This document provides guidelines for preparing a science teaching resource guide, including formatting instructions and style rules. It recommends that technical jargon be avoided, concepts be clearly explained for non-specialists, and colleagues review the work to identify difficult terminology. The guide text should include title, abstract, materials and methods, discussion, acknowledgements and references, and be limited to 1,500 words excluding certain sections. Display items are limited to 3-5, and references to 10.

1. Teaching Innovative Practices in STEM
2015-1-ES01-KA219-015719_1
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication/communication reflects the
views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information
contained therein.
1
Teaching Innovative Practices in STEM
NANOTECHNOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY
Basic guidelines for the preparation of a science
teaching resource guide are presented. This
document is in itself an example of the desired
layout and can be used as a template. It contains
information regarding desktop publishing format,
type sizes, and typefaces. Style rules that explain
how to handle equations, units, figures, tables,
and references are also provided.
Preparing the paper
This science teaching resource would be read by
teachers from diverse backgrounds. In addition,
many are not native English speakers. Authors
should therefore give careful thought to how their
demonstration and teaching ideas may be
communicated clearly. Although a shared basic
knowledge of science may be assumed, please
bear in mind that the language and concepts that
are standard in one subfield may be unfamiliar to
nonspecialists. Thus, technical jargon should be
avoided as far as possible and clearly explained
where its use is unavoidable. Abbreviations,
particularly those that are not standard, should
also be kept to a minimum and should be defined
at their first occurrence. The background,
rationale and main conclusions of the study
should be clearly explained.
Titles and abstracts in particular should be written
in language that will be readily intelligible to any
teacher. We strongly recommend that authors ask
a colleague with different expertise to review the
manuscript before submission, in order to identify
concepts and terminology that may present
difficulties to nonspecialist readers.
Paper text
The paper text file should include the following
parts, in order: Title, Abstract, Materials and
Method, Discussion, Acknowledgements and
References.
The text is limited to 1,500 words, excluding the
abstract, references and figure legends. Including
display items, as an orientation, the document
should not exceed 5 pages.
TIPS Guides should have no more than 3-5 display
items (figures, graphics and tables). References
are limited to 10.
The text file should be formatted as single-spaced,
double-column text without justification. Pages
should be numbered using an Arabic numeral in
the footer of each page. Normal text should use
Calibri 11 font and the 'symbols' font should be
used for representing Greek characters.
Title
As stated in the project each partner will create a
TIPS Guide in two European languages: Spain: TIPS
– Nanotechnology and Astronomy (in Spanish and
English), France: TIPS – Chemistry (in French and
English), Belgium: TIPS –Mathematics (in Dutch
and English) and Italy: TIPS – Physics (in Italian
and English).
1. Abstract
A well-prepared abstract enables the potential
reader to identify the basic content of a document
quickly and accurately, to determine its relevance
to their interests, and thus to decide whether to
read the document in its entirety.
The abstract must be succinct, not exceeding 150
words. It should serve as an introduction, state
the principal pedagogical objectives and scope of
the demonstration. More important, it concisely
summarises the results and principal conclusions.
2. Materials and Methods
The main purpose of this section is to provide
enough detail for a teacher of the appropriate
field to repeat your practice or workshop and

