"Stepping Up to Science and Math" invites teachers to step back and rethink the way they teach both of these essential subjects. Then it illustrates how teachers can step up the pace with Standards-based activities that make learning more effective and efficient. (New lessons featuring gummy worms, school buses, or the planet Mars help teachers step outside the normal.) Compiled from Science & Children, NSTA's award-winning elementary school journal, "Stepping Up" gathers 21 articles that provide interdisciplinary options for linking inquiry-based activities to mathematics as well as other K-6 curriculum areas, such as language arts and social studies. The book is organized into three broad content areas based on subject matter or skills: (1) Making connections among the basic process skills--such as linear measurement, data collection, estimation, and graphing--that underpin both science and math. Chapter titles include "Say Yes to Metric," "Gummy Worms Measurement," and "Weighing Dinosaurs." (2) Using scientific concepts as the core for authentic investigations that link to other disciplines. Titles cover "Crossing the Curriculum with Frogs," "Real Earthquakes, Real Learning," and "Mission to Mars." and (3) Finding contemporary applications for scientific inquiry and experimentation to develop more advanced integrated process skills. Among the titles: "The Scoop on Science Data," "Thinking Engineering," and "Building Structures." To make the book easy to use, each article is labeled by grade level, skills and concepts, Standards addressed, and content connections. Best of all, every activity is "teacher tried-and-true." Practicing educators have validated the value of each one for teachers who've despaired of having no time for science--until now.