We’ve got four free professional development webinars coming up in the month of April. The first two are specifically for middle school math and science teachers. The second two are for elementary teachers but plenty of the content would be appropriate for older students. Librarians and media specialists, science specialists, informal educators, and others will […]

Summer brings us many pleasures: a long break from school, vacations, lots of sunshine, and the occasional rainbow, all against a background of electromagnetic radiation! Despite the negative connotation “radiation” sometimes carries, it’s often more useful to us than harmful. Here are a few resources to enlighten you and your students.
Electromagnetic Spectrum
Students will enjoy […]

Even though your students use electricity every day and would not want to be without it for a single day, they probably haven’t yet given much thought to its importance as an energy source. According to the National Standards for Science Education, middle schoolers should be building on their K-4 experiences with electricity and becoming […]

The National Science Education Standards (NSES) tell us that students in grades 5-8 should “begin to see the connections among . . . [energy forms] and to become familiar with the idea that energy is an important property of substances and that most change involves energy transfer.” Yet there is no explicit direction to introduce […]