Essential Science for Teachers: Physical Science - Extending the Particle Model of Matter
In this session, participants extend their understanding of the particle model to explain additional macroscopic phenomena, including the electrical properties of matter. Participants review the progression of ideas covered in the course and anticipate future developments in the understanding of matter.
Essential Science for Teachers: Life Science - What is Life?
What distinguishes living things from dead and nonliving things? No single characteristic is enough to define what is meant by "life." In this session, five characteristics are introduced as unifying themes in the living world.
Essential Science for Teachers: Life Science - Classifying Living Things
How can we make sense of the living world? During this session, a systematic approach to biological classification is introduced as a starting point for understanding the nature of the remarkable diversity of life on Earth.
Essential Science for Teachers: Life Science - Animal Life Cycles
One characteristic of all life forms is a life cycle-from reproduction in one generation to reproduction in the next. This session introduces life cycles by focusing on continuity of life in the animal kingdom. In addition to considering what aspects of life cycles can be observed directly, the underlying role of DNA as the hereditary material is explored.
Essential Science for Teachers: Life Science - Plant Life Cycles
What is a plant? One distinguishing feature of members of the plant kingdom is their life cycle. In this session, flowering plants serve as examples for studying the plant life cycle by considering the roles of seeds, flowers, and fruits. A comparison to animal life cycles reveals some surprising similarities and intriguing differences.
Essential Science for Teachers: Life Science - Variation, Adaptation, and Natural Selection
What causes variation within a population of living things? How can variation in one generation influence the next generation? In this session, variation in a population will be examined as the "raw material" upon which natural selection acts.
Essential Science for Teachers: Life Science - Evolution and the Tree of Life
Why are there so many different kinds of living things? Comparing species that exist today reveals a lot about their relationships to one another and provides evidence of common origins. This session explores the theory of evolution: change in species over time.
Essential Science for Teachers: Life Science - Energy Flow in Communities
Communities are populations of organisms that live and interact together. The structure of a community is defined by food web interactions. The process of energy flow is the focus of this session as the interactions between producers, consumers, and decomposers are examined.
Essential Science for Teachers: Life Science - Material Cycles in Ecosystems
Studying an ecosystem involves looking at interactions between living things as well as the nonliving environment that surrounds them. Life depends upon the nonliving world for habitat, as well as energy and materials. In this session, material cycles will be explored as critical processes that sustain life in an ecosystem.
Science in Focus: Energy - What is Energy?
Interviews about energy with children, scientists, and people on the street reveal the wide range of concepts that teachers encounter. In this session, you will look at the differences between the everyday language of energy and the scientific concept, see highlights of its history, and learn its importance in our understanding of the world.