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Historically, science education has not adequately addressed the concerns and values of BIPOC individuals and women, especially those who fall into both categories. One way that educators are addressing this disparity is by incorporating social justice into their curricula. Climate change is one of today's most pressing issues, and youth have much anxiety about their future, with extreme weather, food and water insecurity, and sea-level rise threatening many of their neighborhoods. Students engage and participate eagerly when climate change is addressed through a social justice lens and when they are given realistic paths toward solutions. In this study, students measure air quality, an environmental and climate justice issue. Areas with poor air quality tend to be near high levels of traffic and industry rather than near green spaces. These areas disproportionately include low-income communities of color, and researchers see much higher rates of asthma and other respiratory diseases in these populations. In a changing climate, air pollution will be worse, indoor air quality will be worse, and the weather will be more unpredictable, all of which will make asthma more difficult to manage. For this project, the driving question is "What patterns do we see in the air quality index (AQI) in different areas of Miami-Dade county?" Students received a portable air quality monitor (Flow by Plume Labs) and wore it throughout their daily routine: school, work, sports practice, and home. They then analyzed the data, engaged in civic action, and produced a video diary.

One can become a responsive teacher who promotes equity by continuously engaging in the following processes: (1) Attend to students' needs or struggles stemming from both inside and outside the classrooms, in addition to their intellectual contributions as members of a classroom learning community; (2) Interpret classroom situations with a thoughtful consideration of multiple aspects of students' lives inside and outside the classrooms, including race, power, and opportunity to learn, instead of quickly judging observed behaviors or performances in the moment (e.g., on-task vs. off-task behaviors, complete vs. incomplete, compliant vs. noncompliant); and (3) Take deliberate actions to address the noted challenges as a way of improving the conditions for students' participation in the classroom learning community. In the conception of responsiveness for equity, "action taking" is central because it makes an observable difference in students' experiences in classrooms. In this article, the authors unpack these ideas using illustrative examples, sharing the deliberate efforts to help students connect themselves to science, to peers and the teacher in the classroom, and to the place (science classroom, school) at the stages of both planning and instruction. Also provided are a few key takeaways for educators who aspire to further increase their responsiveness for equity.

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.

Wildland fires have become a regular aspect of life for people living in the western United States. Wildfire smoke is now impacting air quality across the United States. Unprecedented wildfires have swept through Australia, Russia, and Portugal in the last few years. Like other natural disasters, wildland fires can have a devastating impact on communities that are directly in their paths. However, they also cast a much bigger footprint due to the smoke they release on a global scale. These smoke events can lead to health warnings, noticeable irritation to the lungs, and cancelled outdoor events. They have quickly become part of the life experience of many students around the world. Their connections to global climate change and environmental policy, juxtaposition as positive forces in ecosystem succession, and relationship to a wide variety of both simple and complex natural phenomena leave science teachers with an opportunity to frame myriad lessons within the context of wildfire. This article presents a series of such lessons, adaptable to various levels of physical or integrated science. This series of lessons was taught in 9th- and 10th-grade physical science classes with students who are regularly affected by intense wildfire smoke. The learning sequence would also be appropriate for general chemistry and physics courses and can be easily adapted to meet the academic level of the students. The lessons were adapted for online instruction in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

There was a time when science was viewed as inherently objective, without bias. We now know that isn't true--scientists bring their life experiences and beliefs with them to work. The designing, funding, and reporting of research are all framed by societal influences and implemented by those who have been privileged to serve in these roles. Mackenzie (2020) points out that our curriculum should help students understand the context in which science is conducted and ask questions such as: Who makes the decisions? and Who is left out or silenced in the decision-making? A focus on social justice should be central to our teaching, in the same way we consciously support students to understand other aspects of the nature of science. As Bell (2020) argues, students have the right to be taught that science is implicated and situated in a range of social inequities. Teachers have a responsibility to develop lessons that emphasize the need for diverse perspectives among all science stakeholders. We want our science students to be agents of change, but knowing where to begin can be daunting. In this article, we argue that science teachers can start today by incorporating news articles and discussions into their existing units of study.

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.

