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Universal Design for Learning (UDL) provides a framework, based in brain research, to design instruction around the needs of all learners. By considering the UDL principles as educators design science instruction, they can proactively address how to engage students, how to make content accessible, and how to provide options for students to demonstrate learning. The authors provide a visual representation of the UDL principles divided into guidelines, with specific checkpoints to guide instruction; a quick reference guide to the barriers to science instruction, corresponding UDL checkpoint, and strategies; and introduce hypothetical scenarios where teachers encounter the barriers and use UDL principles to find solutions.

Students from marginalized populations may be less likely to engage in science education and form science identities. Thus, science education should include culturally responsive pedagogy to engage students from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds and promote science identity in every student (Mhakure and Otulaja 2017). The author is a high school science teacher from rural Montana, teaching a majority-white population with some American Indian students, and developed a weeklong unit for 10th-grade biology students examining the intersection of Indigenous Science and western science. This unit provided many connections to "Next Generation Science Standards" life science performance expectations, practices, and crosscutting concepts, while using culturally responsive pedagogy. The real-world and place-based context of this lesson, along with the two lenses of Indigenous science and western modern science, provided an opportunity for students to consider multiple perspectives while solving problems.

Traditionally, assessing and grading students in science has been an exercise centered around points and percentages (Feldman, Kropf, and Alibrandi 1989; Prøitz 2013). However, with the introduction of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and the need to revisit grading practices stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, an increasing number of schools have begun to revise their grading practices (Guskey 2021; Zalaznick 2022). Recent research suggests that when grade books transparently display students' current understanding, students have a better understanding of their knowledge and skills and can continue to improve them (Guskey 2020; Noschese 2011; O'Connor, Jung, and Reeves 2018; Wilcox 2011). However, many myths and barriers accompanying these alternative science grading practices can make shifting toward standard-based grading (SBG) difficult. The purpose of this article is to address these myths and provide strategies for effectively implementing SBG in the science classroom.

Science diagrams are an integral part of science because they are an important means of conveying and visualizing abstract science content. In recent years, researchers have demonstrated the educational benefits of encouraging students to draw their own conceptual diagrams, rather than focusing on interpreting diagrams given to them. To help students utilize this powerful learning strategy, teachers need to be aware of how to support and guide students' drawing diagrams. This article explains the method that researchers developed after many rounds of evaluating student-generated diagrams. It starts with an explanation of the lesson and the importance of teachers having hands-on experiences drawing the diagrams before the lesson. Then, it suggests that teachers explore the concept to gain a deeper understanding and ensure that the clarity of the concept is evident. Then during and after the lesson, it looks at four overarching procedural features of analyzing students' diagrams: the importance of focusing on the big picture as well as on details by zooming in and out, use of representational conventions, reading the written text, and scrutinizing the diagram multiple times.

The use of large, open-source data sets is ubiquitous in scientific research. Scientists--ranging from meteorologists to chemists to epidemiologists--are researching and investigating critical questions using data that they have not themselves collected. To contribute to the growing effort to bring data science into classrooms, the authors have been implementing the NSF-funded "Data Clubs" project to examine using data sets on topics such as ticks and Lyme disease, COVID-19, and sports and leisure injuries. Much of this work takes place with youth in out-of-school settings. In addition to developing modules for youth, the authors worked with a group of 18 high school science and computer science teachers from Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts who participated in a virtual 15-hour workshop series on data science education over the summer of 2020. The goal of the workshop was to introduce teachers to real and complex data sets, models for scaffolding learning, and tools for working with those data sets. In this article the authors share some of the key findings from this effort.

The authors of this article have participated in intensive professional development in the Peruvian Amazon and brought this firsthand experience of the rainforest back to their classrooms. However, the activities presented in this article are designed to be accessible and inspirational to "all students," regardless of whether they or their teachers have traveled beyond their hometowns. With experiences in urban and rural California, Alabama, New York, and Oklahoma schools, the authors present ways to weave investigations of the ecological roles of local trees together with activities that raise students' awareness of global connections and build their capacities as environmental scientists and global citizens.

In this article, the authors propose a four-part framework for "Critical and Cultural approaches to Ambitious Science Teaching, C[superscript 2]AST," to support educators in grounding learning opportunities in students' cultures and identities and work toward culturally and linguistically sustaining practices. The authors build on previous work with Ambitious Science Teaching, which emphasizes valuing students' ideas and anchoring science units in real-world phenomena (Windschitl, Thompson and Braaten 2018), and offer a critical equity perspective for teachers to consider issues of power, identity, and the sociopolitical context (Gutiérrez 2002). For each principle, the authors begin with a vignette, unpack central ideas, and suggest culturally and linguistically sustaining tips as starting places for science educators.

