Plant a seed of interest in science and watch it grow! Your budding scientist is sure to enjoy learning about weather, plants, insects, reptiles, birds, mammals, and more through informative activities and hands-on experiments such as "condensation on a can" or a model for air pressure. They can make their very own rainbow on a sunny day or be a "flake detective" on the next snowy day. Build a pinecone bird feeder, separate fact from superstition, power through themed mazes, or break the "spider code." Develop vocabulary and reading comprehension skills, and also find suggestions for subject-related storybooks and informational books. Fun facts and the occasional riddle add to the joy. What a great STEM friend!

2018 Outstanding Academic Title, Choice Ambitious Science Teaching outlines a powerful framework for science teaching to ensure that instruction is rigorous and equitable for students from all backgrounds. The practices presented in the book are being used in schools and districts that seek to improve science teaching at scale, and a wide range of science subjects and grade levels are represented. The book is organized around four sets of core teaching practices: planning for engagement with big ideas; eliciting student thinking; supporting changes in students’ thinking; and drawing together evidence-based explanations. Discussion of each practice includes tools and routines that teachers can use to support students’ participation, transcripts of actual student-teacher dialogue and descriptions of teachers’ thinking as it unfolds, and examples of student work. The book also provides explicit guidance for “opportunity to learn” strategies that can help scaffold the participation of diverse students. Since the success of these practices depends so heavily on discourse among students, Ambitious Science Teaching includes chapters on productive classroom talk. Science-specific skills such as modeling and scientific argument are also covered. Drawing on the emerging research on core teaching practices and their extensive work with preservice and in-service teachers, Ambitious Science Teaching presents a coherent and aligned set of resources for educators striving to meet the considerable challenges that have been set for them.