The Mixed Media Bag

This simple but effective laboratory exercise helps middle school students understand the concept of solubility through hands-on experience with a variety of liquids and solids. As they explore factors that affect solubility and saturation, students gain content mastery and an understanding of the inquiry process. The exercise also enables teachers to authentically assess student performance on several levels. The authors have discovered that students and teachers benefit from using such an interactive, hands-on approach.     

Gardening for Homonyms: Integrating Science and Language Arts to Support Children's Creative Use of Multiple Meaning Words

Curriculum integration can increase the presence of science at the elementary level. The purpose of this article is to share how two second-grade teachers have integrated language arts content as a part of science-language arts instruction in a garden-based learning context. One application was a teacher-designed Gardening for Homonyms lesson, which supported new ways of thinking about words and wordplay while developing science vocabulary related to structure and function, diversity of life, and interdependent relationships in ecosystems. This article provides the lesson and discusses its implementation in two second-grade classrooms. Examples of student work illustrate children's creative thought around and application of multiple meaning words. Pre-, post-, and extended posttest measures of students' ability to generate and to use homonyms demonstrate that this science-language arts integrated lesson can result in both short- and long-term learning. Applications and follow-up from the lesson over two subsequent years have engaged second and third grade students in study/inquiry about plant growth and life cycles while utilizing many facets of language arts, which have ranged from labeling an experimental design and writing predictions and results to conversing about digital “GigaPan” images on growing strawberries.     

Causing Physical Change to Create Art

The presentation involves students in a hands-on analysis of artifacts to create a time line of their local area's past societies. This exercise is more of a unit rather than a one-time activity. Procedures, ideas, and background for developing your own unit are presented in this article. The purpose of this unit is to engage students in applying the scientific method to archaeological research. Students will gain experience in designing and conducting their own investigations.     

A Parental-Involvement Homework Activity

This activity is the result of a school-university collaboration among four educators (two intermediate classroom teachers, a vice-principal/teacher, and a university-based teacher educator/researcher) who worked together to improve the quality of learning in the classroom. The educators combined their teaching expertise to plan and co-teach an integrated science and music unit in a grade 4 and a grade 4/5 class. In this six-part unit students rotate through sound exploratory centers and conduct investigations to learn how different factors such as the size, material, and contents of containers affect the behavior of sound. Students also design and make their own instruments.     

利用混合厌氧堆肥进行污水处理的研究

目的：采用堆肥技术处理城市污泥以实现城市污泥的农用资源化进行了研究。方法：重点分析了污泥与粉煤灰混合厌氧堆肥过程中重金属铜稳定化的效果,分别按照污泥与粉煤灰质量比为1∶1;3∶1和4∶1进行混合,在常温下进行厌氧堆肥17d。结果：实验表明污泥与粉煤灰3∶1混合堆肥过程中铜的稳定化效果最佳。结论：堆肥过程有利于污泥的资源化利用。     

Using Inquiry to Learn about Soil: A Fourth Grade Experience

In this article, we describe a fourth-grade inquiry unit on soil. The unit was designed and taught by preservice elementary teachers as part of a university science methods course. Using a student-driven inquiry approach to designing curriculum, the unit engaged fourth graders in learning about the physical properties soil, erosion, worms, and plants. Hands-on activities, literacy strategies, and informational texts and websites were used to build student learning.     

The essential elements of science and management in coastal environmental managements

Coastal environmental management requires timely and appropriate policy, management and technological interventions to address a host of interrelated environmental problems arising from unplanned and unregulated coastal developments. These interventions can only be effective if they are based on sound scientific (including socioeconomic) information. Thus, science plays a significant role in the environmental management of coastal and marine areas. This paper highlights the essential components of environmental coastal management that require scientific interventions, particularly in providing the scientific basis for policy interventions, and preventive and/or mitigating measures. The integration and packaging of scientific information for management actions require an interdisciplinary effort to address identified management problems. Scientific research should respond to management needs and make contributions to the better understanding of ecosystems and their responses to human interventions. Scientific information urgently required for management includes an understanding of interactions in coastal resource systems, identification, evaluation and prioritization of management issues, management strategies and actions, and development of methodologies and tools for environmental management. Obstacles to management-oriented research have also been identified to include defective perception among scientists, defective communication between scientists and decision makers, intellectual and cultural arrogance, and inadequate technical and management capability at the local level. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

