Today's youth are increasingly spending more time indoors and less time outside. As a result, many children have a "nature deficit" (Louv 2005) and little awareness of their role in nature. In this article, the first author describes how she shared her passion for nature with her sixth-grade students through nature journaling and how her…

The messages students receive through popular media such as movies, television, the internet, and music videos have a powerful influence and can shape their thinking. A national survey of media use by 8- to 18-year-olds found the average adolescent spends over seven and a half hours daily with entertainment media (KFF 2010). Rather than viewing…

Unmotivated, underachieving students pose a huge challenge for teachers. One way to motivate and stimulate student interest in a topic is to use humor. Humor can help students make new connections in learning and improves retention of information (Garner 2006). In this article, the authors describe how they integrated art and literature with…

Inquiry practices often involve more student-centered activities where students interact more intensively with materials and with other students during investigations. In addition to monitoring the learning taking place, teachers in an inquiry classroom have to manage more movements of materials and equipment and the social dynamics among…

Biobottles are miniature ecosystems made from 2-liter plastic soda bottles. They allow students to explore how organisms in an ecosystem are connected to each other, examine how biotic and abiotic factors influence plant and animal growth and development, and discover how important biodiversity is to an ecosystem. This activity was inspired by an…

Teaching science by means of inquiry-based projects has the potential to transform the science lab into a place of debate and discovery, but teachers run the risk of either leaving students to work too independently or forcing them to be too dependent on our guidance. To counter these challenges, the author implemented changes in the way topics…

In this narrative article, the author fondly takes a look back at her own personal experiences with a memorable science teacher who showed his students that science was a living, breathing world. Whether he assigned his class to collect water samples from local ponds (to look at microscopic organisms), bring in rocks to class for identification,…

Density is a derived quantity that can be confusing for middle school students. In this article, the author describes how he used a graphical depiction of mass and volume to guide his sixth-grade students in understanding and applying this concept. In the activity, students collected various materials, then discussed and tested whether each of the…

This article describes an interdisciplinary unit of study on the inquiry process and experimental design that seamlessly integrates math, science, and reading using a rubber band cannon. This unit was conducted over an eight-day period in two sixth-grade classes (one math and one science with each class consisting of approximately 27 students and…

Describes a science competition challenge that has students solve several hands-on physical science problems, thus reinforcing both problem-solving skills and science knowledge. (PR)

Describes science activities for a field trip to the beach for sixth-grade students. Explains how students can save what they find using plaster of Paris to create a sand cast. (PR)

Recently, the authors engaged in a collaborative inquiry with a sixth grade science class to explore mind mapping, a graphic organizer that can be used to generate ideas, take notes, develop concepts and ideas, and improve memory (Buzan 1979). With a very limited body of research available on how to best use mind maps in the classroom, the authors…