Tag Archives: lesson plans

Sylvia Shugrue Award winners 2007-2012

Bookmark and Share

The Sylvia Shugrue Award for Elementary school teachers honors one elementary school teacher who creates and makes use of interdisciplinary, inquiry-based lesson plans. To qualify, teachers submit a lesson plan with fully referenced sources of information and any relevant National Science Education Standards and benchmarks found in The Atlas of Science Literacy. Since the award’s [...]

Posted in Early Years | Also tagged , | Leave a comment

Picture-perfect elementary STEM

Bookmark and Share

This morning in New Orleans, as part of the Urban Science Education Leadership (USEL) session, presenters from the Baltimore City Public Schools described their district’s Elementary STEM Teacher Clinic and how it transformed the teachers who participated in it.

Posted in Conferences, NSTA Reports | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Chemistry of dispersants

Bookmark and Share

Oil is a stew of hydrocarbon molecules. Oil doesn’t sink, it floats, and when it spills, it spreads out in a thin sheen. Parts of the oil spill, asphaltenes, froth up and emulsify in waves, becoming tarry globules of hydrocarbon chains mixed with other molecules (nitrogen, oxygen, and sulfur, as well as trace amounts of [...]

Posted in NSF Videos and Lessons | Also tagged , | Leave a comment

STEM classroom activities

Bookmark and Share

The July 2011 release of the Framework for K-12 Science Education, from the National Academies, places new emphasis on the topic of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in the discussion of K–12 education priorities. The Framework recommends building science education in grades K–12 around three major dimensions: scientific and engineering practices; cross-cutting concepts that [...]

Posted in NSTA Press Books | Also tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Chemistry Now, week 16: biotoxins

Bookmark and Share

What can be a poison in one form can be therapeutic in another, which begins to explain why researchers would look to the biotoxins produced by warm water dwelling snails for solutions to chronic pain and a host of other neurological conditions in humans. The venom of some snails has been shown to be 1000 [...]

Posted in NSF Videos and Lessons | Also tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Chemistry Now, week 14: flower color

Bookmark and Share

In a sea of green vegetation, you’ll find reds, yellows, oranges, blues, and purples—a beautiful range of colors that pop out, saying to insects and other pollinators, “visit me, visit me, no, not that one…. me!” Flower colors have evolved to attract  certain kinds of insects and birds, which ensures they can propagate the next [...]

Posted in NSF Videos and Lessons | Also tagged , , | 1 Comment

Chemistry Now, week 15: nylon

Bookmark and Share

“Though wholly fabricated from such common raw materials as coal, water and air, nylon can be fashioned into filaments as strong as steel, as fine as the spider’s web, yet more elastic than any of the common natural fibers and possessing a beautiful luster.” A Dupont Press Release announcing the development of nylon Strong as [...]

Posted in NSF Videos and Lessons | Also tagged , | Leave a comment

The gourmet science lab

Bookmark and Share

Activities that focus on food and cooking can help students see how relevant and fascinating science can be in everyday life.  In a recent illustration of the enduring appeal of food’s scientific underpinnings, one of the most sought-after classroom slots for Harvard undergraduates is in the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences’ course “Science [...]

Posted in NSTA Press Books | Also tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

Chemistry Now, week 13: chemistry to dye for

Bookmark and Share

Reds and pinks, oranges, yellows, greens, blues, purples, browns, even grays and blacks, these represent a spectrum of colors that we take for granted thanks to synthetic dyes, but once weavers and fabric makers took great pains to extract these colors and fix them to textiles. Dyers made the colors from lichen, henna, rose madder [...]

Posted in NSF Videos and Lessons | Also tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Chemistry Now, week 12: clean chemistry: under the sink

Bookmark and Share

Ammonia is one of the chemicals that feeds the world. No, you shouldn’t drink it from a bottle, and mixing it into your flan would be a bad idea, but about 83% of ammonia produced industrially is used as fertilizers, either as salts or as solutions, and it is estimated that fertilizer generated from ammonia [...]

Posted in NSF Videos and Lessons | Also tagged , | Leave a comment