Death as a common mental health issue, however, can be viewed through a lens of student well-being, which can be nurtured through the use of a simple triad--maximize positive affect, minimize negative affect, and minimize the inhibition of affect (Watchtel 2016). Teachers often fear that difficult topics may maximize negative affect. Counterintuitive to the notion, this assumption may actually cause disequilibrium to well-being by inhibiting affect and the expression of present student challenges (Compare et al. 2014; Kelly and Thorsborne 2014). This article explores death and disease through personal experience grounded in science core content, understood through skills necessary for scientific literacy and facilitated through skills taken from restorative practices and humanist perspectives in psychology (Kelly and Thorsborne 2014; Levine and Levine 1998; Pearson and Wilson 2009; Rogers 1951). The lesson presented constructs a model that "describes that all organisms have unique and diverse life cycles, but all have in common birth, growth, reproduction, and death" (NGSS 2013, 3-LS1). The personal experience is then analyzed and expanded upon. The following lesson and personal story were used to provide students opportunities to reflect, express, and start a journey to deeper understanding.

In today's science classes, where standards are shifting toward engaging in scientific practices, a shift in science assessments to better reflect the skills and knowledge achieved in modern science classrooms is needed. If science is a discipline to be practiced rather than memorized, then science assessments should be designed to gauge a student's progress toward employing better science practices. A substantive alternative assessment in science--one that provides authentic and meaningful feedback to students as they do science--is the science symposium. The University of Montana's Research Education on Air and Cardiovascular Health (REACH) program provides opportunities for high school students to conduct student-designed science research projects (Delaloye et al. 2016; Delaloye et al. 2018; Ward et al. 2016). The culminating event of this yearlong REACH program is the Environmental Health Science Symposium. This year's 18th annual symposium will bring together high school students from Montana, Idaho, and Alaska to present their research findings and engage with their peers, University faculty and staff, and a panel of judges--just as research scientists would do. The science symposium provides students with experience in science communication and an alternative assessment providing meaningful, timely, and relevant feedback to students and their teachers. In this article, the authors present findings from student survey data and teacher interviews regarding their experiences with the REACH symposia.

Computers and computer algorithms have contributed to important scientific advances by allowing scientists and engineers to create and use sophisticated models to explain and predict phenomena. Yet, of the eight "Next Generation Science Standards" ("NGSS") science and engineering practices, computational thinking may be the least familiar to teachers and students. In the "Framework for K-12 Science Education" (NRC 2012) computational thinking is linked with mathematics as tools for representing variables and relationships. But what exactly computational thinking means for learning and teaching is not always clear. Does engaging in computational thinking mean students should use spreadsheet software and other computer tools to manage data? Is having students use online simulations to visualize phenomena computational thinking? Should students be writing code and building computational models? Computational thinking can mean all of these things and more. In this article the authors unpack computational thinking practices by presenting a sequence of instructional activities focusing on groundwater contamination. The instructional approach does not require coding but does support students in engaging in the computational thinking necessary to use models to understand problems that are relevant to their lives and communities.

In March of 2020, the world of education was upended. Teachers and students across the globe abruptly left their classrooms. Once taught in abstraction, science concepts became national headlines, no longer relegated to textbooks. Misinformation began spreading faster than any virus, and for many science teachers, addressing scientific untruths became the primary focus of their profession. Telling students a source is not credible, or reviewing the Nature of Science is only a temporary fix--the urgency of providing students the ability to make scientifically informed decisions by addressing data and media literacy must be recognized. Battling half-truths and conspiracy theories is not new to science education--as any climate science teacher can confirm--but the pandemic is unique to this generation. For the first time, a global crisis affects every student worldwide simultaneously, and its impacts are immediate. The slurry of misinformation students and communities believe, share, and politicize has prompted a team of seven teachers from six states--Georgia, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, and Texas--to develop a unit addressing media literacy. It was essential to design the unit so that it could be taught virtually, blended, hybrid, or in-person, and could be applicable both to the pandemic and to other ongoing misinformation crises like climate change. For the sake of simplicity, the authors will describe the unit in two parts in this article: (1) Media Literacy; and (2) Scientific Literacy. Linda Rost, the facilitator in Baker, Montana, conducted the unit primarily in-person, with some students participating virtually.