Ms. Jones stared at the stack of biology quizzes and wondered what went wrong. She thought about the lesson plans and wondered what she should have done differently. Ms. Jones is not alone in wondering how to improve student learning and classroom instruction. To improve student achievement, educators must determine what is working and what is not. This article focuses on basic research skills that teachers can utilize to conduct studies in classrooms and schools for the purpose of determining the effectiveness of instructional techniques and curricula. While the emphasis is on quantitative research, the basics of qualitative research are mentioned as well.

Bringing scientific research into the classroom is often a goal of science teachers. The notion of having students engaged in authentic practices of science underlies the "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS) and is foundational to the "Framework for K-12 Science Education." The overarching goal of scientist-teacher collaborations is the improvement of PK-16 science education; the specific goal of this project was to have students engaged in meaningful, "real" science as a way to learn about ecological principles. The mechanics of having that happen, however, required careful planning and a strong partnership. This article describes a successful effort by a college biology professor, college science education professor, and high school science teacher to bring science into the high school classroom. The authors discuss the steps in assembling a meaningful and productive long-term partnership that can transform the experience of science for high school students, make "real" science more accessible for teachers, and provide meaningful outreach for college professors. At the end, the authors share a link to data and classroom materials developed by the collaboration.

Through teaching science, teachers have the pleasure of developing and implementing learning experiences that allow students to discover how the world works. Interweaving the laws, principles, and theories of the universe with scientific practices that have allowed scientists to discover these ideas is the focus of teaching and learning in the science classroom. The overall intention is that learners will walk away with the ability to engage with science-related issues, and with ideas and processes or practices of science beyond the walls of the classroom--the definition of scientific literacy. The purpose of this article is to close the gap between what teachers intend for their students to know, understand, and be able to do, and what they actually walk away with from science classrooms. In this article, the authors look at the foundation for effective science teaching and learning, the one thing teachers have complete control over every day (whether it is in biology, chemistry, Earth science, or physics): "clarity about learning."

Project-based learning (PBL) in the science classroom provides an opportunity for students to investigate socioscientific issues that are current, authentic, and relevant. In a typical PBL unit, the teacher designs a narrative plan and acts as a facilitator who helps gather and organize student ideas. The framework of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) states that science content be covered deeply and position students in authentic roles as scientists whenever possible (NGSS Lead States 2013). In high school, the NGSS engineering performance expectations require students to solve problems that are global in nature, while considering potential constraints that connect to culture and the environment. The biology PBL unit described here was developed by two science educators during a professional development experience in Madagascar with the Global Exploration for Educators Organization (GEEO). During travel across the island nation of Madagascar photos, videos, artifacts, and recorded personal stories were collected that assisted these educators in the construction of this unit.

Educational researchers have long advocated for the integration of computer simulations (sims) in science courses, citing the positive effects these tools have on students' science conceptual comprehension (Develaki 2017; Hannafin, West, and Shepard 2009; Lamb et al. 2011). In fact, Liao (2007) investigated the learning differences between students taught with computer simulations and those taught with traditional instructional methods, and found that computer-simulated instruction had a greater positive impact on student learning than did traditional instruction. Conceptual computer simulations offer the following advantages: (1) Extend students' understandings of a concept by allowing them to modify variables and see immediate feedback (Hannel and Cuevas 2018); (2) Offer students practical experience in which they can apply their scientific knowledge outside of a laboratory setting (de Jong 2006); (3) Are interactive, allowing students to become immersed in an investigation resulting in greater learning gains (Kim 2006); and (4) Allow students to visualize and interact with invisible and/or abstract concepts such as molecular and atomic models, atomic bonding, etc. This article discusses a pH scale simulation created by PhET (Physics Educational Technology) Interactive Simulations at the University of Colorado Boulder (UCB) (Adams et al. 2008) as a means to extend students' pH/acid/base conceptual understandings.

Districts are scrambling to address climate change performance expectations in the "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS). On the flipside, such questions offer vital opportunities to ignite change and give students agency regarding climate literacy and resiliency in the high school classroom. A cohort of science teachers from Denver Public Schools and a team from the University of Colorado Boulder's (CU) Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) education and outreach program and the School of Education, plus graduate student content experts, collaborated on a two-year climate and resiliency professional development project (Climate and Resiliency Education 2018) funded by the CU Office for Outreach and Engagement. The project goal is to build teacher capacity in climate education and support student-led climate action in schools. Using the phenomena-based storyline approach (Next Generation Science Storylines 2018), the cohort co-designed a series of NGSS-aligned secondary units that localize climate concepts, making them relevant to students' lives. Educators piloted the place- and project-based units, which underwent revisions based on classroom feedback, and education and science experts reviewed the modules for pedagogical and scientific rigor. This article is about a science teacher who shifted her climate education approach from teaching her students about climate change to having her students take the lead in developing and implementing climate change solutions at their school.

