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As an introduction to sound and vibration, the authors wanted their first-grade students to plan and conduct their own investigations. In this article, the authors share a series of investigations to help students explore the relationship between sound and vibration. By planning, creating, testing, adapting, and reflecting on the outcomes of the various investigations carried out, this lesson integrates inquiry-based science and the nature of science (NOS).

Access to drinking water is becoming more limited as drought persists across continents. This article highlights a particularly impacted group of students due to increasing drought conditions and upstream river pollution near their reservation. While there are related water and modeling standards across the K-12 Next Generation Science Standards progression, the standards this classroom used focused on promoting student agency in looking for design solutions, showing students they can critically explore and develop engineering solutions within their community. Before the pandemic, teacher Ms. Xavier used the Garden TOOLS curriculum, which focuses on rural settings working on water conservation while using the Engineering Design Process (EDP). This article uses the EDP to frame how Ms. Xavier modified a lesson plan for online delivery, how she used scientific models and modeling to help students communicate their ideas, and how she supported students with different access to resources at home.

This article demonstrates how the authors used a 5E lesson about food webs as a context to embed speaking and listening standards. This 5E lesson partially addresses 5-LS2-1 in the "Next Generation Science Standards" and focuses primarily on predator/prey relationships. Future lessons focus on decomposition and other relationships. To help students connect to the materials, many of the examples early in the 5E are connected to the prairie because the authors live in Iowa. This could be adapted to other habitats.

When exploring and introducing sound, students need to understand that there are multiple aspects that work together to create sound. In this single class lesson, students work through an inquiry-based challenge to discover how sound can be manipulated and altered through these elements. By investigating how to manipulate sound, students are able to build on the idea that vibrating matter can make sound (1-PS4-1, NGSS Lead States 2013). Through this lesson, students were able to explore different instruments and experiment with the sounds that they make. Students will now be actively aware of the sounds around them and will continue to explore them.

The "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS) encourages educators to help kindergarteners formalize a big idea in physics: A push or pull can cause an object to begin moving, speed up, slow down, stop, or change the direction it is going (NGSS Lead States 2013). In this article, the authors share an exciting, classroom-tested interactive 45-minute 5E lesson that helps kindergarteners begin to investigate this big idea using simple materials. After the authors' literacy-based engagement, students explored, explained, and extended their learning with respect to objects that slide and collide. This article describes each of these lesson components and the authors' evaluation and concludes with tips for teaching motion and force in the kindergarten classroom.

In this essay from a teacher in Argentina, Valeria Vincent describes how she employed Multiple Literacies in Project-based Learning (MLPBL) (Krajcik, Palincsar, and Miller 2015). ML-PBL, an open education free resource, has three design principles that support teacher and student learning and satisfaction. ML-PBL builds on teacher ingenuity and adaptation (Miller, Severance, and Krajcik 2021; Miller et al. 2021) rather than prescription through contexts where both students and teachers play, create, and learn (Charara, Miller, and Krajcik 2021). Some of the challenges included finding materials that can work for designing investigations and sharing artifacts. For example, classroom and recycled materials are different in Argentina. In addition, the "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS) are more comprehensive than the science standards of Argentina. The NGSS are foundational to ML-PBL, as three-dimensional standards expand learning opportunities (Ford 2015; Severance 2016).

Investigating stars can be difficult. The five-day unit presented in this article is designed for fifth graders to work toward Next Generation Science Standard (NGSS) performance expectation 5-ESS1-1, with each lesson lasting about 30 minutes. Students investigate the relationship between the brightness of light and distance, apply their investigations to stars, and analyze data of stars' apparent and actual magnitude. The authors leverage these activities to help students further their understanding of the nature of science and technology (NOST). NOST includes understanding how science works, what scientists are like, what technology is, technological trade-offs, and how technology shapes thinking and behavior. From these activities, students gain knowledge about factors that cause stars to appear with different brightness when observed from Earth. Students also learn how science works and about how technology develops, influences science, and changes behaviors.

Children can see the Moon with the naked eye and often are curious about the Moon and other objects in the sky, like the Sun and the stars. However, there is sometimes disagreement in early childhood about whether studying space is appropriate for young children. This activities described in this article engaged children who had different learning preferences. Some children adored a creative make-your-own constellation, while others were drawn to a crater science investigation. In this article, the authors introduce a space science study--starting with how children's interests were at the core--outlining interdisciplinary links and including a detailed description of the making Moon craters activity. This study of space took place in a prekindergarten classroom with children ranging from 3 to 5 years of age, but could easily be adapted for older children. The lessons were part of a thematic unit on outer space that developed after the class had learned about weather.

