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Water Cycle Lesson Plan
After conducting experiments with a sponge, ice water, and a soda bottle your young scientists become familiar with the water cycle through experiment, song, hand motions and drawing. Students sing about the water cycle and discuss what...
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Tornado
Students study the classification system of tornadoes. In this tornado lesson students make their own tornadoes in different mediums.
Colorado State University
Why Does it Get Colder on a Clear Night than a Cloudy Night?
Clouds are nature's insulator! A lab investigation asks learners to use an infrared thermometer to measure differences in infrared temperatures. They find that pointing the thermometer at a cloud has a much different result than pointing...
Polar Trec
Ice Cores: Modeling Ice Sheets
Ice cores provide scientists with knowledge of historic melt layers, air temperatures, greenhouse gases, and climate stability. Scholars work in groups to build layers representing snow and ice over thousands of years. Then, groups...
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The Sky Show
Students use lecture and research to answer the question: Why is the sky blue? students research a variety of other sky phenomena, chart their observations and participate in experiments.
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Estimating Altitude of Water Cloud Base
Students perform an experiment to find the dew point at ground level and then make a chart to determine where a cloud would form.
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To Float or Not to Float - Density
Learners experiment floating a variety of objects in various liquids. They discover how density affects the ability of an object to float and apply the concept of density to solve problems.
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Wind
Young scholars build an anemometer and measure wind speed. In this wind speed lesson, students build an anemometer using the student instruction sheet. Young scholars visit the Alaska windspeed website and look up the wind speed...
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Sunlight & Soil
In this soil condition learning exercise, students record the soil and air temperature as well as the day length and cloud cover in a small outside area for two weeks. They complete 5 short answer questions and draw graphs of the data.
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DEW POINT
Fourth graders investigate conditions causing saturation and measure the dew point of the atmosphere performing simple experiments.
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Dimming The Sun
Students review the meanings of global warming and global dimming. While watching a video, they take notes on different aspects of the issue. In groups, they develop a list on what can be done to reduce global dimming. They...
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Hurricanes
Students perform various experiments to explore hurricanes. In this earth science activity, students explain how they form. They identify the structure of a hurricane.
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Making Hail
Fourth graders investigate the different types of precipitation and conduct a hail experiment. They identify the types of precipitation during a slideshow, and define key vocabulary terms. Next, in small groups they follow the...
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Climate And the Greenhouse Effect
Students demonstrate the greenhouse effect. They recognize that relatively small changes to our environment can stimulate significant climate changes. They determine that the "scientific method" is a process of testing hypotheses and...
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How Much Salt is in the Gsl Water?
Fourth graders study the water cycle and the different processes that are involved, like precipitation, evaporation, etc. They conduct an experiment observing the water cycle in action and write a hypothesis, observations and...
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The Battle of the Bulge
Students research the events and results of the Battle of the Bulge during World War II. As a class, they discuss the role of the military in the entire European theater and write a paper describing the situations and conditions the...
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Getting A Charge Out of the Sky
Young scholars investigate electricity from the sky. In this electricity lesson, students participate in an experiment to simulate the electric charges from the sky. Young scholars discuss results.
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Weather
Students explore the earth's atmosphere, weather, and climate. They begin class with a discussion about weather patterns, atmosphere, and the layers of the earth. After the class discussion, students rotate through four stations to...
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Lightning!
Students use aluminum, a thumbtack, an eraser, and more to create static electricity. In this static electricity lesson plan, students use this experiment to simulate lightning.
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Gravity Gets You Down
Students investigate the force of gravity and how it effects different objects that are put into acceleration when applied the experiment of free falling. They drop different objects that have a variety of masses and some that cause air...
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Journey Through the Water Cycle
Students canvass the water cycle in the seven lessons of this unit. The processes of the water cycle and the cyclical nature of water is emphasized inthis unit.
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Movement of Fronts
Students use a demonstration in order to learn abou the movement of weather fronts.
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Condensation
Students participate in the scientific process to investigate what happens to water when it evaporates by observing condensation. In small groups they observe what happens to ice in a cup, and what occurs when they hold a bowl of ice...
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Watercycle
Third graders examine the natural circulation of water from oceans, lakes, and rivers to evaporation into the air, and then to condensation to produce rain falling back to the soil as components of the water cycle.