The ideas students bring to class and their perspectives on what is happening in the classroom change constantly. Keeping track of these changes is useful for adapting lessons, nurturing student self-reflection, increasing student ownership of learning, and building a teaching practice responsive to learners' needs. In this article, the authors discuss how a simple formative assessment tool--exit tickets--can be used to help teachers do this work. Exit tickets are short response tasks that teachers administer to students after an activity (such as laboratory experiment) or class period. They present opportunities for teachers to elicit students' thinking without affecting their grade, provide individualized feedback, and identify learning needs or modifications to an instructional plan.

This paper highlights learning supports associated with genetics lessons that were implemented in a urban high school biology classroom. The supports provided access to science content for ELLs [English language learners], students with IEPs [individualized education programs], and struggling readers during an introductory unit on genetics. Due to space constraints, this paper does not include all assignments from the unit, but instead provides a sample of instructional approaches to promote success among all science students.

A lesson that focuses on the intricate co-evolution of flowers with their pollinators is one way to help students learn the delicate balance in nature and help ensure that our actions do not upset this balance. In this lesson students use the engineering design process to engineer a flower that is a perfect model for its chosen pollinator. Next, they construct an explanation of the coevolution process that occurs between flowers and their pollinators. The lesson addresses HS-LS4-4 Biological Evolution: Unity and Diversity from NGSS and covers Common Core Writing Standard CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.WHST.11-12.1.B. The various activities in this lesson allow for individual work, whole class discussion, and group work consisting of groups of 2-3 students. This lesson is a great way to use plants as the model for teaching evolutionary concepts in a biology class, can be done in conjunction with other lessons on floral reproductive anatomy, or as a stand-alone lesson as long as attention is given to new vocabulary. At the conclusion of this lesson, students will have a model of a flower that they will use as an aid in constructing an argument on the coevolution of flowers and their pollinators.

The idea that plants do photosynthesis but do not do cellular respiration is a common misconception among middle and high school students that often stems from an over-simplification of these processes in diagrams and formal science instruction. The activity presented here uses a conceptual change approach (Nussbaum & Novick, 1982) and an online simulation to facilitate high school students' accurate conceptions of the relationship between photosynthesis and cellular respiration in plants.

Interactive science simulations (sims) have become popular tools for science educators, and research confirms that sims can improve student learning (Rutten, van Joolingen, and van der Veen 2012). Over the past 15 years, the PhET Interactive Simulations project at the University of Colorado Boulder has created a collection of 150 open (free) educational sims for teaching science and math. Teachers bring these resources into their classrooms, now with over 100 million uses per year. PhET sims are highly flexible tools that can be used in many ways in the classroom. Teachers new to sims may wonder how to get started. In this article, the authors turn to experienced teachers for guidance. They share responses from over 1,500 PhET-using high school teachers on how and why they use PhET sims (Perkins, Moore, and Chasteen 2015), and they present ready-to-use lessons contributed to PhET's activity database. These lessons exemplify a variety of common, effective sim-based instructional practices.

The "Framework" (NRC 2012) and "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS Lead States 2013) require science teachers to think differently. Specifically, NGSS's performance expectations now require that three domains (disciplinary core ideas (DCI), crosscutting concepts (CCC), and scientific and engineering practices (SEP)) be seamlessly integrated into teaching for each grade level. Great strides have been made in developing curriculum and instructional practices that assist teachers in guiding students to meet these performance expectations. For example, NGSS's "Classroom Sample Tasks", provide lesson plans that support student achievement of performance expectations through integrated project- and problem based activities. Despite these resources, clear strategies for assessments, particularly formative assessments, remain elusive for practicing teachers. In an attempt to provide assessment guidance for these NGSS goals, the authors of this article illustrate how formative assessments can be organized to support learning in all three domains using three models: Concurrent, Sequential, and Embedded. Table 1 summarizes the three models, including guidance of when each may be most useful. The remainder of the article shows what these models may look like in practice, including an example with a specified performance expectation and tips for teachers.

There is clear scientific evidence linking climate change to human activity. Despite this, we still find numerous public figures claiming there is no climate change, or that climate change data is "fake news." Societal polarization around climate change (Worland 2017; Pernett 2017; McCright and Dunlap 2011) can provide students with opportunities to examine the data themselves and make up their own minds based upon the evidence. One of the key aspects of science is making judgments based on the facts, rather than based on beliefs. The "Next Generation Science Standards" place emphasis on the importance of using evidence to substantiate claims; having students form conclusions based on real data is a critical step in helping them become scientifically literate individuals. The proxy climatology activity examined in this article is designed around a constructivist view of learning. Students must analyze scientific data and construct their own conclusions based on that data (Colburn 2007; Crowther 1999). In this teaching strategy, the teacher plays the role of "mentor in the center" rather than "sage on the stage," providing the activities and asking the questions to make sure the concept construction is done by the student (Lawson, Abraham, and Renner 1989). In this lesson, students analyze different climate change data sets and present their findings to the class without the teacher acting as a filter.