Some high school science students now have access to new sophisticated research tools using synchrotron radiation and other instruments not found in a typical high school setting. Students use these tools to collaborate on projects in a variety of disciplines with support from classroom teachers and scientists. Access to these tools advances NSTA's position on quality science and 21st-century science skills, including engaging students in real-world problem-solving, critical thinking, and opportunities to investigate and build scientific explanations (NSTA 2011). Such real-life, hands-on opportunities allow students--who would not normally interact with their teachers and scientists in such a collaborative way--a unique learning experience that builds scientific confidence and curiosity and could help inspire a future generation of scientists. This access brings with it a new set of issues. How can students learn about the specialized capabilities of these tools? How will they discern the best ways to apply the tools to their specific research questions, and make best use of the limited time they will be granted? How will students learn to collaborate in large, multischool groups? How can students learn to use state-of-the-art computational tools to analyze the big data generated by their projects (Sneider 2014)? How can teachers discern which portions of the projects the students may safely perform at the facility, using techniques of active learning to promote interest in STEM careers? How will these experiences enrich students and inform the science research curricula studied by students in high school? (Bell et al. 2003). In this article, the authors will explore some answers to these questions by sharing student experiences with Student Partnerships for Advanced Research and Knowledge (SPARK), a new collaborative program at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL). The SPARK program is designed to promote student research at BNL's National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS II) with the guidance of their high school teachers, BNL educational leaders, and BNL scientific mentors.

Teaching about wave structure and function is a critical element of any physical science curriculum and supported by "Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)" PS4: Waves and Their Applications in Technologies for Information Transfer. To support students' learning of these ideas, teachers often rely on developing graphic models of a wave with students identifying different aspects of wave structure. To enhance this experience, some teachers employ readily available simulations from trusted websites. Digital resources are valuable tools that teachers can use to support students' science understanding through manipulating elements of digitally constructed scientific models. These approaches to teaching promote students' engagement in the practice of designing (drawing a wave) and using scientific models (working with a simulation). To expand upon these resources, the authors developed a series of instructional activities that deepen students' conceptual understanding of waves by engaging in computational thinking while developing and using scientific and mathematical models. They used an accessible programming platform, called Pencil Code, which displays the simulation and its code side by side, offering learners more opportunity to understand their interaction. The sequence of activities described in the article offers physical science teachers an engaging way for students to explore wave structure and observe the impact of different media. Most importantly, these activities also provide an example of how teachers can incorporate the scientific practice of computational thinking through combining it with the practice of developing and using scientific models.

In this secondary-level lesson, students will generate and prioritize questions about the novel coronavirus and evaluate scientific and/or technical information from multiple authoritative sources, assessing the evidence and usefulness of each source for answering their prioritized questions. This lesson consists of three segments: (1) connecting prior knowledge to the novel coronavirus global outbreak (lesson parts 1-2); (2) making sense of the novel coronavirus (lesson parts 3-4); and (3) examining people's negative bias toward people of Chinese descent at home and abroad (lesson part 5). Lesson part 6 offers students an opportunity for reflection on the lesson as a whole.

The science and engineering practices in the "Next Generation Science Standards" seek to engage students in complex tasks including planning and carrying out investigations or engaging in argument from evidence. However, such tasks often require students to effectively collaborate. While our students get better at working together in an inquiry environment as the school year progresses, we have found teaching social and emotional learning skills has helped students see the connections between engaging with the science and engineering practices and everyday life. This two-day activity about group behavior (HS-LS2-8) blends the three dimensions of the "Next Generation Science Standards" and explicitly helps students develop socially and emotionally.

At the Center for Integrated Access Networks (CIAN), an Engineering Research Center funded from 2008-2018 by the National Science Foundation, the education department worked to develop new and innovative digital resources to engage students in learning science content. One resource created, the CIAN Comic Book, focuses on educating students about optics, technology, and scientific discovery, and is well-aligned with the "Next Generation Science Standards" ("NGSS"). This article suggests one way to utilize the CIAN digital comic book by incorporating it in an Argument Driven Inquiry (ADI) lesson. The CIAN Comic Book in combination with effective instructional models, like ADI, presents an opportunity to incorporate technology in the classroom, engage students through a medium of their interest, and implement the most up-to-date educational lesson plan models in a new way. [Note: The issue number (8) currently displayed on the article's page via the URL is incorrect. The correct issue number is 6.]