To combat environmental apathy, the authors seek to help students develop environmental knowledge, ethics, and "critical-thinking skills that will prepare them to evaluate issues and make informed decisions regarding stewardship of the planet". This article describes scientific, place-based investigations of local species and their ability to survive well, moderately well, or not at all (3-LS4-3) (NGSS Lead States 2013) while promoting components of environmental literacy. To encourage students' recognition of nature's proximity and expand their environmental dispositions, explicit, open-ended questions are asked regarding the concept of wilderness/nature, possible uses of nature, and the extent to which humans should sustainably conserve nature (Roberts and Kruse 2019). Although these lessons were given to third-grade students, the activities provided are easily adaptable for all elementary, middle, and even high school students.

In this article, the authors highlight how a preschool teacher nurtured children's natural curiosity by inviting an expert visitor into the classroom, resulting in many possible investigations. The setting of this activity was an early learning facility at a university with a volcanologist on faculty who was able to share his expertise with children.

Using cross-grade peer mentoring as an integral component to field trip experiences can help educators realize the learning potential of nature-based experiences. When young students are paired with older students, Socratic peer dialogue deepens interest, investment, and ultimately ownership of new learning. Using peer-supported inquiry experiences has been a positive way to enhance the effectiveness of field trips in achieving multiple learning outcomes.

The inclusion of engineering in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) as a key component of K-12 science learning has provided both opportunities and challenges for elementary teachers. One challenge is integrating the design thinking processes that undergird engineering with core science concepts and current issues facing scientists and the broader world (NRC 2007). The study of oceans, waves, and shorelines allows children to explore factors that impact both humans and the environment and provides a context for authentic engineering challenges that are accessible to elementary students. The engineering challenges the authors present here were integrated into a larger unit on living shorelines. The ideas were originally developed as part of a teacher professional development institute in which K-5 teachers explored the local shorelines of the San Francisco Bay Area and engaged in engineering challenges to better understand the role of engineering in the NGSS. The engineering challenges were then piloted with children at a science camp for grade 3-7 students and then taught as part of the science curriculum in a fourth-grade classroom. In each of these settings, the driving question was: How do we engage with the coastline in ways that benefit nature and humankind through engineering design?

This article shares the "Paper Circuit Story Timeline" and the "Story Quilting" project from the Elementary STEM Teaching Integrating Technology and Computing Holistically (E-STITCH) curriculum, a free curriculum and project guide set for grades 3-6. The E-STITCH curriculum is designed as a method for teaching science and social studies together in order to teach both in more culturally responsive and inclusive ways. Students learn science content around energy transfer and circuits as a means to produce projects that highlight their social studies learning about immigration, migration, and forced relocation--topics that are relevant to children living across the United States. This article outlines how these projects were implemented as part of an energy transfer unit within a fourth-grade classroom, but they can be easily modified to meet the needs of students in grades 3-6.

The engineering design process (EDP) can be a wonderful tool to nurture creative problem-solving abilities, prepare students to tackle problems with intentional planning, and encourage learning from failures. Many lesson plans and instructional strategies are guided by the EDP (Hill Cunningham, Mott, and Hunt 2018). In this article, the authors present a way of thinking about the engineering design process and illustrate it through an example of student work. The authors developed their model, called "Design Zones," through experience working with teachers and students and by studying research on design. As an example, the authors used the Design Zones model to look at the engineering design process of Selena, Nina, and Lola as they designed, built, and iterated on a prototype for a piece of accessible playground equipment. Over the course of 10 sessions, the team successfully negotiated design ideas, made iterations on their prototype, incorporated ideas about balanced forces into their design, and communicated their process to classroom visitors. In both the classroom and in interviews after the unit, the students demonstrated their pride in their prototype and showed identification with identities as scientists or engineers.

At a time when changes in standards and curriculum compound the pressures of fifth-grade state testing, the authors wanted to find an engaging way to involve students in authentic science and engineering. Rather than put their efforts into a traditional science fair that would inevitably lead to inequitable input by parents and students alike, they took aim at facilitating an individual engineering fair. The initial goals were to (1) have students work independently (rather than in groups) to identify and engineer a solution to a problem that sparked their interest; (2) complete all stages of the engineering fair during school hours to avoid the inequitable input of parents and other care-givers; and (3) capitalize on the technology access the district provides. The activity took place during a two-week period near the end of the academic year and after state testing and devoted approximately one hour a day to the engineering fair project. Much like a traditional science fair, student projects were based on their individual interests and science conceptual understanding rather than connected directly to science curriculum. All three classes of fifth graders at the school utilized the last hour of the school day to ask their engineering question, imagine and research possible solutions, plan their solution design, and finally share and improve their designed prototypes. On the final day, a day-long fair where students digitally shared their designed solutions along with their experiences along the way. Each step of the engineering fair project relied heavily on online tools, providing an opportunity for this to be easily adapted for settings where students are learning in a virtual or completely online setting.