The "Next Generation Science Standards" ("NGSS") emphasize integrating engineering design into the science classroom (NGSS Lead States 2013). Inventing is an authentic and relevant classroom approach, regardless of content area, located at one end of a design continuum opposite from routine problem solving. Invention, at the other end of the continuum, represents authentic, creative, and unique solutions (Committee for Study of Invention 2004). This article examines how invention activities are a fantastic way to integrate a variety of disciplinary core ideas and to increase student engagement. Many inventions start with identifying a need in the local community. When students work to solve local, authentic problems, engagement increases and they can draw upon disciplinary core ideas (Sarkar and Frazier 2008) across content areas. Invention can also make engineering design relevant and interdisciplinary, and frames engineering as a process that can improve the lives of others, rather than reinforcing the notion of engineering as a stale, technocentric field lacking an ethic of care (Gunckel and Tolbert 2018). Reframing engineering design as an activity that helps others can increase student interest for women and traditionally underrepresented people in the science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM) fields.

Constructing scientific arguments is an important skill, and is specifically addressed by the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) science and engineering practice of Engaging in Arguments From Evidence. To ensure that students understand the significance of a scientific argument, they need experiences that will help them understand, use, and interpret scientific explanations, evaluate evidence, and think about the development of scientific knowledge. This article focuses on how the authors have used High-Adventure Science (HAS) modules (see "On the web") as a valuable tool for helping 11th grade Earth science students consider scientific evidence as they develop critical-thinking and scientific-argumentation skills.

DNA extraction from strawberries is a well-known procedure that allows students to visualize DNA and to recognize that living things contain DNA (NHGRI 2018, Science Buddies 2013). In this article, the authors describe a modification to the traditional DNA extraction protocol that promotes student agency in experimental design and also emphasizes important social dimensions of argumentation. The lesson provides ample opportunities for students to engage deeply in the social dimensions of argumentation. First, small groups of students design their own DNA extraction protocols based on their knowledge of cell structure and the properties of biomolecules. Within each group, they collaborate to make claims about a procedure that they expect to be effective, providing reasoning for using certain materials in a certain order. After obtaining their results, they conduct a "lab meeting," in which each group presents its protocol, the rationale for its design decisions, and its results. Students engage in questioning and critiquing the approaches of others as they try to build a collective understanding of the most effective approaches. The lab meeting introduces a critical aspect of scientific argumentation, one that is often neglected in school settings: collaborative discussion, critique, and sense-making about procedures. This approach allows teachers to emphasize the central role of collaborative talk in science, as well as the social dimensions of scientific argumentation as students puzzle out the best procedures for repeating the experiment. Structures such as lab meetings help provide students with insight into the roles of argumentation and sense-making in professional scientific communities.

Science teachers need to consider how they want to grow professionally. Thinking about one's future involves identifying the knowledge, practices, and attributes needed in a new role. By using a framework such as the science education trajectory (SET), teachers can more easily consider their professional options and work strategically toward them. Most professional development programs available to science teachers focus on improving instructional practice. This seems appropriate with the emergence of the "Next Generation Science Standards" ("NGSS") (NGSS Lead States 2013), but these types of programs comprise only one area in the universe of potential professional opportunities. The goal of this article is to help science teachers consider their professional options. The authors suggest a process to build a professional growth or learning plan, which they call a SET. A SET is specific to science education, and describes the knowledge, practices, and attributes a teacher needs to develop in order to progress to a new professional role. While this is not a classroom-based article, the authors hope to show teachers how they can grow professionally and benefit their students, their learning environment, and the science teaching profession.

This article describes a five-lesson curriculum that introduces students to the primary cause, multiple predicted impacts, and possible solutions to ocean acidification. It builds upon the strengths of over 90 existing teaching resources on the topic while also contributing new ways to teach about the impacts and solutions to this pressing environmental problem. By focusing on ways to help, we hope to leave students with hope for the future and a sense that ocean acidification can be addressed.

Infographics present information or data in an accessible and concise manner to help a viewer understand a phenomenon. Creating infographics requires students to make sense of multiple sources of data and synthesize these data into a compelling visual form to make a central claim. Unlike posters, which tend to be purely informational with disjointed facts, news infographics can be journalistic, make an argument, and have an overarching message. Constructing infographics, or visual displays of information, encourages student creativity in selecting a topic, strategically and visually organizing the topic, and sharing it with a public audience. The STEM Literacy through Infographics (SLI) project has partnered with secondary teachers to explore infographics in science classrooms and has found that student creativity is tied to their level of engagement, authenticity of work, and ultimately pride in their final product. For this article, the authors interviewed 15 teachers about their experiences with infographics. They report on the accomplishments and challenges the teachers have had using them in science classes.

