This article provides an overview of learning cycles and how they can enhance student learning in science.

This issue of the free online magazine, Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears, explore how to use fossils and artifacts (scientific clues) to learn about the polar regions' past. Targeted literacy skills include making inferences, and using context clues to define new vocabulary.

This article assembles free resources from the Learning from the Polar Past issue of the Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears cyberzine into a unit outline based on the 5E learning cycle framework. Outlines are provided for Grades K-2 and 3-5.

This article highlights children's literature about fossils, dinosaurs, archaeology, and paleontology for use in the elementary classroom.

This article highlights lessons and activities for elementary students about the people and cultures of the Arctic region.

This article includes integrated lessons, activities, and ideas for teaching about exploration and polar explorers in the elementary classroom.

This article highlights lessons and activities for elementary students about heat, insulation, and how animals and people stay warm in cold environments.

This article includes lessons that elementary teachers can use to build the foundations of climate literacy while meeting elementary science standards. Lessons are paired with literacy activities as well.

Students explore methods employing simple machines likely used in ancient pyramid building, as well as common modern-day material transportation. They learn about the wheel and axle as a means to transport materials from rock quarry to construction site. They also learn about different types and uses of a lever for purposes of transport. In an open-ended design activity, students choose from everyday materials to engineer a small-scale cart and lever system to convey pyramid-building materials.

Working as a team, students discover that the value of pi (3.1415926...) is a constant and applies to all different sized circles. The team builds a basic robot and programs it to travel in a circular motion. A marker attached to the robot chassis draws a circle on the ground as the robot travels the programmed circular path. Students measure the circle's circumference and diameter and calculate pi by dividing the circumference by the diameter. They discover the pi and circumference relationship; the circumference of a circle divided by the diameter is the value of pi.

In this video segment adapted from NOVA, a team of archaeologists and engineers explores different uses of the lever by recreating the engineering feats of the ancient Easter Island peoples.

This article describes daily life and work at the IceCube telescope at the South Pole, Antarctica, and links to informational text about them. Versions are available for students in grades K-1, 2-3 and 4-5. Related science and literacy activities are included.

In this lesson, students learn about the physical properties of the Moon. They compare these to the properties of the Earth to determine how life would be different for astronauts living on the Moon. Using their understanding of these differences, they are asked to think about what types of products engineers would need to design for us to live comfortably on the Moon.

How can you lift a heavy metal table using air? In this video segment adapted from ZOOM, cast members succeed in lifting a table using their own breath and a few plastic bags.

This activity is an experiment where students learn about angles of reflection and use that knowledge to reflect a light beam around obstacles to a target across the classroom.

Students complete an exercise showing logarithmic relationships and examine how to find the linear regression of data that does not seem linear upon initial examination. They relate number of BMD scanners to time.

This article discusses explicitly teaching and assessing listening comprehension skills in the elementary grades and provides templates for classroom use.

A magical demonstration where a Pyrex tube vanishes in a beaker of mineral oil. Useful demonstration to introduce to concept of refraction (and/or partial reflection).

Students visualize the magnetic field of a strong permanent magnet using a compass. The lesson begins with an analogy to the effect of the Earth's magnetic field on a compass. Students see the connection that the compass simply responds to the Earth's magnetic field since it is the closest, strongest field, and thus the compass responds to the field of the permanent magnets, allowing them the ability to map the field of that magnet in the activity. This information will be important in designing a solution to the grand challenge in activity 4 of the unit.

Students begin working on the grand challenge of the unit by thinking about the nature of metals and quick, cost-effective means of separating different metals, especially steel. They arrive at the idea, with the help of input from relevant sources, to use magnets, but first they must determine if the magnets can indeed isolate only the steel.