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Balloon Rocket
Young scholars observe a balloon rocket and how it relates to Newton's Third Law of Motion. For this balloon rocket lesson plan, students make a balloon rocket out of balloons, clothespins, straw, fishing line, and duct tape.
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Rockets: Kinematics or Energy?
High schoolers construct model rockets, measure and record the height of the launch. In this creative lesson students use different methods to calculate velocity and height data from their launched rockets.
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Moving to the Frontier
Learners explore the Frontier House website, examining the challenges of frontier settlement in the American West in the late 1800's. They develop budgets, and create displays based on their own research.
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What Do Salt Trucks Do?
Students predict what will happen to ice when salt is put on it. They make observations and discuss what actually happened to the ice. They relate their experiment to the salt trucks they see on the street.
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Senses -- The Touching Game
Students practice making educated guesses about objects in their hands. They guess what the object is without looking at it and choose a word that describes it. They practice using new vocabulary as well.
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Weather -- Snowmen in May
Pupils are read the story "Snowballs" and discuss what the conditions must be for it to snow. They make snowmen out of snow when it snows outside. They discover what happens to their snowmen when they take them inside.
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Introduction to Magnetism and Electronics
Students are introduced to the concepts of magnetism and electronics. As a class, they walk through the steps of the scientific method and define new vocabulary. In groups, they are given a bag of objects and they are to separate them...
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The Monarch Butterfly Watch
Students explore monarch migration through the Journey North web site. In this butterfly lesson plan, students use the internet to identify a butterfly's migration pattern. Students write in electronic journals.
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Composition
Ninth graders, while looking and examining a photograph provided to them, write a composition that exemplifies the photograph with at least three of the five composition rules illustrated with 100% accuracy. The composition is the start...
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How Does Your KinderGarden Grow
Learners find forecast and graph weather by using WeatherBug site, create flower books by using Wiggleworks, and plant radish seeds both on KidPix and in class garden.
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Gene Puzzles
Students come to understand that in sexually reproducing organisms, such as humans, typically half of the genes come from each parent.
Students examine a fictional pedigree and determine which gene is responsible for a given trait. The...
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Monitoring an Epidemic: Analyzing Through Graphical Displays Factors Relating to the Spread of HIV/AIDS
Tenth graders differentiate pandemic and epidemic. In this health science lesson, 10th graders analyze how HIV and AIDS affect different countries. They construct and interpret different types of graphs.
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Read Aloud: "The Bookshop Dog"
Students listen to the book "The Bookshop Dog" and discuss what happens when there is a change in their lives. They create a class T-chart about changes and feelings, develop a graph related to the story, and define key story vocabulary...
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Pasta Research
Third graders read the story STREGA NONA together as a class and discuss what they know about pasta. They each receive pieces of pasta to glue down on construction paper and write beneath each one what they think it looks like.
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Advanced Art – Cultural Place-setting Still life
Upper graders view a series of films that depict rituals or celebrations as they occur in different cultural settings. They conduct a cultural investigation about one culture, brainstorm and research objects that have cultural or...
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Writing a Formal Thank You Letter
Students research various formats for writing thank you letters in resource books and through a provided Internet site. They use these resources to write a thank you letter to a recent outside speaker who visited their class.
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Extinction
Students explore reasons why the dinosaurs became extinct, and the specific needs (habitat, environment, food) of individual types of dinosaurs.
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Tree I.D.
Students explore various tree species. For this tree species lesson, students collect leaves on nature walks and use Internet sources to identify the trees that the leaves belong to. Students graph their data as well.
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Types of Dinosaurs
Students complete puzzles of dinosaurs. They compare each piece of the puzzle to a fossil and simulate a scientist's role in learning about dinosaurs.
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Fossils
Students act as paleontologists to discover who a mystery guest to the classroom was. They do not know the identity of the guest but infer the identity from items left behind in the classroom. They make inferences from dinosaur fossils.
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Habitat Happenings
Students examine the characteristics of the Prairie Creek Habitat in Illinois. In groups, they travel between various stations writing haikus and reading brochures. They identify what occurs in each habitat and identify the animals...
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Shake, Rattle, and Roll
Learners make an earthquake simulator and test their structure to see if it lasts through the earthquake. In this earthquake lesson plan, students make a structure and test and record the results from an earthquake simulator made out of...
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Calcium Counts
Learners evaluate the food pyramid. In this dairy nutrition lesson, students identify the position of the milk group on the food pyramid, then determine their daily calcium requirement and how they can meet that requirement.
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"If you build it..."
Students utilize prior knowledge to erect and assemble a building from a drawing using spaghetti noodles and marshmallows. In this building lesson, students visualize a three dimensional structure from looking at a picture and converting...