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This article portrays how citizen science (CS) projects can be integrated into elementary classrooms to enhance students’ sensemaking skills and connect to real-world science problems. For the last several years, we have been involved in a study, Teacher Learning for Effective School-Based Citizen Science (TL4CS), that developed materials for elementary school teachers to engage their students in data collection, analysis, and interpretation for two existing CS projects: Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network (CoCoRaHS) and the Lost Ladybug Project (LLP). After piloting the TL4CS materials for two years, two teachers, Penny and Amy, share the ways they used the materials to create rich sensemaking experiences for their students. Penny used our TL4CS CoCoRaHS materials to make connections between their daily precipitation data and local weather phenomena, patterns in ecosystems, and student-created graphs. Amy used our TL4CS LLP materials to explore students’ questions about human impact on animals’ habitats and discover the importance of biodiversity in ecosystems. As demonstrated by Penny’s and Amy’s stories, the TL4CS materials can transform mere data collection for CS projects into opportunities for real-world connections and sensemaking in science classrooms. 

School-based citizen science (SBCS) can promote mathematics and science integration in elementary classrooms. The "Teacher Learning for Effective School-Based Citizen Science" (TL4CS) project created materials to support teachers' use of SBCS. One teacher shares her experiences using TL4CS materials designed for the weather-focused CoCoRaHS project to teach mathematics and science. 

Science education is an important component of a full education beginning in primary grades. In recent decades, research has identified young learners’ rich knowledge of the natural world and their potential to connect with sophisticated science ideas. Elementary teachers face many challenges to implementing reform-based science instruction in their classrooms. Some teachers may choose to enhance their students’ science experiences by introducing them to citizen science (CS) projects. Unfortunately, few CS projects offer substantial guidance for teachers seeking to implement the projects for instructional purposes, placing a heavy burden on teachers. To address these burdens, our research team collaborated with Teacher Advisory Group (TAG teachers) during the development and revision of educative support materials for two CS projects. We present data about how the TAG teachers informed our CS support materials’ revisions, how they implemented the two CS projects with and without educative support materials, and how they perceived their students’ classroom and outdoor experiences with the CS projects. These data demonstrate the importance of including teachers’ voices and experiences in reform efforts, particularly when trying to incorporate instructional elements that teachers may perceive as deviations from what they are expected to teach.