During a two-week inquiry-based 5E learning cycle unit, children made observations and inferences to guide their explorations of animal traits and habitats (Bybee 2014). The children became "animal detectives" by studying a live-feed webcam and digital images of wolves in their natural habitat, reading books and online sources about…

Children are natural scientists full of curiosity. This curiosity allows them to ask questions about and to investigate their surroundings. Since science is not just a collection of facts to be learned, but rather investigations that need to be made, teachers should encourage that natural curiosity in the classroom. Luckily, the "Next…

Bugs, slugs, bacteria, and fungi are decomposers at the heart of every ecosystem. Fifth graders at Dodge Intermediate School in Twinsburg, Ohio, ventured outdoors to learn about the necessity of these amazing organisms. With the help of a naturalist, students explored their local park and discovered the wonder of decomposers and their…

The activity shared here is an animal role-playing lesson developed, field-tested, and refined for "Nature's Neighborhood", a newly designed children's education facility at the Toledo Zoo. The activity is targeted at students in kindergarten through second grade, but it can be adapted for use in grades three and four as well. Through…

When working with elementary students, one never knows when that moment of "magic" will happen. For the author, an environmentalist who also conducts outreach activities with elementary students, one of the best of these experiences happened during a water-exploration trip in Ohio. This article describes how he used tools such as a hand…

The author recently conducted a case study describing the process a suburban Ohio school district underwent when adopting a new elementary science program. The district's seven elementary schools moved from a "totally inquiry-based science program" in 1995 to a hybrid program of "inquiry-based and textbook science program" in…

What Australia, Alaska, Qatar, Indiana, and Ohio have in common is the authentic writing More Observations Of Nature (MOON) project. In this unique project, teachers from these disparate geographic locations teamed up to instruct children in grades four through eight via the internet on a nearly universally challenging subject for teachers in the…

To develop scientific literacy in today's global era, however, it is important that students learn about interactions within the Earth's systems worldwide. A unit exploring El Nino and La Nina-phenomena that can result in extreme weather events in locations all around the world-can help bridge this gap and broaden students awareness of global…