Ocean acidification (OA) has been called climate change's evil twin for a reason. Increased levels of carbon dioxide, caused by humans burning fossil fuels, are not only causing a rise in global temperature but are also having adverse impacts on marine ecosystems. In the lesson presented in this article, students conduct investigations using models to explain how increases in CO[subscript 2] affect ocean pH and examine the impact of ocean acidification on the ability of oyster larvae to produce shells. The lesson is organized around an overall driving question and two more focused, investigative questions. The lesson has been designed for, and implemented in, both the middle and high school levels, and takes less than 250 instructional minutes. An extensive teacher's guide for the lesson is available and contains the activity setup and facilitation information, readings for teachers and students, scaffolding suggestions, student handouts, and anticipated student responses. While many OA activities for students focus on its effects on adult marine organisms, such as weakening and dissolving of shells, this lesson highlights how OA impacts the ability of larval oysters to build their shells, a critical process that must occur in the first 24 hours of life. This lesson was explicitly designed to engage students in three-dimensional learning, as called for by the "Next Generation Science Standards" ("NGSS"; NGSS Lead States 2013).

To enhance teaching and learning about Earth's climate and global climate change (GCC) in secondary science classrooms, the authors are engaged in a four-year, National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded project to develop, implement, and evaluate a new four-week curriculum module grounded in the use of a data-driven, computer-based climate modeling toolkit--EzGCM (see Forbes et al. 2020). Instructional approaches focused on investigations grounded in climate data have been successful in improving students' understanding of the global warming phenomenon, as well as the methods scientists use to develop the evidence (e.g., Holthius, Lotan, Saltzman, Mastrandrea, and Wild 2014). However, it is challenging to obtain, analyze, understand, and present large scientific data sets and complex computer models in the classroom. Tools such as EzGCM make modeling and big data more accessible to students and more appropriate for classroom teaching and learning. However, if not integrated meaningfully, students' interactions with these data and models remains superficial (Bowen and Rodger 2008). In this article, the authors describe their approach to using models to support students' reasoning about Earth's climate and GCC through the use of EzGCM.

Underrepresentation is endemic across disciplines and across time (National Science Foundation 2019), and extensive research clearly shows that this reflects bias and a lack of access, not a lack of ability in students from those underrepresented groups (National Research Council 2012). Systemic injustice is present in the teaching (Moss-Racusin 2012), learning, and practice (Leslie, 2015) of science, both historically and today. This is a moral problem, and also a pragmatic one. Research has shown that less-diverse scientific groups do less impactful work (Freeman and Huang 2014). Crucially, nobody is better positioned to address these systemic imbalances in science than science teachers. In this article, Moses Rifkin argues educators must help their students see through science how society needs improvement and give them tools to bring it about. But few resources exist for science teachers who want to bring social justice into the science classroom. Herein, Rifkin shares one such resource, the Underrepresentation Curriculum (URC)--a free set of lesson plans and resources, created and curated by science teachers to help fellow science teachers bring social justice to their classrooms--and how he implements it in the classroom.

Science is full of amazing facts, but at times it may be difficult to fully appreciate their significance without an understanding of the scientific practices that gave them meaning. The teaching of evolution may be an example of this situation; there are many interesting facts to consider, but it is equally important for students to learn where those facts come from and to have opportunities to weigh the evidence themselves. In this article, the authors share an activity they designed that allows students to take on the role of researchers and scientists themselves. In this task students collect and use evidence to determine the evolutionary relationship between three (carefully chosen) animals. This task is aligned to HS-LS4-1.

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.