Teaching socio-scientific issues (SSIs) allows students to explore science ideas and practices intertwined with complex social phenomena, which can promote significant growth in critical thinking. Sadler, Barab, and Scott (2007) suggested specific critical thinking competencies associated with the negotiation of SSIs that capture the complexities of what students can learn through participation in SSI learning opportunities. The authors refer to these competencies collectively as socio-scientific reasoning. They are: (1) Examining the social and scientific complexity of an SSI; (2) Analyzing diverse perspectives held by multiple stakeholders; (3) Examining specific areas of further inquiry; (4) Skeptically evaluating scientific findings and media messages about science; and (5) Recognizing both the affordances and limitations of science for understanding and solving complex SSIs. Teachers may mention current science events during a related lesson, but the most effective issues-based teaching requires a more thorough approach. They believe SSI can be the central context through which the core ideas of science, practices, and crosscutting concepts are explored. The authors developed the Rigorous Investigation of Relevant Issues [RI][superscript 2] teaching and learning framework as a systematic approach to SSI instruction (Sadler, Foulk, and Friedrichsen 2017). The [RI][superscript 2] framework encompasses lesson plans, presentations, and student activities. In this article, they present an overview of an ecology unit for high school learners developed with the [RI][superscript 2] framework and then highlight ways in which the learning of SSR, as an important aspect of critical thinking, was supported through the unit. This ecology unit, titled "The Karst Connection," evolved through 17 years of instruction by the lead author, and in 2015 was redesigned around the [RI][superscript 2] framework (Kinslow and Sadler, 2017).

Understanding how scientific conclusions are drawn from data is central to learning about the nature of science. Many students struggle with aspects of reasoning from data, including identifying relationships among variables, interpreting graphs, coordinating theory and evidence, and not allowing personal beliefs to outweigh the data when forming conclusions. This article describes five activities in which students collect and analyze data with increasing sophistication. The second author implemented all five activities in her chemistry classes in a school in which almost half the students are designated as socioeconomically disadvantaged. During each activity, students collected data, identified patterns, collaborated in different ways, and justified their ideas, citing their level of confidence in their conclusions. Each activity helped prepare students for the final lab--Who Tagged the Bench?--which served as a summative assessment of students' skills in data collection, analysis, and interpretation. The activities, conducted throughout the school year, provide multiple opportunities to discuss how scientific knowledge is constructed and the intersection of science and technology. They also demonstrate that uncertainty is inherent in science and therefore the scientist's degree of confidence in the data must be reported. The activities align with the "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS Lead States 2013).

Groundwater contamination is a serious environmental problem, given that all living things depend on this essential resource. Groundwater represents less than 1% of all water found on Earth, but nearly 90% of the freshwater used comes from groundwater (USGS 2016). The problem-based activity described in this article actively engages students in real-world issues related to water. Considering water's unique combination of physical and chemical properties, ability to exist in multiple phases, and daily use in agriculture and industry, it is evident that concepts related to water are vital to many scientific domains, including Earth, physical, and life sciences. These activities also can be incorporated into an interdisciplinary unit (e.g., civics class). This lesson lasts approximately one week, including one day for each of the three sections of the lesson, class and independent time for designing students' solutions to a given problem, and at least one class period for presenting and defending the designs.

Minerals are commonly taught in ways that emphasize mineral identification for its own sake or maybe to help identify rocks. But how do minerals fit in with other science content taught? The author uses mineral formulas to help Earth science students wonder about the connection between elements, compounds, mixtures, minerals, and mineral formulas. This weeklong 5E learning cycle (Bybee 2014) lesson has been used with middle school students being introduced to the periodic table as well as high school students in Earth science, physical geology, and chemistry. The unit addresses the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States 2013; see p. 23). This lesson focuses on the mineral-classification-by-formula portion of the unit.

Building a website allows students to find and evaluate resources, pose and answer scientific questions, and connect class content to real-world problems and possible solutions. Writing explanations for a particular audience, instead of only the teacher, requires students to state concepts clearly, leading to increased comprehension. Finding the most exciting aspects of a topic engages students in the issues they research and fosters collaboration with other students and the wider community (Tierney 2004). Many science teachers use project-based learning, in which students choose real-world problems to explore, explain, and solve (Strobel and van Barneveld 2009). Designing a website fits perfectly into this framework.

Part 1 of the series looked at teaching speed and velocity. Part 2 considers the teaching of acceleration in physics. Teachers may find it okay to hurry through the concepts of speed and velocity because they are intuitive. But teachers cannot hurry through acceleration quite so quickly because it is not intuitive. Whereas velocity is a rate of covering distance, acceleration is a rate of the rate of covering distance--or even a rate of turning. This can be twice as complicated for the learner, and, as said, it is not intuitive. An understanding of acceleration will be crucial for understanding Newton's second law--the law that got humans to the Moon in 1969. [To view Part 1 of the series which considers the teaching of speed and velocity, see EJ1209579.]

