Contains comprehensive content that introduces your students to key earth science concepts including energy, plate tectonics, weathering, earthquakes, volcanoes, and ecosystems. The text also integrates important ideas in science such as heat, density and buoyancy.

Provides many approaches to help students learn science: direct instruction from the teacher, textbooks and supplementary materials for reading, and laboratory investigations and experiments to perform. It also provides for the regular teaching and practice of reading and vocabulary skills students need to use a science textbook successfully.

Science Learning and Instruction describes advances in understanding the nature of science learning and their implications for the design of science instruction. The authors show how design patterns, design principles, and professional development opportunities coalesce to create and sustain effective instruction in each primary scientific domain: earth science, life science, and physical science. Calling for more in depth and less fleeting coverage of science topics in order to accomplish knowledge integration, the book highlights the importance of designing the instructional materials, the examples that are introduced in each scientific domain, and the professional development that accompanies these materials. It argues that unless all these efforts are made simultaneously, educators cannot hope to improve science learning outcomes. The book also addresses how many policies, including curriculum, standards, guidelines, and standardized tests, work against the goal of integrative understanding, and discusses opportunities to rethink science education policies based on research findings from instruction that emphasizes such understanding.