This article describes a group of second and third graders who began the school year 83% below reading proficiency. On surveys given at the beginning of the year, parents/guardians stated reading was the biggest concern for their child, and students stated they enjoyed hands-on activities, especially during science. To increase comprehension and fluency, a combination of reading and engagement was the key. To capture the same passion and excitement students showed while engaging in science investigations and experiments in the classroom, the Reading Adventures program was created. Each take-home bag contains a nonfiction book along with a simple scientific investigation and math problem related to the book's topic (see NSTA Connection for an overview of the activities). The goal for the program was to increase student reading scores by including families in the learning process. After all, research on the best practices in education "suggests that parental involvement, not income or social status, is the most accurate predictor of scholastic achievement." Response to this program was overwhelming.

Model Eliciting Activities (MEAs) are pedagogical approaches that allow teachers to integrate multiple subjects into creative multi-day learning experiences that captivate students' curiosity and engage them in real-life problem solving. MEAs are known in the fields of mathematics and engineering (Gilat and Amit 2014), but despite their ability to integrate mathematics, ELA, science content, and process skills, are a relatively novel idea in elementary schools. The ability to tailor MEAs by pairing teacher-selected ELA and mathematics skills with science content to meet the needs of the class makes them a worthwhile primary grade instructional strategy. This MEA was allotted two 45-minute classroom periods over two consecutive days. The teacher heterogeneously grouped students into teams of three. Teams worked cooperatively to reach consensus on all points of the activity. The MEA was completed as a culminating experience to a second-grade unit on force and motion. Students were informally assessed as the teacher spoke with each team and more formally assessed using a performance rubric that reflected task completion and allowed space for individualized feedback.

Engineering is increasingly expected in elementary classrooms now that the "Next Generation Science Standards" have explicitly identified engineering disciplinary core ideas as well as engineering practices. To incorporate engineering into their elementary classrooms, the authors used building blocks (i.e., LEGOS) to help students begin to understand engineered products and how engineers work while engaging them in learning about the structure of matter. By integrating the science content alongside engineering content, the authors hope the students will better understand and apply both sets of ideas. In the lessons described in this article, students are asked to make observations and construct scientifically accurate views that objects are made of smaller pieces and how those small pieces can be used to create a new object (NGSS Lead States 2013). The authors incorporate the K-2 engineering standard that states students will create drawings or make models to illustrate how the shape of an object helps its function (NGSS Lead States 2013). Students learn how to work with constraints when incorporating engineering practices. To further expand on student thinking, both the nature of engineering and the nature of technology are included in the lessons.

The "Next Generation Science Standards" ("NGSS") have placed an emphasis on the incorporation of engineering practices into K-12 science instruction. This article details a sequence of physical science lessons that would be part of teaching matter in the second-grade classroom. The goals of these lessons are: (1) to be hands-on and have students actively involved (e.g., observing, experimenting, recording data); (2) to incorporate engineering practices; (3) to have students communicating with their peers; and (4) to connect individual components of the lessons with a real-world problem, asking students to think about their results and design a solution to an identified problem (like engineers do!). The 5E instructional model (Bybee et al. 2006) guided planning and activities during this sequence of lessons.

Crossroads Elementary School in Saint Paul, Minnesota, was designed and built physically and pedagogically with an "Inquiry Zone" located in the heart of the school. This collection of 80 learning centers provides a pathway for all students to pursue their own scientific interests. In this article, the authors describe the background and rationale of our development and use of a school-based Inquiry Zone and offer ideas and encouragement for developing similar Inquiry Zones in elementary classrooms.

Art and science share several significant practices. Both involve exploration. Both use experimentation. Both endeavor to discover. And both share the act of careful observation. Observation is a concentrated study requiring attention to the characteristics of an object, a scene, or a situation: light, shape, texture, pattern, color, detail, and changes of these over time and under varying conditions. As with any skill, the ability to observe well takes constant practice. In this article, the author, a scientific illustrator, describes a workshop she taught for a professional development program on biodiversity hosted by the Smithsonian Science Education for Teachers. In the workshop, she introduces K-12 teachers to scientific illustration. The experience was not about learning how to draw but to practice visually recording what one observes, both accurately and without judgment. Variations on these exercises are encouraged based on grade level, but they will work for any age given a few minor adjustments.

