concrete examples of students' movement between multiple discourses in sixth-grade science fair presentations, and shows how those multiple discourses in science practices illuminate students'…

The definition of "English language classroom" is changing. When students have the opportunity to learn content and language at the same time, disciplinary boundaries overlap. Teachers are rethinking how they design courses, plan lessons, assess students, and collaborate with colleagues to support student learning and facilitate their…