Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Memoir

For Teachers 6th - 10th
After reading and analyzing two narrative memoirs, middle schoolers engage in a variety of activities, including writing an essay, developing a story map, and creating character charts. They then compare and contrast story maps, and...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

El Nino

For Teachers 6th - 8th
Explore the properties of water and the affects of El Nino. Middle schoolers will learn about the devastation an El Nino can cause as well as the definition of El Nino. Additionally, they will discover the cause of El Nino along with the...
Activity
PBS

Heart to Heart

For Students 3rd - 7th
Study heart health and math in one activity. After measuring their resting heart rates by finding the pulse in their wrists, learners build a stethoscope to listen to their heart rate, and note the differences between the two methods.
Lesson Plan
Polar Trec

Sea Ice Impact

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
The arctic seas contain currents that are both warm (with high salinity) and cold (relatively fresh water) that circulate throughout the year. Through discussion, a lab, and a web quest, participants explore the impacts of melting and...
Activity
Teach Engineering

Glowing Flowers

For Teachers 6th - 8th
What a bright idea! Young scientists conduct an experiment on flowers to finish the last of a six-lesson unit on Cells. Putting the stems into dye-injected water and leaving it overnight results in flowers that glow. This is to simulate...
Lesson Plan
Illustrative Mathematics

Growing Bean Plants

For Teachers K - 2nd Standards
Plant growth experiments offer rich, cross-curricular learning opportunities that can really excite and engage young learners. In this series, children work in pairs planting, measuring, and comparing the height of bean plants in order...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Pond Ecology

For Teachers 4th - 6th
A lab activity is a great way to incite thoughtful questioning and scientific processes. Pupils will collect organisms with a Petri dish, make observations, sketch the organism, ask questions, then attempt to identify the specimen...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Gas Law Investigation

For Teachers 9th - 12th
Investigators collect the carbon dioxide produced when an antacid tablet is activated and identify what alteration produced the most gas. They also collect the gas in a buret in order to practice precision. Then they choose between two...
Lesson Plan
Library of Congress

The Conservation Movement at a Crossroads: The Hetch Hetchy Controversy

For Teachers 9th - Higher Ed Standards
Should wilderness areas be preserved or managed? Class members examine primary source documents, including lecture notes, articles, essays and congressional records to better understand the Hetch Hetchy controversy that created a split...
Activity
Scholastic

Columbus Day/Thanksgiving Ships at Sea

For Teachers K - 2nd
Discover the meaning of Columbus Day and/or Thanksgiving by creating art from food. This activity focuses on making edible ships using easy to find food items. The class will investigate the journeys that were taken for either of these...
Activity
1
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Teach Engineering

Cartesian Diver

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
Amaze your scholars with an activity that uses a Cartesian diver to demonstrate Pascal's Law, Archimedes' Principle, and the Ideal Gas Law. Groups then repeat the process and make their own diver move up and down in a bottle.
Activity
1
1
Teach Engineering

Are We Alone?

For Teachers 6th - 8th Standards
Find an answer to the age-old debate of whether life exists on Mars. Groups determine criteria to help look for signs of life on Mars. The activity has the class simulate testing Martian soil samples for signs of life before drawing...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Novel Study: The End of the Line

For Teachers 7th - 9th
The End of the Line, Angela Cerrito's gripping novel about an adolescent murderer incarcerated in an unusual "school," is the subject of a comprehensive set of support materials. Chapter vocabulary and discussion questions are excerpted...
Activity
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Ask a Biologist

It’s a Plankton Eat Plankton World

For Teachers 3rd - 7th Standards
For as small as they are, plankton sure play an enormous role in maintaining marine ecosystems. Dive into an investigation of these tiny organisms with a hands-on life science activity in which children cut out pictures of sea...
Activity
1
1
Teach Engineering

Building a Barometer

For Teachers 6th - 8th Standards
Forget your local meteorologist — build your own barometer and keep track of the weather with an activity that provides directions to build a barometer out of a narrow necked bottle, a glass, and some water. Using their barometer,...
Lesson Plan
Space Awareness

Navigation in the Ancient Mediterranean and Beyond

For Teachers 9th - 11th Standards
Ancient texts, like Homer's Odyssey, mentions navigating ships by observing constellations. Pupils learn about the link between history and astronomy as they relate to navigation in the Bronze Age. Scholars complete two hands-on...
Activity
Howard Hughes Medical Institute

What van Leeuwenhoek Saw

For Teachers 6th - 12th Standards
When van Leeuwenhoek saw cells and single-celled organisms for the first time, he knew these small things were a big deal! Share his discoveries with young learners through a narrated video, model-building activity, and scale study....
Lesson Plan
Space Awareness

Meet Our Neighbors: Sun

For Students 1st - 6th
The sun isn't just a ball of yellow! Young scientists learn about the features of the sun using a hands-on modeling activity. They build models of the sun using common household items to represent sunspots, solar prominence, and the...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Wind Effects- A Case Study

For Teachers 5th - 7th
Students explore hurricanes.  For this weather data interpretation lesson, students draw conclusions about the impact of Hurricane Floyd as it related to weather conditions. Students read and interpret a tide data table, a...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Building Soil Nature's Way: Exploring decomposition and soil health

For Teachers 4th - 6th
Students explore decomposition and soil health by creating their own garden.  In this agriculture lesson, students build a "lasagna garden" with organic matter found in the area and plant perennials native to their region....
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

A'planting We will Go

For Teachers K - 1st
Germination is an amazing process that results in amazing things. The book The Tiny Seed is the inspiration for a set of activities that will help build early literacy, observation, language, and writing skills. The class observes how...
Activity
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Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Ocean Acidification

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Human impacts on the environment can sometimes be difficult to measure, especially under water! An activity centered on ocean acidification gives science scholars the opportunity to examine the effects of carbon dioxide on marine life....
Worksheet
Curated OER

Attractive Alloys

For Students 3rd - 4th
Include a lab about alloys and magnets in your fourth grade science lesson. Young scientists read the necessary background knowledge about alloys, then choose which objects (a screw, a bell, scissors, or coins) will be attracted to...
Activity
NASA

Taking Apart the Light

For Students 9th - 12th
Break down light into spectra. Scholars learn how atoms emit and absorb photons and come to understand how this process allows scientists to identify different atoms based on either absorption lines or emission lines. Learners then...

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