This article illustrates several types of at-home science experiences that could be incorporated during grades K-2 to provide enriching science experiences that are motivating for students without requiring exhaustive work and preparation. These activities are designed to augment science interest and enthusiasm of students in the classroom and then facilitate further engagement at home. The suggested activities vary in degree of teacher involvement and planning; therefore, teachers can pick activities that best fit their needs and school community. While examples are given of how these might be related to specific content aligned to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States 2013), they could easily be modified to other content areas. It is acknowledged that students may live in diverse households and not just with their parent(s), so whenever the term parent(s) is used in this article, it is meant as a generic term for any adult caregiver that is found within a student's home.

Engaging students in conversations around science and engineering design can be challenging. Sparking such conversations during field trips at an interactive science center has additional challenges. First, students vary considerably in age from day to day: science center employees might work with first graders one day and sixth graders the next. Second, students are on the field trip for a short time. Therefore, they must establish norms without spending much time teaching expectations around science and engineering discourse. These challenges motivated the authors to implement a framework that would work effectively across age groups and immediately engage students in discussion and dialog during their Engineering Explorations, 50-minute engineering design activities implemented as field trip programs in our museum classroom. This framework adapts well to classroom settings and is easily implemented as a lead-in to any number of science or engineering design activities.

The "Next Generation Science Standards" ("NGSS") and current research in science education call for students to participate in making sense of scientific experiences by building explanations from evidence collected during these experiences. One way this goal can be achieved is through rigorous classroom discussions. In this article, the author provides an example of a first-grade teacher who supported students as they engaged in constructing explanations and used evidence to support claims through the use of simple classroom discourse moves.

For some elementary science teachers, a unit on land and water brings nightmares of dirt and water all over the room. Several Earth science "kits" contain hands-on exercises that allow the students to "get messy" as they manipulate materials; however, these lessons may lack the necessary opportunities for students to ask unique questions and solve real-world problems. The authors' primary goal was to design a unit that was more engaging than the traditional kit unit on land and water and in alignment with the "Next Generation Science Standards." As an equally important goal, they wanted to give their students an opportunity to put their knowledge to use in a way that was authentic, relevant, and tangible. Savery and Duffy (1995) suggest that problem-based learning (PBL), allows students to build their understanding in a real-world context, where cognitive conflict provides the stimulus for learning and knowledge evolves through social interaction (i.e., constructivist learning). They note that learning takes place most effectively in a realistic setting in which students are challenged to solve a real-world problem set within their realm of experience. Learning through PBL challenges students with a messy problem to which there is no single correct answer. This means that the students are challenged to defend their solution and provide clear evidence of accuracy. This approach to learning is student-centered and engages the teacher as a facilitator and guide. In this article, the authors present a multi-day PBL for use throughout the unit or as a wrap-up lesson for a unit on land and water. The students were presented with a challenge to research and plan the best location for a garden on the school grounds. Success depended on their ability to consider many factors related to land and water, including erosion, runoff, water flow, and more. Over the course of the investigation, students sought advice from a community expert, investigated soil characteristics around the school, and created and analyzed topographic maps in order to plan the best location for their new garden.

By the age of five, there is already a science achievement gap among young children in the United States. Educators have worked to address this gap between upper elementary and middle school children for many years. However, little attention has been placed on preventing the gap by focusing on the youngest learners. This article describes how to support learning in exploratory science centers for toddlers through second graders.

This article describes how two teachers implemented a 5E lesson in a third-grade classroom where the students had been working with forces/motion and investigating things that move like pendulums, swing sets, and various toys. The lesson was included as part of a larger unit on motion. The desired outcome for this lesson was for students to discover and recognize that the motion of various objects could be predicted, graphed, charted, and measured. This collection could then be analyzed for patterns and used to make predictions of the object's future motion. For this particular lesson, the core idea was seen as students were able to see motion represented in a graph through the use of technology. These graphs helped students visualize or model the movement of objects, and students could even use the graphs to predict what forces could be involved if the graph showed movement that was not a recognizable pattern.

One plausible method for ensuring students are truly understanding science fundamentals beyond being actively and intellectually engaged is to consider how informal learning environments can provide meaningful relevancy by connecting to real-world instances. Transforming traditional science centers into informal learning centers will ensure that the hands-on explorations come together to formulate conceptual understanding when combined with the facilitated instruction. In this article the authors share how a third-grade teacher refurbished the traditional science center into an informal learning center. Using a STEM approach, she made learning relevant by using problem-based, real-world tasks that align with disciplinary core ideas.