The authors developed a lesson for teachers to integrate chemistry and culinary arts, providing students with an opportunity to participate in three-dimensional learning, engage in science and engineering practices, and apply disciplinary core content and crosscutting concepts (Krajcik et al. 2014). The project involved five classes: three integrated chemistry and physics (ICP) classes and two culinary arts (CA) classes, with mainly sophomores and juniors. The lesson was part of a larger interdisciplinary project involving multiple classes working together to develop a gingerbread house community with an interactive light and music show. The ICP students' task was to design a window panel on a gingerbread house out of candy with optimal transparency and provide data-driven recommendations to CA students for the proportion of sugars to use in the candy recipe. Students learned about the structure and properties of key components of candy (glucose and sucrose) and how the proportion of glucose and sucrose in the mixture affects the molecular structure, transparency, and hygroscopicity. (A hygroscopic substance is one that readily attracts water through its surroundings, through either absorption or adsorption. Hygroscopicity is the percentage of moisture on the surface.) This article describes the project with particular attention to the teacher scaffolding of the inquiry and examples of student artifacts.

Inquiry-based teaching aims to increase student engagement through the development of the hands-on, minds-on skills, such as critical thinking, collaboration, and communication, needed for the 21st century (The Partnership for 21st Century Skills 2015). This approach respects the complexities of the learning process, values the knowledge and experience students bring to the classroom, and prioritizes active problem solving, communication of findings, and the shared construction of new ideas. This notion of inquiry is at the heart of several pedagogical initiatives including project-based instruction, maker-centered learning, and the 5E learning cycle. The 5E Instructional Model, developed by the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS), evolved from previous learning cycles (Lawson 2002) and incorporates findings from research on teaching and cognition. The 5E model includes five stages: engagement, exploration, explanation, elaboration, and evaluation (Bybee et al. 2006). This article describes the 5E Learning Cycle and provides an overview of how a teacher candidate engaged her students in a 5E learning cycle to explore the process of saponification and learn the concept of pH.

In the 1990s, classes throughout the United States began participating in Classroom FeederWatch, sending data on birds they had seen at feeders in their schoolyards to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. The launch of eBird in 2002 opened up new possibilities for submitting data on all types of bird species, allowing users to record and upload information on species they have seen or heard. The database currently contains over 500 million observations, representing every country and almost all of the world's more than 10,000 bird species. In any location--urban, suburban, or rural--students can observe birds and share data through the eBird citizen science project. By submitting data to eBird, students join hundreds of thousands of citizen scientists throughout the world providing crucial support for professional scientists. Engaging students in investigations related to birds meets the "Framework for K-12 Science Education" goal by piquing their interest in relevant real-world science and opening a window into options for careers in fields ranging from ecology to computer science. This article examines how students have learned by participating in the eBird program and gives examples of lessons teachers have created using it.

Citizen science can provide insightful data to inform decisions, while also serving to enhance ecological awareness and foster environmental stewardship among participants. In this article, high school student citizen scientists investigate how trees respond to changing mountain climate during a field trip to Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP) to conduct a forest inventory. The field trip is part of an ongoing project in which students collect and analyze data to monitor changes in the ecological structure of forest communities. The data will help RMNP scientists better understand how tree species are adapting to a changing mountain climate. Facilitating this kind of place-based citizen science experience requires a significant amount of advance planning and preparation both in the field and the classroom. Through this experience students gain appreciation for scientific methods and what it takes to conduct science in the field while contributing to the citizen science database. Students practice critical skills such as analyzing scientific texts and data and producing evidence-based writing. Students connect to the natural world around their communities and gain a greater awareness of the impact that climate change and disturbance are having on Rocky Mountain forests. They also gain a greater respect for nature and the preservation of public lands.

Land use and development are complex issues rooted in ecology and environmental science as well as in politics and economics. This complexity lends itself to a problem-based learning (PBL) lesson for environmental science students. In the lesson described in this article, students investigated developing a city-owned, 13-acre site where a shopping mall had been demolished, leaving open land and a parking lot. This project allowed students to explore environmental science concepts and use science and engineering practices and communication skills. While students acknowledged that the process of considering multiple perspectives and devising a comprehensive plan was more challenging than they anticipated, all groups presented a final land use that was supported with evidence.

