Curated OER
Tree Cookies
Students identify heartwood, sapwood, and a tree's annual rings, infer from a tree's rings what damage or stress might have occurred in its life, and make a time-line of human history that coincides with a tree's rings.
Virginia Department of Education
Factoring
Uncover the relationship between factoring quadratics and higher degree polynomials. Learners develop their factoring skills through repetition. A comprehensive lesson begins with quadratics and shows how to use the same patterns to...
Curated OER
Leaf Identification
Students identify different leaf types. They examine their patterns, shapes and colors. They complete a worksheet to end the activity.
Curated OER
Earthquake Introduction
Young scholars investigate basic principles and properties of earthquakes, including vocabulary, causes, and types of faults. They examine history of seismic activity in their home state, and complete "Locating Patterns of Distribution"...
Curated OER
Making Sense of Homographs
What is a homograph? Develop your students' vocabulary with a word association tool. Language arts classes discover what a homograph is and how it can be used as a visual thesaurus. They discover the other uses for homographs...
Curated OER
US Immigration
Middle schoolers examine the history of immigration in the United States. Using primary source documents, they identify the areas of origin for people settling in Minnesota and describe the push and pull factors that brought them there....
Curated OER
Straw Breathing Exercise
Students fill out an anonymous questionaire to explore whether they might have asthma. They then set up a spreadsheet to enter the data, decide on a definition of asthma, and figure out the prevalence of asthma. Pupils simulate what it...
Curated OER
Deducing Induction
Students examine how changing magnetic fields induce currents in
loops and coils, determine orientation and magnitude of magnetic field,
describe Michael Faraday's experiments that led to conclusion that changing
magnetic force induces...
Curated OER
Words in the News: Scientists Find Giant Squid
Pupils discuss a headline of an article. In groups, they match the new vocabulary words with their definitions. They read an article about a giant squid and answer questions.
Curated OER
Seed Plants: Angiosperms
Middle schoolers describe flowering plants and see why angiosperms are the most successful plants. In this angiosperms lesson students identify angiosperms and explain how they reproduce.
Curated OER
Family Centers
Students participate in activities which help them with the idea of families. They discuss what characteristics make a good friend or family member. They rotate between centers focusing on different aspects of their family.
Curated OER
Plant Life Cycle
Fourth graders explore the plant life cycle. They discuss the sequence of events in the life cycle of the plant and illustrate how the life cycle never ends. Students explore the importance of water, sunlight, and nutrients during the...
Curated OER
Rocket Car
Students construct a balloon-powered rocket car from a Styrofoam tray, pins, tape, and a flexible straw, and test it along a measured track on the floor. They experiment with ways of increasing the distance the rocket car travels.
Curated OER
Vibrations
Sixth graders use rubber bands, textbooks, pencils, rulers and yo-yos to experiment with the concept of vibrations. They observe changes in pitch according to the speed of vibrations and record their observations in a journal.
Curated OER
What Configurations Work to Light a Bulb?
Young scholars explore simple electrical circuits. Students experiment, using different configurations, to determine what is necessary to compeete a circuit. Young scholars observe similarities between arrangements that work and...