During the Jurassic period (201 million to 145 million years ago), termites up to 15 mm long consumed and recycled vegetation and feces. Since then, termites have evolved into some 3,000 identified species, have colonized every continent except Antarctica, and are major contributors to nutrient cycling and vertebrate food webs (Shaw 2014). Termites' persistence through time is largely due to the symbiotic association of protists and other microbes that colonize the termite's gut. These "endosymbionts"--organisms living inside a host organism--allow the termite to digest cellulose from plant debris for nutrition. In return, the termite gut provides a stable environment in which endosymbionts can maintain homeostasis. In this article, students dissect a termite hindgut, observe and record the symbiotic relationship between the endosymbionts and termites, and investigate the responses of protists when their environment is disrupted. Students also learn about the interconnected relationships and processes that affect their own body and the world around them. The activity, which aligns with the "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS Lead States 2013; see box, p. 51), engages students in three fundamental biological concepts: "symbiosis," "homeostasis," and "osmosis."

Important science phenomena--such as atomic structure, evolution, and climate change--are often hard to observe directly. That's why an important scientific practice is to use scientific models to represent one's current understanding of a system. Using models has been included as an essential science and engineering practice in the "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS Lead States 2013). This article describes an instructional unit that uses an iterative process of generating, critiquing, and revising complex scientific models that address sea level rise.

The global scale of climate change may seem beyond many high school students' comprehension. To complicate matters, climate change has emerged as a political issue that pits candidates, neighbors, and sometimes teachers and students against each other (Kahan 2015). The "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS Lead States 2013) call on science teachers to incorporate climate change concepts into their lessons, which can be a daunting task. This article describes one way to do so: an ecology unit that uses a socio-scientific issue (SSI) approach.

Formative assessment has been defined as the process "to recognize and respond to student learning to enhance that learning during the learning." Formative assessment helps teachers identify strengths and weaknesses in their students' understanding, focuses students' attention on relevant information and ideas, and provides scaffolds that guide and support student progress (NRC 2011). Formative assessment is an ongoing process in which teachers typically engage in multiple cycles of: (1) eliciting students' ideas; (2) noticing the substance of students' thinking; (3) interpreting to make sense of students' ideas, and (4) acting to guide and support student learning. How teachers approach formative assessment influences students' conceptual understanding, as well as their attitudes, motivation, and effort, particularly among underperforming learners. Research indicates that meeting the new vision of the "Next Generation Science Standards" requires shifting teaching practices from more prescriptive approaches that emphasize "discrete facts with a focus on breadth over depth" toward more responsive approaches that provide "time for students to engage in scientific investigations and argumentation and to achieve depth of understanding of the core ideas presented." In each of the four dimensions listed, a teacher's practices can be characterized along a continuum from more prescriptive to more responsive. This article, using results from investigations of chemistry teachers' practices, suggests ways to implement more responsive approaches to formative assessment in the science classroom.

While student demographics continue to change nationwide, science achievement gaps persist, as measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NCES 2012). As traditional racial and ethnic minority students have become the numeric majority (NCES 2013), teaching science for all increasingly means addressing diverse student populations. Emerging now is a new wave of science education reform grounded in "A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas" (NRC 2012) and the "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS Lead States 2013). The goal of this reform is to make all students ready to pursue STEM college degrees and careers and to be informed citizens. This new wave calls for all students to learn academically rigorous science, become college and career ready, and take part in the global community. This article describes how the "NGSS" address diversity and equity issues and calls for next steps in implementing the "NGSS" for diverse student groups.

The "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS Lead States 2013) lay out an ambitious agenda for students to simultaneously engage with disciplinary core ideas, crosscutting concepts, and scientific practices. This does not just mean new expectations for teaching; it also requires new formative assessments. In contrast to summative assessment, used to "evaluate" student learning at the end of an instructional unit, formative assessment is something that teachers and students can do together, every day, to "monitor" student learning and provide timely feedback. Formative assessment also helps teachers modify and fine-tune their teaching practices. Developing intriguing questions and activities for formative assessment and providing useful feedback to students are challenging. Fortunately, the authors' research has shown that teachers can design this ambitious type of assessment with the support of their colleagues. In this article, the authors present the research-based, four-step Formative Assessment Design Cycle (FADC), which guides science teachers through developing, enacting, and revising formative assessments. In the FADC, a group of teachers design common assessments together and then use them in their own classrooms, meeting later to discuss the ideas students shared and what they plan to do next. Each element of the FADC was informed by the results of two research projects involving science teachers from four high schools over several years. These studies found that teachers using the FADC develop better formative assessments, synchronize their units, and learn more about science and student thinking; likewise, student learning increases the more teachers use the cycle to design their formative assessments.