This inquiry-based lesson gets students moving to simulate chemical reactions in a way that allows them to visualize, understand, and retain information about chemical reactions in the stratosphere. Students then look at scientific data and conduct research to understand trends in the data and the impact of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). These activities, which align with the "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS Lead States 2013), allow students to make connections between human inventions and environmental degradation in a way that is engaging and relevant.

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.

In this activity, students learned scientific practices and evidence-based reasoning by formulating and testing hypotheses about factors affecting human reaction time and examining those hypotheses with data from ruler-drop tests. The project aligns with all eight of the science and engineering practices (SEP) embodied in the "Next Generation Science Standards."

In a 2014 report, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) projected that by the year 2022, minority students will outnumber non-Hispanic white students enrolled in public schools. As the diversity of the student population in the United States increases, concerns arise about student performance in science classes, especially among students of color. Hispanic and African-American students continue to under-perform on standardized science assessments, the NCES reports. Although these groups have shown small improvements in recent years, considerable achievement gaps persist for students of color (NCES 2012). As educators strive to implement the "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS Lead States 2013), addressing the needs of our shifting student demographics will become ever more important. This article discusses strategies proposed in the "NGSS" to make science more accessible to students of diverse backgrounds.

Teaching the children of today about nature is important as they become increasingly removed from the natural world. Children should be exposed to environmental issues so that they will become environmentally aware adults. This article describes a project in which high school biology students teach preschool students about a local environmental issue.

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.

This article describes a five-day online energy module, developed by the Concord Consortium (an educational research and development organization) in which students compare the effects of various energy sources on air quality, water quality, and land use. The module's interactive models explore hydraulic fracturing, real-world data on energy production and consumption, and scaffolded argumentation tasks to help students examine evidence and discuss the issues associated with claims based on models and data. The free module, which aligns with the "Next Generation Science Standards," runs on computers or tablets.

This summer, on August 21, 500 million people across North America will experience one of the most beautiful astronomical phenomena: an eclipse of the Sun. It will be a "must teach" moment, when all students will want to know the "what, when, and why" of the event. In addition, many high school science teachers are likely to be asked about it, not only in their classes, but in discussions with colleagues, family, and community members. Research shows that many high school students--and adults--fail to correctly understand the Earth-Sun-Moon system. For educators, the eclipse and its associated ideas provide the perfect opportunity to incorporate three-dimensional learning (3-D learning) into their teaching, as recommended by the "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS Lead States 2013), covering science and engineering practices (SEPs), disciplinary core ideas (DCIs), and crosscutting concepts (CCs). The goal of 3-D learning is to interweave the dimensions, so students see them as a connected whole. The authors present how to incorporate 3-D learning while learning about the Earth-Sun-Moon system.

The solar eclipse coming August 21 offers students the opportunity not only to explore the geometry of the solar system but also to learn about exoplanets transiting distant stars. Students can glimpse a great frontier of science: the search for other worlds and life. This article presents information on exoplanets, discovering planets around distant stars, and an activity to incorporate into the classroom.

To promote teaching science through inquiry, the author wanted to use his experience in the Galápagos to design a lesson that allows students to immerse themselves in the essential science and engineering practices identified in the "Next Generation Science Standards," as they ask questions; analyze and interpret data; engage in argument from evidence; and obtain, evaluate, and communicate information. Students may have preconceived ideas and sometimes misconceptions about evolution from their previous experiences, so a lesson plan must reflect the contemporary constructionist view of learning wherein students redefine, reorganize, expand, and change their initial concepts and views through classroom activities and experiences while interacting with other students and their environment. To satisfy these concerns, the author followed the 5E instructional model (Trowbridge, Bybee, and Powell 2000). This model describes a sequence of phases--engagement, exploration, explanation, elaboration, and evaluation--that align with both inquiry processes and constructivism. [This article is an updated version of an article published under the title "Investigating Island Evolution" in the February 2002 issue of "The Science Teacher." See EJ659938 for the original article.]

Learning about chromosomes is standard fare in biology classrooms today. However, students may find it difficult to understand the relationships among the "genome", "chromosomes", "genes", a "gene locus", and "alleles". In the simple activity described in this article, which follows the 5E approach (Bybee et al. 2006), students create paper models of chromosomes to learn how these terms are related and also to learn about the science and engineering practice of modeling. This activity should come after students have been taught DNA structure, including complementary base pairs (Adenine-Thymine; Guanine-Cytosine).