The "Next Generation Science Standards" ("NGSS") challenge prevalent beliefs that young children are "not ready" to understand natural selection, introducing core aspects in grades 1, 2, and 3 (NGSS Lead States 2013). The authors' research and teaching team engaged in a multiyear project to understand how early grades instruction can support a learning progression toward full understanding of natural selection. To do this, the authors drew upon several key aspects of how children (and adults!) learn science. First, understanding the process of natural selection requires significant "content knowledge" of organisms' structures and functions and their interaction with the environment (Gelman and Brenneman 2004). Second, learning experiences need to focus on the "explanatory utility" of ideas (NRC 2007). Finally, throughout the unit they drew on the power of narrative as an aid in building and understanding scientific explanations. The unit described in this article uses the context of crickets to explore the concept of natural selection in ways that capitalize on these three principles. The sequence of lessons described herein is part of a much longer unit on animal behavior and natural selection. However, the section described here has also been taught independently in second- through fourth-grade classrooms in both the United States and China. In all settings, children showed increased understanding of the process of natural selection by unit's end. The authors have correlated these lessons to third-grade "NGSS" goals, but they can be easily adjusted to address either second- or fourth-grade standards as well.

The National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) (2014) sets forth that children learning science and engineering practices in the early years lays "the foundation for a progression of science learning in K-12 settings and throughout their entire lives." So, it is important to build upon children's natural curiosities and expose them to thinking like engineers early on and long before college. The Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math (STEAM) lesson plan presented in this article about matter was co-taught to a gifted and talented fifth-grade class by a university professor and an elementary classroom teacher. Collaboration among experts across fields resulted in the lesson design and incorporated science (metals and their properties), technology (using and understanding technology systems), engineering (the engineering design process), art (sculpture), and math (data and proportionality). The lesson resulted in students' greater understanding of matter (metals) through the roles of engineers and artists. The engineering aspect of this STEAM lessons lends itself well to fostering understanding of solid matter (such as metals) and its interactions.

Inquiry-based active learning in science is helpful to all students but especially to those who have a hearing loss. For many deaf or hard of hearing students, the English language may be their second language, with American Sign Language (ASL) being their primary language. Therefore, many of the accommodations for the deaf are similar to those for hearing English Language Learners (ELL) (Easterbrooks and Stephenson 2006). These accommodations usually involve a multisensory approach that utilizes visuals along with hands-on experiences. From these inquiry-based experiences, new science-specific vocabulary emerges. When deaf students who sign are faced with new vocabulary, it is best to present these new words in ASL; therefore, it is crucial to provide the specific words to their interpreter before the lesson (Science for Students with Disabilities 2017). Last, in order for deaf students to communicate through the written language, graphic organizers can provide a visual representation of a system or expected work (Dexter, Park, and Hughes 2011). These accommodations for deaf or hard of hearing students can be very effective for most science topics, but what about the study of sound as a science phenomenon? Sound is traditionally taught in early elementary classrooms through student explorations such as plucking rulers on the table, striking water-filled glass soda bottles, talking on tin-can telephones, or making musical instruments. All of these activities rely on the fact that students can actually hear the sounds, but what if there is a student in the class that cannot hear the sounds like the other students? This article describes a sound unit that was completed in a first-grade classroom with a deaf student. Instead of using the more traditional sound activities that require the hearing of the sounds, the students focused more on visualization and the tactile evidence of differing sounds. This unit was implemented during the literacy block of instructional time with the science center incorporated within the other independent literacy centers so the teacher could work with a smaller group of students. Throughout the unit, the teacher introduced new vocabulary and documented student understanding through shared writing, so this unit is also aligned to the following Common Core English Language Arts Standards: CC.ELA-LITERACY.L.1.4, CC.ELALITERACY.L.1.5, and CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.1.8

"A Framework for K-12 Science Education" emphasizes the need to teach students the core ideas of science through capitalizing on students' curiosity to discover the world around them (NRC 2012). Children's experiences vary, and for educators to engage them in the process of science, they need to think of diverse ways to nourish their inborn curiosity. Research has advocated the "pedagogy of multi-literacies" that can serve two purposes: embracing diversity and attending to the different learning styles (Cope and Kalantzis 2000, p. 61). Millard (2003) calls for a "literacy of fusion" where various discourses (such as technology/mass media and academic) serve to teach children the required concepts. The authors have therefore used the 5E model (Bybee 2015) to design a lesson that fuses several modalities to teach students about the structure and function of organisms. The lesson presented in this article on polar bears and their adaptations was taught in a fourth-grade classroom of 21 students over two days for an hour-and-a-half period each day.

It can be a struggle for early childhood teachers to create hands-on, engaging lessons about animals. This is especially true of units that require exposure to a wide range of animals from a variety of habitats. The authors' describe how they shook up their traditional animal unit by creating a Kindergarten zoo! Herein they summarize their "There's a zoo in our room" unit. This unit sequences critical concepts needed to build understanding of core life science ideas as well as science and engineering practices. Students sort and classify animals based on physical characteristics, they speak and write about animals, draw animals, read grade-appropriate text, and use media to obtain the information needed to create a physical replica of a zoo.