Science teachers often participate in professional development programs (PDPs) to improve their students' learning. They sign up for workshops, institutes, university classes, or professional learning communities to gain knowledge and new instructional practices and to find colleagues with whom to discuss their teaching. But with so many options available, how do you know which PDPs are best and which in particular will support the "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS Lead States 2013)? To answer these questions, a review was conducted of the research focused on PDPs for science teachers. In this article, the authors present the results of that review and suggest what to consider when selecting a PDP.

Species richness, migration, habitats, ecological niches, adaptations: Concepts such as these come alive when students explore and analyze landscapes, environmental characteristics, and related biological features represented on digital maps. Most students are familiar with navigation tools integrated into smartphone apps but may be surprised to learn that the same mapping technologies are found in biological, environmental, and conservation research. Using maps or tabular spatial data, students can construct powerful scientific arguments grounded in real data. One user-friendly yet powerful mapping tool is ArcGIS Online. GIS stands for "Geographic Information System," which refers to a data management system that captures, processes, and displays spatial data. Teachers and students can use maps provided on the website, build their own from a large repository of online data, or create maps using data they enter themselves. ArcGIS Online is free, fast, and reliable. Research on use of GIS in science and environmental education has documented the challenges as well as opportunities (Barnett et al. 2013). This article describes two cases in which the authors used web-based GIS maps in student inquiry focused on bird habitats, biodiversity, and conservation. The maps and lessons were developed in collaboration with almost 60 teachers who participated in the Crossing Boundaries Project. Each lesson was co-designed with teachers, piloted during professional development workshops, field tested in the classrooms of participating teachers, and continually refined. Each case describes a map, corollary lesson sequence, student investigation highlights, and a teacher's implementation experience. The teacher using the first lesson was teaching a ninth-grade course entitled STEM 9. The teacher using the second lesson was teaching environmental science for grades 11 and 12. In both cases, the teachers were using desktop computers in a wired computer lab. The maps and related resources are available online.

This article is aimed at teachers already experienced with activities involving small, student-collected data sets and who are now ready to begin working with large, online data sets collected by scientists and engineers. The authors discuss challenges, instructional strategies, and sources of appropriate lesson plans. With guidance, plus online data and newly acquired big data skills, students can find evidence for some of the big ideas of science, rather than having to accept those ideas on authority from a teacher or textbook. They can conduct investigations about places and circumstances where they may never go, such as the bottom of the ocean. They can explore phenomena that are global in scope and span years in time, becoming a part of the community of users of that same data, and perhaps even make important discoveries of their own. Students' facility with complex data will be useful in a growing array of professions, from auto mechanics to health care, plus a necessary prerequisite for careers in science and engineering.

Gaming is becoming an effective form of learning and assessment and shouldn't be overlooked in an increasingly technological world. The games described in this article ("Impulse," "Quantum Spectre," and "Ravenous"), entertaining enough to be played by the general public, are also appropriate and useful in a classroom setting.

One of the most difficult challenges of incorporating literacy in the classroom--as called for by the "Common Core State Standards" (NGAC and CCSSO 2010)--is inspiring reluctant writers. Students are often unmotivated by essay assignments or having to write answers to open-ended questions. Some students may even view these as obstacles instead of learning opportunities, which means they aren't gaining experience in the scientific and engineering practice of obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information, as described in the "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS Lead States 2013). To address this shortcoming in the science classroom, the author implemented an ambitious project in which he substituted creating digital movies for traditional literacy assessments in his sophomore chemistry classes. His goal was to answer these research questions: (1) To what extent does creating a movie motivate sophomore chemistry students to read and write?; (2) To what extent does movie creation foster creative critical thinking and expression?; and (3) To what extent is the evaluation process of movies more engaging than traditional writing assignments? The author tested this activity with 153 of his sophomore chemistry students, using various reading levels. In his honors class, students were assigned to read a chapter on cellulose from Napoleon's Buttons (Le Couteur and Burreson 2003), a fascinating book that explains how 17 molecules affected human history, health, economics, and geopolitics. The chapter on cellulose details how glucose monomers link in different ways to produce the polymers known as cellulose. Students learn how slight differences in structure result in cellulose polymers having different functions and how cellulose affected the industrial revolution. The chapter draws upon "NGSS" core ideas from physical science and the crosscutting concepts of Patterns.

As the ethnic and racial diversity in U.S. classrooms continues to grow, myths about the education of English Language Learners (ELLs) persist, while many teachers feel ill-prepared to meet these students' academic needs. This article focuses on myths shared by in-service science teachers enrolled in a master's program at the University of Texas at El Paso on the Mexican border. The authors asked these teachers to describe at least one myth about second-language acquisition they had encountered. This article discusses their responses and offers strategies teachers can use to address these myths based on the authors' previous work with ELLs and the Project Citizen curriculum (Center for Civic Education 2014).