This year marks the U.S. National Park Service's 100th anniversary. Although the nation's first national park--Yellowstone--dates to 1872, the government organization protecting and administering the national parks was founded just a hundred years ago, in 1916. Many U.S. national parks were established to preserve their unique geology or biology. Over the years, their often stunning flora, fauna, and topography have been celebrated in many forms of artistic expression. This article describes ways to honor the centennial by integrating scientific concepts with the artistic endeavors that national parks inspire.

The goal of the Family Science Night (FSN) described in this article was to involve culturally and linguistically diverse families in school life so that students would be more vocal, successful, and interactive in science class. The project would also demonstrate to the students that their teacher valued their input in the classroom. The setting for the FSN was the International Newcomer Academy (INA) in Fort Worth, Texas. INA, which is both a middle school and high school, is a specialized institution where students experience their first year in public school as new immigrants. Students are educated in English and the content areas using sheltered instruction strategies, that is, strategies designed to make content comprehensible for ELLs, such as using visuals, promoting the use of the native language, and building background knowledge. The topic of the Family Science Night was Earth Day.

As institutions, science and science education alike have rarely included the perspectives and contributions of indigenous peoples pertaining to the natural world. Yet, people worldwide have benefited from the traditional ecological knowledge of indigenous communities. Western science and technology, though broadly worthwhile, have been a source of global environmental damage. Research has shown that indigenous ways of knowing can help students develop complex and multilogical understandings of the natural world. In particular, students can learn from native knowledge systems how to live in more sustainable ways. In this article, the authors describe a lesson on climate change that explored possibilities for a more multilogical science education. Ninth- and tenth-grade science students investigated collaborations between Inuit elders and Western scientists working to understand how climate change alters bird migration patterns. The lesson connects to the "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS Lead States 2013) and the nature of science. The authors conclude by discussing possibilities for integrating indigenous knowledge in science education.

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 vision of Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) "requires a dramatic departure from approaches to teaching and learning science occurring today in most science classrooms K-12" (Reiser 2013, p. 2). In this article the authors emphasize the importance of examining student misconceptions and correcting them with sense-making activities supported by the NGSS. Specifically, they suggest using activities that engage students in science and engineering practices that will help them develop their understanding of disciplinary core ideas and crosscutting concepts and, subsequently, the world around them. It is hoped that these strategies will be a helpful guide for working with student ideas in the future and will support the collective efforts as a science education community to support student learning.

Integrating engineering and science in the classroom can be challenging, and creating authentic experiences that address real-world problems is often even more difficult. "A Framework for K-12 Science Education" (NRC 2012), however, calls for high school graduates to be able to undertake more complex engineering design projects related to major global, national, and local issues. This article describes a partnership among a high school, college student group, and nonprofit organization that provides such an experience. The partnership resulted in a unit that integrated science content with engineering practices and supports the "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS Lead States 2013). The unit aims to help students: (1) understand the importance of conservation, calculate a personal carbon footprint, and know how to reduce it; (2) understand the science behind composting to design an effective compost bin; and (3) engage in elements of the engineering design process and successfully meet the needs of their "client," the nonprofit organization.

Animal biology is fascinating for its incredible diversity in life strategies. These strategies amaze scientists and can also fire the enthusiasm of science students. One group of animals impressive in this way is the phylum "Cnidaria," containing some 10,000 invertebrate species that include jellyfish, corals, sea anemones, hydroids, and siphonophores. Many students have seen the flower-like anemones living on rocks at tide pools. The starlet sea anemone, "Nematostella vectensis," is found in estuarine salt marshes on both coasts of North America and southern England. Scientists use it to study many aspects of cnidarian biology from population dynamics to cell and molecular biology. Students can collect "Nematostella" from mud flats, rear it in the classroom, feed it, and spawn it year-round to obtain embryos. "Nematostella" adapts to the changing temperature and salinity of the salt marsh environment, so it is tolerant of less-than-ideal culturing conditions, such as those in a school science lab. In this article, the authors describe how to care for "Nematostella" and provide sample experiments. Students can easily design and carry out their own investigations into "Nematostella" biology, promoting authentic, student-directed research.

