Curated OER
Understanding Tiananmen Square
William Bell's Forbidden City is used as the basis of a study of China, Chinese culture and government, and especially of the events in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Class members select a topic for Internet research and then prepare a...
Curated OER
How to Implement Project Based Learning to Engage Students
Can a math teacher employ project-based learning? Learn how one great math teacher uses PBL to design math projects that provide learners with a more challenging and holistic learning experience. A wonderful article, that includes three...
Texas State Energy Conservation Office
Investigation: Blowing in the Wind
Using a simulated air sample, environmental or earth science pupils examine the components. You will need to prepare the faux air by using a hole punch and various colors of construction paper. Each color will represent a different...
Curated OER
Build a Cardboard Bridge That Can Hold Potatoes
Students identify the characteristics of a bridge and build with junk materials. In this bridge building lesson, students use cereal boxes, paper towel or toilet paper tubes and tape to create their bridges. Bridges must be a certain...
Curated OER
Transportation and Environment
Students make an eco-friendly vehicle to help make transportation better for the environment. In this transportation lesson, students learn how transportation inventions are bad for the environment. They then see how engineers have tried...
Perkins School for the Blind
Safety Crash Testing
Everyone knows that cars have safety features, but wouldn't it be fun to design your own? Learners with visual impairments build a ramp and then attempt to use the material provided to design a safety system to protect a raw egg from a...
NASA
Rover Races
Operating a vehicle remotely can be difficult, especially when the vehicle is on another planet. Young engineers get a feel for some of the real-world challenges as they work to program their rovers (blindfolded group members) through an...
It's About Time
Cushioning Collisions (Computer Analysis)
Did you know the car bumper is specifically designed to save the car and not the passengers in case of an accident? Young scientists use a computer, a force probe, and a sonic ranger to experiment with external cushioning on cars.
Curated OER
Blow-and-Go Parachute
Students design a skydiver and parachute constraption to demonstrate how drag caused by air resistance slows the descent of skydivers as they travel back to Earth. They experience how gravity pulls the skydiver toward the earth and how...
AAA
Oil, Fuel, Coolant & Fluids
Although designed for vocational and auto shop classes, this image of a pamphlet contains everything anyone would need to know about automobile engine the fluids, how to check them, and when to replace them.
Teach Engineering
Six Minutes of Terror
Help your class understand the design challenges when trying to land a remote spacecraft on a planet. Class members examine the provided information to understand how each component of a spacecraft is designed in order to safely land a...
NASA
Oh, Chute!
Using a scare model of the a test vehicle developed by the Systems Architecture and Integration Office at NASA, groups determine the dimensions for a scale model of the parachute compartment. The groups also determine the volume of the...
Curated OER
Youth Art Month Made Simple
Pragmatic projects designed to integrate Youth Art Month with your curriculum.
Curated OER
Drive the Data Derby
Three days of race car design and driving through the classroom while guessing probability could be a third graders dream. Learn to record car speed, distances traveled, and statistics by using calculation ranges using the mean, median,...
Noyce Foundation
The Wheel Shop
Teach solving for unknowns through a problem-solving approach. The grouping of five lessons progresses from finding an unknown through simple reasoning to solving simultaneous equations involving three and four variables. Each lesson...
Centers for Ocean Sciences
Ocean and Great Lakes Literacy: Principle 7
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to take your class on an underwater adventure. The final installment in a seven-part series involving salt and freshwater bodies takes junior oceanographers below the surface in...
Annenberg Foundation
Controversial Issues in Practice
Wow! This resource provides three related lessons on the First Amendment that challenge US government students to explore their personal opinion on the separation of church and state. Each lesson can be adjusted in length, but is...
Curated OER
Transportation Fuels: The Future is Today
Assign each group of 3-4 upper elementary engineers to a different type of transportation fuel. A background information page is provided to get them started with researching their assigned fuel. Each group then produces an exhibit or a...
Lexington High School
In the Time of the Butterflies Packet
Considering using Julia Alvarez's In the Time of the Butterflies? Here's a resource designed to be used before and during a reading of her powerful story of the murder of the Mirabal sisters. Included in the packet is a vocabulary list,...
Film Education
Gone with the Wind Study Guide
The 1939 Oscar-winning Gone with the Wind, is the focus of an informational packet designed to be used with a viewing of the film. As part of their analysis, media students respond to a series of discussion points about the influence of...
Bowland
Explorers – Patrol Services
Far out — plan a trip to space! Aspiring mathematicians steer a space vehicle through an asteroid field, calculate currency exchanges to buy provisions, and determine placement of charges to blow up asteroids. Along the way, they learn...
Curated OER
To Boldly Go Where No One Has Gone Before
Students study pictures of space vehicles and make their own space vehicle. In this space vehicle lesson plan, students study pictures of the vehicles and compare and contrast the pictures. Students classify the space crafts and then...
Curated OER
The Air Car
Students, in groups, design and construct an air car capable of acceleration. They view a video on acceleration, test their cars and make adjustments as desired.
Curated OER
Mechanical Monsters
Young scholars experiment try to build a Lego car. For this physical science lesson students present and demonstrate the vehicle that they constructed.