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 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.

This article describes online artifact collections available through the Arctic Studies Center, a part of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. The collection includes artifacts and background information about the peoples of Alaska and Northeast Siberia.

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.

The author explains heat transfer and how it applies to living in extremely cold environments.

This article highlights the five essential components of cooperative learning, provides a quick overview of the research behind the strategy, describes three of the most common types, and offers ideas on how to get started using cooperative learning at the elementary level.

The concepts that underlie the fourth essential principle of climate literacy ("Climate varies over space and time through both natural and man-made processes.") are too complex for students in early and upper-level elementary school, but the foundational knowledge can be taught within existing curriculums and standards. This foundational knowledge will lead to understanding in later years. The author shows the correlation to the national science education standards, identifies misconceptions among elementary school students, suggests formative assessment probes, and identifies lessons and activities to make curriculum connections. The free, online magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle is based on the seven essential principles of the climate sciences.

In this lesson, students demonstrate how the cotton gin, and expanding cotton production, fostered regional interdependence and Northern industrial growth during the antebellum period. Students will also be introduced to the processes of creating and protecting intellectual property.

This article profiles Linda Deegan, scientist with the Arctic Long-Term Ecological Research site in the Kuparuk River region of Alaska, as she counts and tags Arctic grayling as they migrate from streams to lakes in the fall.

This article introduces a free online collection of images, video clips, and animations that teachers can use in creating resources for use with students. The four steps in creating a video clip, an animation, or other resource are presented.

This article provides an overview of Teaching Tolerance, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center that provides educators with free resources around the areas of equity, justice, and tolerance.

This article discusses how creating Readers Theater scripts from informational text can improve fluency and build comprehension.

This article discusses the importance of student feedback in creating a respectful, equitable classroom.

This article describes how curriculum compacting can be used to meet the needs of gifted students within the regular classroom.

This nonfiction article, written for students in grades 4-5, explores the life and seasonal migration of the sanderling bird. Modified versions are available for students in younger grades.

This informational text introduce students to the life cycle and migration of the sanderling, a bird that winters on beaches in the Southern United States and South America but breeds in the Arctic during the summer months. The text is written at a grade four through grade five reading level. This is a PDF containing the informational text and a glossary.

In episode seven of the Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears podcast series, learn how scientists can get a first-hand look at changing polar icebergs and glaciers and what these changes can teach us about density.

This article describes the reading strategy of determining importance and provides templates and guidance for teaching this content area strategy to elementary students.

This article highlights lesson plans and activities that help elementary students develop map skills as they learn earth science concepts.