The authors developed an integrated science-and-art program to engage science students from a performing arts high school in hands-on, inquiry based lab experiences. The students participated in eight biology-focused investigations at a local university with undergraduate mentors. After the laboratory phase of the project, the high school students were charged with generating ideas and producing original science-inspired art to strengthen their science communication skills and comprehension. A culminating exhibit allowed the student artists to share their scientific insights.

Although the "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS Lead States 2013) were released over two years ago, misconceptions about what they are--and are not--persist. The "NGSS" provide for consistent science education opportunities for all students--regardless of demographics--with a level of rigor expected in every location and community. All students can study and achieve in science. The "NGSS" are based upon the National Research Council's consensus report "A Framework for K-12 Science Education" (NRC 2012). The "NGSS" passed a fidelity review by the NRC in which reviewers analyzed the congruency of the standards with the vision and content of the "Framework." As a New York science teacher active in local, state, and national discussions about sciene standards, and a member of the "NGSS" writing team, the author has encountered common misconceptions about the "NGSS" in these discussions with fellow teachers. In this article, the author addresses the misconceptions most relevant in the science classroom.

Mobile devices have become a popular form of education technology, but little attention has been paid to the use of their sensors for data collection and analysis. This article describes some of the benefits of using mobile devices this way and presents five challenges to help students overcome common misconceptions about force and motion. The authors have used these challenges--and the apps they created to go along with them--in their physics classes but have also found them useful in environmental science, chemistry, and biology classes as well.

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.

The Innovative Technology in Science Inquiry (ITSI) project is a learning portal with hundreds of free, customizable science, math, and engineering activities funded by the National Science Foundation at the Concord Consortium, a nonprofit research and development organization dedicated to transforming education through technology. The project engages K-12 students in web-based STEM activities using probes and models. With these activities, students: (1) investigate problems through hands-on activities; (2) use technology to ask and answer questions; (3) collect and analyze data; and (4) engage in argumentation to defend claims with real evidence. ITSI activities come from the Concord Consortium's collection of classroom-tested exemplars. They follow the 5E Instructional Model and address the three dimensions of the "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS Lead States 2013) (see box, p. 61, and "On the web"). In this article, the authors offer a sample of the many activities available on the ITSI portal, describing one activity in biology and another in physics (see "On the web" for links to the activities).

The decline in hummingbird populations and shifts in their movements may adversely affect their role as pollinators and, in turn, plant biodiversity (Allen-Wardell et al. 1998). For example, Hadley et al. (2014) discovered that larger fragments of forest correlated with larger hummingbird populations and more seeds of "H. tortuosa" being produced. Citizen science engages people to collect, organize, and analyze scientific data at a scale beyond the capabilities of a single research lab. Due in part to the explosion of connectivity technology and social media, research projects using citizen science have increased dramatically, and citizen scientists have contributed to furthering understanding in a wide range of fields, from ecology to computer science (Bonney et al. 2014; Rosner 2013). Working as citizen scientists, students can collect and report data for projects beyond the classroom and actively contribute to furthering scientific knowledge (Jones et al. 2012). This article describes a project to support hummingbird conservation, in which the Oregon State University Citizen Science Hummingbird Project (OCSHP) uses student citizen scientists to better understand the populations and habitat preferences of rufous hummingbirds and other common hummingbird species in Oregon (Figures 2 and 3, p. 28). The OCSHP aims to determine whether--like the tropical species examined by OSU researchers--temperate hummingbirds are sensitive to deforestation and forest fragmentation. Several species of tropical hummingbirds prefer large patches of connected forest and tend to travel in forested habitat while avoiding open areas (Volpe et al. 2014). The OCSHP was started in 2012 through a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded research project. The principal investigators of the study partnered with the Oregon Natural Resources Education Program to include citizen science studies in Oregon that paralleled the research questions of the NSF-funded study. The goal of the OCSHP is to have students build a data set to help determine whether changes in forest cover and human development lead to hummingbird decline.