NSTA Press – serie

Productive Uncertainty in Science Education provides the support that teachers and students need for more complex science investigations.Science is driven by the need to manage uncertainty—uncertainty about how to explain the world, but also how to represent the world in an investigation, what to measure, and how to convince peers to see what the scientist wants them to see. For children, uncertainty supports engagement with materials, more purposeful science practice, and deeper conceptual understanding, yet classroom investigations typically reflect little of the uncertainty that scientists grapple with. How can we move past cookbook science investigations and provide the support that teachers and students need for more complex work?This book introduces a framework describing specific forms of science activity, shares stories of children engaging with uncertainty, and provides practical supports to help K– 2 teachers deepen their science teaching practice. The text includes tools for building classroom norms, planning and adapting investigations, leading discussions, and designing student sheets and other forms of support. The framework, tools, and examples are drawn from research conducted in partnership with elementary teachers and instructional leaders and have been applied in secondary science classrooms as well.Book Features: A new way of building engagement and supporting science practice through centering uncertainty, an essential human and scientific experience.Inspiring examples of students engaging in science practices, developed with teacher collaborators.A suite of tools to support the design, adaptation, and implementation of rich investigations for the science classroom.Sample classroom dialogue showing how teachers can facilitate student discussions that foster and build from uncertainty.A companion website with additional investigations, real classroom case studies, and helpful resources and tools (investigationsproject.org).

How do our bodies manage to heal wounds, build the stamina to run marathons, and give us the energy—even while we’re sleeping—to keep us alive and functioning? Matter and Energy for Growth and Activity prompts high school students to explore fascinating questions like these. It takes a new approach to teaching essential ideas about food, human body systems, matter and energy changes, and chemical reactions.Developed by a team of scientists and science educators and then tested in classrooms, the 14 phenomena-based lessons in this book follow a coherent sequence. They unfold in two main sections: (1) making sense of the matter changes involved in human growth and (2) making sense of the energy changes involved in human growth and activity. Matter and Energy is unique because it does the following:• Targets important ideas about changes in both physical and biological systems within the same unit. The book first engages students in seeing the usefulness of the ideas in making sense of phenomena in simple physical systems. Then it shows how to apply these ideas to make sense of related phenomena in complex biological systems. This interdisciplinary approach reflects the way science is practiced in the real world.• Supports all three dimensions of the Next Generation Science Standards. Disciplinary core ideas, crosscutting concepts, and science practices are all integrated in this unit.• Emphasizes important relationships between mathematics and science. Students interpret data sets and graphs to provide evidence for claims. They also do simple computations to explain puzzling phenomena—for example, why does energy have to be added to ignite a marshmallow even though the burning marshmallow releases lots of energy?• Builds on the middle school unit Toward High School Biology (also published by NSTA Press). Together the two units help students deepen their understanding of matter and energy changes in plants and animals and the role of chemical reactions in the growth, repair, and activity of living organisms.Matter and Energy for Growth and Activity, Student Edition provides all the student handouts with the teaching tips and sample answers found in the Teacher Edition removed. A set of online resources includes the interactive media, videos, and handouts required to use these experiential lessons. Between both books, you have the support you need to help your students turn abstract ideas into applicable knowledge—a critical first step in learning.