If you and your students can't get enough of a good thing, Volume 2 of Uncovering Student Ideas in Physical Science is just what you need. The book offers 39 new formative assessment probes, this time with a focus on electric charge, electric current, and magnets and electromagnetism. It can help you do everything from demystify electromagnetic fields to explain the real reason balloons stick to the wall after you rub them on your hair. Like the other eight wildly popular books in the full series, Uncovering Student Ideas in Physical Science, Volume 2: - Provides a collection of engaging questions, or formative assessment probes. Each probe in this volume is designed to uncover what students know-- or think they know-- about electric or magnetic phenomena or identify misunderstandings they may develop during instruction. - Offers field-tested teacher materials that provide " best answers" along with distracters designed to reveal misconceptions that students commonly hold. - Is easy to use by time-starved teachers like you. The new probes are short, easy-to-administer activities that come ready to reproduce. In addition to explaining the science content, the teacher materials note links to national standards and suggest grade-appropriate ways to present material so students will learn it accurately. By helping you detect and then make sound instructional decisions to address students' misconceptions, this new volume has the potential to transform your teaching.

V. 1. Physical science assessment probes -- Life, Earth, and space science assessment probes.

What do your students know-- or think they know-- about what causes night and day, why days are shorter in winter, and how to tell a planet from a star? Find out with this book on astronomy, the latest in NSTA' s popular Uncovering Student Ideas in Science series. The 45 astronomy probes provide situations that will pique your students' interest while helping you understand how your students think about key ideas related to the universe and how it operates. The book is organized into five sections: the Nature of Planet Earth; the Sun-Earth System; Modeling the Moon; Dynamic Solar System; and Stars, Galaxies, and the Universe. As the authors note, it' s not always easy to help students untangle mistaken ideas. Using this powerful set of tools to identify students' preconceptions is an excellent first step to helping your students achieve scientific understanding.

This is a must-have book if you're going to tackle the challenging concepts of force and motion in your classroom. --

Author Page Keeley continues to provide KOCo12 teachers with her highly usable and popular formula for uncovering and addressing the preconceptions that students bring to the classroomOCothe formative assessment probeOCoin this first book devoted exclusively to life science in her Uncovering Student Ideas in Science series. Keeley addresses the topics of life and its diversity; structure and function; life processes and needs of living things; ecosystems and change; reproduction, life cycles, and heredity; and human biology."

If you' re new to formative assessment probes, you' ll love this timely addition to the bestselling Uncovering Student Ideas in Science series. Authors Page Keeley and Laura Tucker give you 32 engaging questions, or probes, that can reveal what your students already know-- or think they know-- about core Earth and environmental science concepts. Armed with those insights, you can use the probes' teacher notes to adjust your approach and present the science in grade-appropriate ways so students will learn the content accurately. If you' re among the thousands of educators who love the Uncovering Student Ideas in Science series and crave probes specifically about Earth and environmental science, you' re in luck. The probes are organized into four sections: land and water; water cycle, weather, and climate; Earth history, weathering and erosion, and plate tectonics; and natural resources, pollution, and human impact. The 10th book in this wildly popular, award-winning series offers field-tested teacher materials that provide science background and link to national standards, including the Next Generation Science Standards. The new probes are short, ready to reproduce, and easy to use. Why wait? It' s time to help your students demystify why the ocean is salty, how old the Earth is, and which direction water swirls when it goes down the drain.

What student—or teacher—can resist the chance to experiment with Rocket Launchers, Drinking Birds, Dropper Poppers, Boomwhackers, Flying Pigs, and more? The 54 experiments in Using Physics Gadgets and Gizmos, Grades 9–12, encourage your high school students to explore a variety of phenomena involved with pressure and force, thermodynamics, energy, light and color, resonance, buoyancy, two-dimensional motion, angular momentum, magnetism, and electromagnetic induction. The authors say there are three good reasons to buy this book: 1. To improve your students’ thinking skills and problem-solving abilities 2. To acquire easy-to-perform experiments that engage students in the topic 3. To make your physics lessons waaaaay more cool The phenomenon-based learning (PBL) approach used by the authors—two Finnish teachers and a U.S. professor—is as educational as the experiments are attention-grabbing. Instead of putting the theory before the application, PBL encourages students to first experience how the gadgets work and then grow curious enough to find out why. Students engage in the activities not as a task to be completed but as exploration and discovery. The idea is to help your students go beyond simply memorizing physics facts. Using Physics Gadgets and Gizmos can help them learn broader concepts, useful critical-thinking skills, and science and engineering practices (as defined by the Next Generation Science Standards). And—thanks to those Boomwhackers and Flying Pigs—both your students and you will have some serious fun. For more information about hands-on materials for Using Physical Science Gadgets and Gizmos books, visit Arbor Scientific at http://www.arborsci.com/nsta-hs-kits