This article describes how a farm-based class in the Great Lakes region investigated how plants and animals prepare for winter. Two groups of children, ranging in ages from three to five years old, had a farm, pasture, gardens, forest, and a pond available for exploration. A low teacher-to-child ratio was maintained, with one teacher to approximately five children, to ensure safety and facilitate the teachers' ability to address the students' needs and interests. The teachers were interested in exploring how and why the plants and animals living in a place might change over time, how they could be connected, and how their coexistence could support their survival. They used guided inquiry to structure the project, in which they posed the essential question: "How do plants and animals prepare for winter?" It was an open-ended question that as educators they were curious about as well. The children's interests and questions and the local resources they encountered created the guiding questions. Throughout their investigation, they supported the children's development of scientific inquiry practices: observing, questioning, predicting, problem-solving, collaborating, and communicating ideas and new understandings.

Many preschool classrooms explore plant growth. However, because many plants take a long time to grow, it is often hard to facilitate engagement in some practices (i.e., since change is typically not observable from one day to another, children often forget their prior predictions or cannot recall what plants looked like days or weeks earlier). Documentation in journals, using digital or paper versions, enables children to record their observations and predictions and has been found to be a productive learning experience that can support learning from the experimentation process (Brenneman and Louro 2008). This article discusses resources that are part of a larger set of curricular activities that seek to promote young children's science learning. These resources focus on three main areas: (1) "Science Practices," such as asking questions or analyzing/interpreting data; (2) "Science Concepts" focused around big ideas that are present in children's everyday experiences and which capitalize on their natural curiosity; and (3) "Science Discourse" that includes rich science talk and vocabulary that can be guided and modeled by the teacher and allows children to share their ideas, expand upon their thinking, and listen to and reflect on what other classmates are sharing. Throughout these activities, children engage with digital simulations and document experiments that help them consider what plants need to grow.

This column presents ideas and techniques to enhance science teaching. This month's issue describes preservice elementary teachers learning engineering principles from engineers. Few elementary teachers have experience with implementing engineering into the classroom. While engineering professional development opportunities for inservice teachers are becoming more numerous, engineering education is rarely required or even offered in elementary teacher-preparation programs. To prepare future elementary teachers to teach engineering, a collaborative partnership was formed between professors in Iowa State University's College of Engineering (CoE) and School of Education (SoE). The partnership included teacher education faculty in science and mathematics education and three engineering faculty who provided perspectives on content, knowledge, and skills foundational to engineering. Members of the partnership worked together to co-plan and co-implement engineering experiences across a teacher education program. These experiences included building engineering content knowledge through a Saturday short course, inclusion of engineering in methods courses, and a summer workshop that preceded a partnership with an engineering graduate student. This article describes the Saturday short course provided to prospective elementary teachers by three members of the engineering faculty and two from the teacher education faculty.

In this article, the author describes how a partnership was established to bring science and education majors together with elementary school children in an after-school STEM program. This partnership allowed preservice teachers and science majors to have fun with science and to learn science informally, in a nonclassroom, low-stress environment--no on-the-spot questions, testing, or homework. The undergrads got to be the teacher of a science topic. This opportunity gave the undergrads an arsenal of science they could do and feel comfortable with. More important, it gave them confidence in modeling the "Next Generation Science Standards" ("NGSS") science and engineering practices (SEPs). This is what the STEM nights described in this article were designed to do; they were not so much a lesson on a particular standard but an exercise in practicing and reinforcing the SEPs (for children and preservice teachers alike). The partnership fit the bill for Francis Marion University's Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) project, which aims to get students into nontraditional settings, because the undergraduates would be learning science, practicing teaching, and experiencing an actual classroom. The class ran for a full year, and the college students would meet twice a month for 2-3 hours each time. At the first meeting each month, science faculty would explain the STEM family challenges (one big challenge plus several smaller "openers"). At the second meeting, held at an elementary school, the college students facilitated the STEM family night. Generally 15 families attended the STEM family nights. They began with brief openers by the college students. Families are then presented with an activity emphasizing experimental design, identifying variables, replication, looking for patterns in data, and stressed how the data supported the preservice teachers' claims. Each family had 45 minutes to complete the challenge. Afterward, each family discussed the data and showed their results or finished product. The article concludes with a discussion of challenges faced and safety considerations.

This column presents ideas and techniques to enhance your science teaching. This month's issue shares information on how students' everyday experiences can support science learning through engineering design. In this article, the authors outline a reverse-engineering model of instruction and describe one example of how it looked in our fifth-grade classroom to highlight how the model can be applied to other engineering lessons.

