Discovery Education
Smoke on the Water
How do clouds form? Learners demonstrate the formation of clouds and the water cycle by testing four different setups in a plastic bottle. They identify the key components of a cloud to help them understand the process of cloud...
Curated OER
What Contains Carbon?
Students explore elements by analyzing everyday objects and materials in class. For this carbon lesson, students define several vocabulary terms such as carbon dioxide, hydrocarbon, and carbonate. Students view a group of items,...
Texas State Energy Conservation Office
Nuts! Calculating Thermal Efficiency
Oh nuts! Do macadamias or almonds produce more thermal energy? Energy enthusiasts find out with this experiment. The objective is to demonstrate to your class how the chemical energy contained in foods can be converted into useable...
California Academy of Science
Greening Your Middle School
Middle schoolers redesign their school to make it more energy efficient, and create a model of their design. Learners get together in groups of 5, and they take on the task of making their school more energy efficient. To do this, they...
Carnegie Mellon University
International Perspectives to Climate Change 2
A couple PowerPoint presentations are used to stimulate discussion about the perspectives of different countries on the issue of energy consumption. Afterward, they play a game in which each team is assigned a country, considers its...
Carnegie Mellon University
Bathtub Model
Using a colorful infographic handout and a guide sheet, hold a class discussion about how a bathtub can serve as a model for the greenhouse effect created by Earth's atmosphere. Participants will understand that as energy or matter is...
Curated OER
Fossil Fuels: Facing the Issues
Students explore energy by researching fuel usage on Earth. In this fossil fuel lesson, students define fossil fuels, the energy created by burning them, and the impact on the environment when using them. Students conduct pollution...
Curated OER
Grass as Biomass
Learners explore energy properties by listening to a sustainability lecture in class. In this biomass instructional activity, students identify what biomass is, how it can be transformed into a usable energy and how it complements the...
Teach Engineering
Get Me Off This Planet
What do Newton's Laws have to do with getting from Earth to Mars?The activities in this resource show how Newton's Laws work with rockets to get them into space. Background information includes facts about orbits and how orbits...
Curated OER
Water
Third graders study different bodies of water and how they fit into the water cycle. They explain that materials exist in different states (solid, liquid and gas) and change from one to another, that there are systems, order, and...
Curated OER
Water and Ice
Students observe and discuss what happens when water turns to ice and when ice turns into water. In this freezing and melting lesson plan, students observe ice and water and complete hands on activities that change their properties.
Curated OER
Water and Ice
Students explore water and how it changes forms. In this investigative lesson students participate in an activity that shows them how water changes form and what it looks and feels like.
Curated OER
Activity #5 Environmental Effects
Young scholars explain the implications of particle theory of The Law of Conservation of Matter for problems of pollution and waste disposal. They describe, in terms of atoms and molecules, what happens to materials when they are...
Curated OER
Primary Activity: Dichotomous Key of Energy Sources
In this energy sources activity, students fill in a chart using a dichotomous key of energy sources. They use follow the directions and label items such as the sun, a windmill, and an oil rig with the proper number and letter labels from...
Curated OER
Bag Balloons
Students demonstrate that heat can change air. They determine that hot air rises. Students construct a working model of a hot air balloon. They understand that there are two ways that a balloon can rise: it can (1) be filled with a...
Curated OER
Globalization: Darfur
Students examine the conflict in Darfur. In this global studies lesson, students listen to their instructor present a lecture about how history, geopolitics, and international law have contributed to the conflict. Students...
Curated OER
The Energy Crisis
Students participate in different activities and discussions to analyze the energy crisis in the United States and other parts of the world. In groups, they research the availability of fossil fuels and the possible alternatives. Using...
Curated OER
Glaciers Worksheet #1
The landscape impacted by glacier activity is drawn at the top of this activity. Ten multiple choice questions follow, some relating to the diagram, and some about the quality of soil left by glaciation. It is not often that you come...
Kenan Fellows
Electricity: Sources, Usage, Challenges, and the Future
What does the future of energy look like? Junior engineers collaborate to discover a solution to the global energy crisis during a very hands-on lesson. The unit focuses on learning through collaboration to develop a deep understanding...
American Museum of Natural History
Volcanoes Magma Rising
Get ready for an explosive lesson! Learners read and interact with an online lesson describing the characteristics of volcanoes. They study specific historical volcanoes as well as the science of volcanic eruptions using animations and...
National Wildlife Federation
An Energy Mix: Renewable and Nonrenewable Resources
What did the windmill say about renewable energy? I'm a BIG fan! Lesson three in the series of 12 has classes discuss potential and kinetic energy and then, in pairs, they complete a web quest over the different types of energy...
Population Connection
The Carbon Crunch
Carbon is in the air; should we care? Teach the class why it is important to pay attention to carbon levels and how the world population and various countries across the globe affect the carbon levels in the atmosphere. High schoolers...
Discovery Education
It's Getting Hot in Here
Class members engage in a STEM experiment and investigate how materials affect heating in a house by creating models of houses and using different top surface materials. They record the temperature inside the models and consider what the...
Global Oneness Project
Deconstructing Consumerism
A short, engaging video provides a critique of the hyper-consumerist mentality that many think have taken over the Western world. After watching the video, pupils reflect on their own habits and use evidence...