蚯蚓堆制处理对农业有机废弃物的化学及生物学影响的主成分分析

在实验室可控条件下,以碳氮比28.7∶1的农业有机废弃物（牛粪和稻秆）为赤子爱胜蚓(Eisenia foetida)的培养基质,研究蚯蚓的堆制作用对有机物料的化学及生物学特性的影响.结果表明： 蚯蚓堆制处理30 d后,基质pH值、碳氮比显著降低,全磷显著升高,而全氮、碱解氮、可溶性碳、速效磷、微生物生物量碳、呼吸速率和微生物熵分别提高8.5%、2.6%、18%、63%、212%、44%和300%,有机质、呼吸熵分别降低5.0%和21.9%.蚯蚓堆制处理后物料具有较高的转化酶、酸性和碱性磷酸酶活性,较低的过氧化氢酶和脲酶活性.多元数据分析结果显示,自然堆制和蚯蚓堆制处理物料的化学和生物学特性均呈现显著的差异性.蚯蚓堆制处理优于自然堆制处理,可以明显改善有机物料的化学、生物学性质,是一种高效率处理农业有机废弃物的技术.     

Investigating Minerals: Promoting Integrated Inquiry

"Mineral Detectives!" is one of eighteen lessons in the Private Whys? integrated science unit, which uses a guided inquiry investigation to teach students in grades three through five about the role of minerals in our lives. The University of North Texas developed Private Whys? with funding from the Copper Development Association. This lesson can easily be implemented in the classroom, and the entire unit can naturally be integrated into existing elementary school curricula.     

Learning about the Environment

In this article, the authors describe an integrated science and literacy instructional model in which students build background knowledge by engaging in free-choice learning options during an investigation of school yard habitats. Students interact with their peers while inquiring, discussing findings, and using print resources to enhance learning.     

Modeling the States of Matter in a First-Grade Classroom

ABSTRACT

Scientific modeling along with hands-on inquiry can lead to a deeper understanding of scientific concepts among students in upper elementary grades. Even though scientific modeling involves abstract-thinking processes, can students in younger elementary grades successfully participate in scientific modeling? Scientific modeling, like all other aspects of scientific inquiry, has to be developed. This article clearly outlines how students in a first-grade classroom can develop and use scientific models to explain the properties and behaviors of solids, liquids, and gases in a unit on the states of matter.     

Local Tree Mapping: A Collaborative,Place-Based Activity Integrating Science,Technology, Math,and Geography

This inquiry-based activity designed for the fifth through 12th grade allows students to engage in an outdoor, place-based experience, working collaboratively both in groups and as a class to accomplish the class goal of creating a local tree map linked to student-collected data about each tree. During Local Tree Mapping, students explore the local trees in the yard or neighborhood of the school, while learning basic skills in geographical information systems and Microsoft Excel. Through this activity, students gain a deeper understanding of and appreciation for the role of trees within the Earth's ecosystems, as they collect data on tree type, height, diameter, age, and the longitude and latitude of the trees. An extension activity is described in which students can enter their tree data into a carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions reduction calculator to determine how much CO₂ is sequestered by the trees in their research site. Local Tree Mapping provides an opportunity for students to gain inquiry skills in science, mathematics, and geography as they participate firsthand in the collection, analysis, and presentation of real-world data that can be utilized by the local community.     

"探究性教学"解析

新一轮基础教育改革十分重视探究性教学的实施,但是探究性教学的研究与实践在我国尚处在起步阶段,为更好地理解探究性教学,促进它的研究与实施,试从历史发展的角度探讨探究性教学的若干关系。     

The Monkey and the Hunter

Learning about the water situation in other regions of the world and the devastating effects of floods on drinking water helps students study science while learning about global water quality. This article provides science activities focused on developing cultural awareness and understanding how local water resources are integrally linked to the quality of the world's water supply. After reading and discussing a case study highlighting one water situation facing the people of Kenya, students explore water sanitation and testing methods, including solar pasteurization and the Colilert test for total coliform bacteria and Escherichia coli. These investigations are relevant to inquiry-based water quality labs for high school biology, chemistry, and environmental science.     

探究式课程设计在医学生临床决策能力培养中的探索

临床决策能力是一个医生的必备能力之一，是医学教育中必要且重要的培养目标之一。目前对医学生临床决策能力的培养没有形成完备的体系，一般安排在高年级阶段进行，为时较晚。如何把临床决策能力的培养融入低年级基础课中，以尽早开展能力训练值得探索研究。本研究以医学遗传学课程为例，结合探究式教学方式的特点，模拟临床决策思维过程的各细分模块，优化了课程设计，探索在低年级课程中融入临床决策能力的培养。结果提示：探究式课程设计能充分调动学生主动性，增加学生分析、思考的投入；在教师引导下，促使学生依循临床决策思维的过程得到有效地训练。最后，整理分析了探究式课程设计及实践的思路，总结了设计原则和要点，反思了教学中的经验得失。