Classroom implementation of the "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS Lead States 2013) does not necessarily require complete curricular overhaul. In many cases, teachers can review previously used lessons with respect to the "NGSS," evaluate alignment, and make subsequent modifications. One science activity the author has used in numerous settings is the familiar "shoe sorting" challenge. An early example of this lesson appears in the "Treasure Boxes" GEMS teacher's guide (Activity 3, Session 1), published by the Lawrence Hall of Science (Kopp and Hosoume 1997). A common "big idea" of this experience is classification, whether the content focus is living things, rocks and minerals, or something else. This lesson often takes place at the start of a unit to introduce students to the idea of classification, including the degree of complexity and specificity needed for accurate and clear categorization. When considering the "NGSS," however, teachers can expand this initial experience into a more robust exploration and examination of concepts, practices, and core ideas. The author recently revamped this activity to fit an upper level elementary unit about matter. This article provides specific components added to the standard sorting lesson, along with general strategies and resources the author used to increase "NGSS" alignment and elevate content for older elementary students (i.e., grades 3-5), including extensions. Although this article describes this introductory lesson in context of an upper level physical science unit, teachers are encouraged to apply these strategies where and when they best fit in their own classrooms.

Evidence is mounting that children have decreasing exposure to the natural world, which makes sense as the population of the planet urbanizes and many interests and assignments involve digital technology. According to the United Nations, 54% of the world's population now live in cities (2014), and a 2010 study by the Kaiser Health Foundation found children ages 8-18 spend over 53 hours on media each week, leaving less time overall for outdoor pursuits. To help quantify the effect of this decreased time outdoors, Heidi, a fifth-grade student, conducted an investigation for a schoolwide project fair, a "BioBlitz," to determine the veracity of the commonly held belief that children today recognize hundreds of corporate logos but fewer than 10 local plants. While the sample size was small, she found the children in a remote, rural Alaska town easily recognized most of the corporate logos (some recognized all 10) but far fewer of common local plants (some recognized zero). One of Heidi's conclusions was that children are spending more time on electronic devices, and this is limiting their time for outdoor experiences. This may be especially true in the Alaskan community, which is located in a brilliantly beautiful yet cold and rainy temperate rain forest. In this article, fourth graders learn about local biodiversity by working with local experts and nature enthusiasts.

Writing in science is a natural way to integrate science and literacy and meet the goals set by the "Next Generation Science Standards" ("NGSS") and the "Common Core State Standards" ("CCSS"), which call for learners to be engaged with the language of science. This means that students should record observations, thoughts, and data as scientists do, but more important, they should engage in the practices of making and defending claims, engaging in argument based on evidence, and communicating what they have learned. Science notebooks are one means to engage students with the scientific practices and the language of science. Notebooks serve as a means to record observations, collect data, and summarize investigations; however, they should also be used to explain thinking, to develop arguments that demonstrate understanding, and to connect ideas across concepts. These latter tasks are associated with higher student learning. This is what the K-5 teachers the author worked with came to realize as they analyzed their students' notebooks within a professional study group, with some participating over a four-year period. The teachers met once a month to discuss science notebooks and professional literature related to writing in science in order to improve their practice. This article highlights the teachers' progress over time as they moved from mechanical to insightful use of science notebooks.

Having high-quality early childhood education programs that prepare children for success in school and later years continues to be an ever increasing national priority. While the "Next Generation Science Standards" ("NGSS") do not provide standards for preschool, there are ample opportunities to use the Standards as a guide to prepare students for later science experiences. The science methods and early childhood professors at Eastern Washington University in Cheney, Washington, discussed extrapolating from the "NGSS" to link to national early childhood content standards such as the "Head Start Early Learning Outcomes" (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2015). This would allow for preK teachers to meet their standards while also supporting the transition at kindergarten to use of the "NGSS." The authors examined the "NGSS" kindergarten standards and compared it to Head Start. In this comparison, they noticed that the "Head Start Early Learning Outcomes" differed from the "NGSS" in that they do not focus on specific content; instead, they focus on scientific reasoning, which could support the "NGSS" science and engineering practices and crosscutting concepts in later grades. This article describes how the authors used DCI ESS2.D Weather and Climate as a guide to provide a pre-"NGSS" experience about water/weather with the goal of allowing students to be able to apply the Scientific Reasoning Goals of Head Start. The Scientific Reasoning Goals align with the "NGSS" science and engineering practices such as Planning and Carrying Out Investigations and Analyzing and Interpreting Data. A Learning Cycle approach was used to outline the lesson about water. In addition to the "NGSS," the authors wanted to use shared book reading as a way to engage students in science talk about the day's topic. Preschool is the perfect time to use the shared book strategy to engage students in scientific talk and scientific inquiry. This strategy allowed students to build both science and literacy skills to support future science learning. The hands-on, outdoor activity allowed students to connect talk with their everyday lives and to bridge expectations of Head Start and those of the "NGSS" and "Common Core State Standards" ("CCSS").

