This article lists common misconceptions about weather, climate change, and the polar regions. It provides formative assessment probes and information about teaching for conceptual change.

This article lists common misconceptions about weathering, erosion, volcanoes, and earthquakes. It provides formative assessment probes and information about teaching for conceptual change.

This task is appropriate for assessing student's understanding of differences of signed numbers. Because the task asks how many degrees the temperature drops, it is correct to say that "the temperature drops 61.5 degrees." However, some might think that the answer should be that the temperature is "changing -61.5" degrees. Having students write the answer in sentence form will allow teachers to interpret their response in a way that a purely numerical response would not.

The purpose of this task is to generate a classroom discussion that helps students synthesize what they have learned about multiplication in previous grades.

This task can be used to either build or assess initial understandings related to rational approximations of irrational numbers.

Students must calculate the volume of a cone in this real world task.

Many students will not know that when comparing two quantities, the percent decrease between the larger and smaller value is not equal to the percent increase between the smaller and larger value. Students would benefit from exploring this phenomenon with a problem that uses smaller values before working on this one.

The purpose of this task is for students to compare a number and its product with other numbers that are greater than and less than one.

In this task students are required to compare numbers that are identified by word names and not just digits. The order of the numbers described in words are intentionally placed in a different order than their base-ten counterparts so that students need to think carefully about the value of the numbers.

In this task students are required to compare numbers that are identified by word names and not just digits. The order of the numbers described in words are intentionally placed in a different order than their base-ten counterparts so that students need to think carefully about the value of the numbers.

Accuracy of measurement in navigation depends very much on the situation. If a sailor's target is an island 200 km wide, sailing off center by 10 or 20 km is not a major problem. But, if the island were only 1 km wide, it would be missed if off just the smallest bit. Many of the measurements made while navigating involve angles, and a small error in the angle can translate to a much larger error in position when traveling long distances.

The purpose of this series of tasks is to build in a natural way from accessible, concrete problems involving volume to a more abstract understanding of volume. The purpose of this first task is to see the relationship between the side-lengths of a cube and its volume.

The purpose of this series of tasks is to build in a natural way from accessible, concrete problems involving volume to a more abstract understanding of volume. In this iteration, we do away with the lines that delineate individual unit cubes (which makes it more abstract) and generalize from cubes to rectangular prisms.

The purpose of this series of tasks is to build in a natural way from accessible, concrete problems involving volume to a more abstract understanding of volume. Here, we are given the volume and are asked to find the height.

The purpose of this series of tasks is to build in a natural way from accessible, concrete problems involving volume to a more abstract understanding of volume. This problem is based on ArchimedesŐ Principle that the volume of an immersed object is equivalent to the volume of the displaced water.

With the help of simple, teacher-led demonstration activities, students learn the basic concepts of heat transfer by means of conduction, convection, and radiation. Students then apply these concepts as they work in teams to solve two problems. One problem requires that they maintain the warm temperature of one soda can filled with water at approximately body temperature, and the other problem is to cause an identical soda can of warm water to cool as much as possible during the same thirty-minute time interval. Students design their solutions using only common, everyday materials. They record the water temperatures in their two soda cans every five minutes, and prepare line graphs in order to visually compare their results to the temperature of an unaltered control can of water.

This article describes six collaborative and real data projects that engage elementary students in collecting and sharing local data and communicating with students across the country and world.

The purpose of this task is to have students think about the meaning of multiplying a number by a fraction, and to use this understanding of fraction multiplication to make sense of the commutative property of multiplication in the case of fractions.

This article from the free online magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle provides appropriate science lessons for Grades K-5. The focus is on acquainting young learners with climate-change concepts that are not too complex for their grade level and will not frighten them. In each issue, the magazine develops articles around one of the seven essential principles of climate science. The author believes early lessons about water availability and extreme weather events will prepare students for complex climate concepts they will encounter in later grades.