2. Teaching Innovative Practices in STEM
2015-1-ES01-KA219-015719_1
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication/communication reflects the
views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information
contained therein.
2
reproduce the results with a group of students.
Using pictures or figures in this section is a must.
Equipment and materials available off the shelf
should be described exactly and sources of mate-
rials should be given if there is variation in quality
among supplies.
Example of a list of materials:
• 1 ice cube tray (preferably transparent; a
normal 14 or 16 wells ice cube tray is fine)
• 5 disposable plastic pipettes (or glass pi-
pettes)
• 6 glass vials with cap with a volume of 2-5 mL
(or any other small glass or plastic container
holding this volume, for example a test tube)
• 50 mL calcium chloride 0.3 M (from stock so-
lution)
• 10 mL sodium alginate
• Red Food Dye (E-120, Carminnic acid), e.g. Dr
Oetker Food Colouring Red
The usual order of presentation of methods is
chronological. The method used to prepare re-
agents should be stated exactly.
Show your materials and methods section to a
colleague. Ask if they would have difficulty in re-
peating the practice.
3. Results and Evaluation
In this section of the guide you should discuss
what principles have been established or rein-
forced and what generalisations can be drawn.
Refer briefly to the experiment results to support
your discussion statements.
Be sure to address the objectives of the study in
the discussion and to discuss the significance of
the results of the experiment. Don't leave the
reader thinking "So what?"
End the discussion with a short summary or con-
clusion regarding the significance of the practice
or workshop.
4. Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements should be brief and simple. EC
Erasmus+ Grant and contribution number have to
be properly acknowledged.
5. References
References are numbered sequentially as they
appear in the text, tables and figure legends.
Only one publication is given for each number.
Footnotes are not used.
Standard referencing style should be used. All
authors should be included in reference lists
unless there are more than three, in which case
only the first author should be given, followed by
'et al.'.
Authors should be listed last name first, followed
by a comma and initials (followed by full stops) of
given names. Article titles should be in Roman
text, the first word of the title should be
capitalized and the title written exactly as it
appears in the work cited, ending with a full stop.
Book titles should be given in italics and all words
in the title should have initial capitals. Journal
names are italicized and abbreviated (with full
stops) according to common usage. Volume
numbers and the subsequent comma appear in
bold.
Titles of cited articles are required for Articles,
Letters, Reviews and Progress articles. Example:
Eigler, D. M. & Schweizer, E. K. Positioning single
atoms with a scanning tunnelling microscope.
Nature 344, 524–526 (1990)
For Commentaries or News & Views, titles of cited
articles are not included. Example: Iijima, S.
Nature 354, 56–58 (1991).
For book citations, the publisher and city of
publication are required. Example: Jones, R. A. L.
Soft Machines: Nanotechnology and Life Ch. 3
(Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, 2004).
For web references, a stable Internet address
should be included and should direct the reader
as close as possible to the actual work. If the work
has a digital object identifier (DOI), use this. If
there is no DOI or similar handle, use a stable URL.
If the URL is not stable, as is often the case with

3. Teaching Innovative Practices in STEM
2015-1-ES01-KA219-015719_1
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication/communication reflects the
views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information
contained therein.
3
online newspapers and some subscription-based
databases, use the home page of the site you
retrieved the work from. It is highly encouraged to
give web links to youtube videos or pinterest ta-
bletops created by the TIPS Guide authors to give
additional info on the practice or workshop.
Tables
Include a caption and column headings that
contain enough information for the reader to
understand the table without reference to the
text. The caption should be at the head of the
table.
Organise the table so that like elements read
down, not across. Don't use vertical lines to
separate columns unless absolutely necessary.
Units should have a single space between the
number and the unit, and follow SI nomenclature
(for example, m/s rather than m/sec) or the
nomenclature common to a particular field.
Thousands should be separated by commas
(1,000).
Graphics
Provide each axis with a brief but informative title
(including units of measurement). Choose units of
measurement so as to avoid the use of an
excessive number of digits. Labelling must be of
sufficient size and contrast to be readable. Don't
extend the axes very far beyond the range of the
data.
Lettering in graphics should be in lower-case type,
with only the first letter of each label capitalized.
Unusual units or abbreviations should be spelled
out in full or defined in the legend.
Figures and Pictures
Figures and Pictures should be numbered
separately with Arabic numerals in the order of
occurrence in the text of the paper. One- or two-
column format figures are preferred. Figure
lettering should be in Microsoft Sans Serif 9
typeface; the same typeface in the same font size
should be used for all figures in a paper. Use
symbol font for Greek letters.
All display items should be on a white
background, and kept as simple as possible.
Figure legends
Include a legend (Microsoft Sans serif 9 typeface)
describing the figure. It should be succinct yet
provide sufficient information for the reader to
interpret the figure without reference to the text.
Begin with a brief title for the whole figure and
continue with a short description of each panel
and the symbols used; they should not contain
any details of methods. The legend should be
below the figure.
Examples of a figure with its figure legend
Figure 1:Figure 1:Figure 1:Figure 1: A black hole: the collapsed star or singularity;
the event horizon, a region around the singularity where
not even light can escape; and the region outside the
event horizon, where objects can feel the gravity of the
black hole without becoming trapped.
Equations
If needed, equations and mathematical
expressions should be provided in the main text
of the paper. Equations that are referred to in the
text are identified by parenthetical numbers, such
as (1), and are referred to in the manuscript as
"equation (1)".
Examples of an equation:
[ ] [ ] ( )
∑
−
=
−
=
1
0
2
n
knj
enxkX π
(1)