Teachers often start their careers in schools with large populations of English language learners (ELLs), whose enrollment in U.S. public schools reached some 4.4 million in 2012 (Kena et al. 2014). To serve these ELLs, new science teachers must develop skills to not only teach the content and language of science but also academic English. Proper mentoring can help new teachers avoid didactic, lecture-based, teacher-centered instruction in favor of more hands-on, inquiry-based teaching (i.e., where students gain experience with science and engineering practices). Unfortunately, few teachers are offered professional development on how to mentor new science teachers. This article addresses that need by showing the importance of shifting the frame in which new teachers approach working with ELLs, offering mentoring strategies, and, finally, providing strategies to engage ELLs in the practices of science and engineering. In order to help beginning science teachers move toward student-centered science strategies that promote success for all students, the authors collected sample dialogs from a range of settings including their own work as mentors, interviews with other mentors and mentees, and interactions with mentors at NSTA-sponsored workshops.

The "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS Lead States 2013) urge science teachers to include engineering practices and ideas in their already full science curriculum, but many teachers do not know where to start. Only 7% of high school science teachers report feeling "very well prepared" to teach engineering. The apprehension level may be higher for those who don't teach physics--28% of physics teachers have taken an engineering course compared to only 10% of other science teachers (Banilower et al. 2013). In this article, the authors describe the engineering design process and how it parallels scientific practices. The authors suggest ways science teachers can begin to incorporate engineering design into their current classroom curricula.

When teaching how "tension" and "compression" relate to geometrical structures such as bridges, arches, and domes, The author shows a picture of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, completed in the 14th century, and presents a lesson on using the curve called a catenary to explain how he teaches about tension and compression related to geometrical structures such as bridges, arches, and domes.

We constantly encounter data--in the form of graphs--that convey information about weather, medicine, politics, finances, and nutrition. These graphs are intended to help us visualize data for easy interpretation; however, approximately 41% of adults in the United States have low graph literacy (Galesic and Garcia-Retamero 2011). In this article, the authors describe an activity that they created to help students: (1) integrate and evaluate multiple graphs to answer questions; (2) choose and interpret units in graphs; and (3) analyze and interpret data. In this activity, students use Google Trends and climate-change data to understand patterns in basic time-series graphs. The activity aligns with several areas of the "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS Lead States 2013) and "Common Core State Standards" (NGAC and CCSSO 2010). The authors originally created this activity for a high school teacher workshop. Most participants used the activity the following year and reported that it not only enabled students to better grasp basic graphing concepts but also allowed them to apply these skills and vocabulary to interpreting real geoscience data. Climate change is too complex for students to fully understand with one or two graphs, but by explaining the strengths and weaknesses of any one piece of evidence, teachers can help students reach their own views about this topic. This activity also enables students to grasp data patterns and inevitably results in students suggesting search terms.

New teachers are common in the teaching workforce (Ingersoll and Merrill 2012). All new teachers will learn about the school curriculum and school policies in their first years. New science teachers, however, need to attend to the "Next Generation of Science Standards" (NGSS Lead States 2013) as they build their instruction and knowledge of teaching. For newly hired science teachers to succeed in the classroom, they need well-conceived support from administrators and other teachers. This support should draw upon what is known about science teacher development and should be attentive to teaching science. Unfortunately, most of the support given is not specific to science teaching nor is it crafted around what is known about new science teachers (Luft 2007). This article, sharing findings from over 30 years of research on beginning science teachers, addresses new teachers' needs and suggests ways their more experienced colleagues can help them. It is important to support these teachers so that they can maximize the learning of students, and, in the future, guide the profession of science education.

A "Framework for K-12 Science Education" identified eight practices as "essential elements of the K-12 science and engineering curriculum" (NRC 2012, p. 49). Most of the practices, such as Developing and Using Models, Planning and Carrying Out Investigations, and Analyzing and Interpreting Data, are well known among science educators. In contract, the practice of Using Mathematics and Computational Thinking raises questions in the minds of many educators. As mathematics has long been integral to science teaching, the questions tend to revolve around the meaning of computational thinking. The authors present a Venn diagram that shows how they see the relationship between mathematical and computational thinking. The diagram shows which capabilities can be considered part of mathematical thinking, which are part of computational thinking, and which are part of both. As the diagram illustrates, analyzing and interpreting data is common to both mathematical and computational thinking, as are problem solving, mathematical modeling, and statistics and probability. The authors give examples designed to support student learning of a number of performance expectations in the "Next Generation Science Standards." Each example is accompanied by a performance expectation from the standards and the practice that is combined with computational thinking that students are expected to demonstrate when meeting the performance expectation.