Students of today are digital natives who for the most part come to school with experiences that may surpass those of their teachers. They use tablet computers and other devices in their personal lives and are eager to use them in the classroom. For teachers, this means they must integrate technology in ways that allow their students to learn with technology rather than from technology. Using tablets as digital science notebooks is one way in which students can learn with technology. This article describes how fourth and fifth graders used a tablet as a digital science notebook in a STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) summer camp while engaging in science and engineering practices.

The editors of "Science and Children" invite readers to explore the 2016 list of Outstanding Science Trade Books. The list builds upon a 44-year history of identifying the very best science books for children. In the award-winning titles provided in this article, readers will find traditional science content as well as engineering and design.

Traditionally, electricity and circuits are taught using alligator clips, lightbulbs, batteries, and wires. Although these circuits engage students in building, they don't always provide opportunities for students to deeply explore energy, electricity, polarity, and circuitry. Multimedia Circuits is a curricular unit made up of three projects that allow students and teachers to engage in science learning from a more artistic perspective by constructing circuits using different media (i.e., clay, paper, and fabric). By engaging students in a craft-based approach rather than a traditional classroom approach, Multimedia Circuits gives students a new way to engage with science content (Gu et al. 2016). Additionally, with its strong focus on modeling and the engineering practices of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States 2013), Multimedia Circuits empowers elementary teachers to engage their students in science learning and integrate their curriculum more fully. This article describes a presentation of Multimedia Circuits during a two-week, six lesson electricity unit. The projects can be done in sequence or in isolation, depending on teachers' curriculum, goals, and time constraints. The unit is comprised of three projects that gradually increase in complexity and build student understanding through hands-on, craft-based learning.

Reading and writing are essential skills that students use as they learn science. For students to attain scientific literacy, they must create meaningful lessons capitalizing on curiosity and natural wonders about the world, through which students speak, read, and write about their science experiences. The inquiry-based lesson described in this article empowers second-grade students to take ownership in their learning, as they use their senses to observe and classify five materials based on their physical properties. By creating digital products, students construct explanations based on shared classroom research and writing opportunities. Student-led discussion piques student interest and keeps them engaged as they use evidence and reasoning to support claims about solids and liquids.

Courtney Loynachan was a student in Dr. Lindquist's summer 2014 "Teaching Science in the Elementary School" methods course at Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota. The course included an exploration of the power of writing as a learning tool for science with a particular focus on the use of science notebooks. Throughout the course, students were immersed in the doing of science--making full use of science notebooks consistent with the practice they would use with their students. Courtney was teaching on a variance in a Spanish Immersion program at Deephaven Elementary while seeking her full license. This provided an immediate instructional context for her to make application of ideas being explored in class. Courtney took to heart the power of focused writing as a way to improve science teaching in her classroom. This article shares her experiences with the use of science notebooks including factors associated with the Immersion learner, characteristics of an effective science notebook, importance of attending to academic language, and the role of formative assessment.

For students to know how to prepare for severe weather, they must first understand what types of weather they might experience in their location. Much of students' interactions with and learning about severe weather events will happen through printed text resources and video excerpts. Through the use of such resources, young students can begin to ask questions to learn about different types of weather, whereas older students can start to consider how they can take steps to reduce the impact of severe weather events.

In this article, Mann and Pynes describe a five-day mini-project-based learning (PBL) unit about organisms and their environments that addresses the "Next Generation Science Standards" (3-LS4-3). Third-grade students were asked how they could determine which animals live in their neighborhoods. In teacher-determined collaborative groups, students researched an animal that lived in their neighborhood, investigated evidence an animal might leave behind, and used what they learned to create two pages in their class book. When the mini project was completed, teachers reported being pleased with the interest and pride the students had in their work. As designers of the unit, Mann and Pynes were pleased that all of the teachers completed the PBL unit and expressed interest in trying other PBL units in the future.

Inspired by a song to be sung by her daughter's first-grade class in an upcoming musical, a parent volunteer teacher used fireflies as the focus of a science lesson to build on the children's interest and experiences. She developed a 5E lesson (Bybee et al. 2006) using the backwards-design approach (Wiggins and McTighe 2005) to ensure meaningful learning related to science and literacy standards for first grade (see "Connecting to the Next Generation Science Standards" on p. 57). During this hourlong lesson, the children expanded on their knowledge of fireflies and light; gathered evidence to develop the understanding that at night, objects can be seen only when illuminated; and considered ways to use light to not only see, but also to communicate. Throughout the lesson, the parent teacher encouraged the children to share their observations and ideas verbally and in writing.