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Collecting Rocks
Students examine how rocks are formed, used, and how to collect them. They listen to and discuss the book, Let's Go Rock Collecting, sort rock samples, and collect rocks from home.
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Minerals - The Building Blocks of Rocks
Students examine how rocks are composed of different minerals. They analyze rock samples, then examine cookies, sorting out the simulated mineral ingredients from the cookies and identifying the mineral ingredients.
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Dissolved Oxygen Introduction
Students are shown how dissolved oxygen enters the water. They are taught the difference between a water sample that has been exposed to the air and one that has not. Students brainstorm what organisms need to survive. They use dissolved...
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Is Our Water Healthy?
Students test water for a least one chemical characteristic. They hypothesize how a storm event might change the chemical characteristics of a stream. Students collect water samples and use the chemical test to test the water.
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Aquatic Ecosystem Exploration
Students visit a local stream, pond, creek, or river and collect macroinvertebrates. They sort macroinvertebrates and identify each species using a dichotomous key. Students decide on trophic levels and construct a possible food web for...
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What If There's No Light?
students discuss the importance of light and the consequences of living without it. Using a plant as a demonstration, students predict and observe what happens to a plant when it does not receive enough light. In groups, they experiment...
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Runoff: Intro to Watersheds
Students are taught that a watershed is, what types of basic land cover are impermeable and permeable to water. They trace the flow of water around their school and around their home. Students determine what watershed their school is a...
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Water Chestnut Graphing Activity
Students are taught how to format and enter data into an Excel spreadsheet. They make a graph and interpret graphed data. Students discuss possible impacts of water chestnut invasion. They graph data on water chestnut. Students report...
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Water Quality with Samples
Learners recognize whether one wants to drink water, swim in it, or for the health of the organisms living in it. They prepare different water samples to observe and collect samples regarding the water quality.
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Bottled Water vs. Tap Water
Pupils analyze the similarities and differences between tap water and bottled water. They make informed decisions about their use of each. Students are asked if they drink mostly tap water straight from the tap or water fountain. They...
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Wastewater
Students discuss what happens to their wastewater. They read about the wastewater treatment process. Students are asked what types of things get flushed down toilets or goes down drains in sinks and showers. They are taught what happens...
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Hudson Valley Rocks
Students identify each of the rocks provided and locate where in the valley they are found. They explain why the rocks came to be as they are in each location. In addition, they relate the exercise to how the Hudson Valley's geologic...
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Glacial Groundwater
Students study glacial deposition and groundwater in Dutchess County, new York. They identify the permeability rates in different glacial deposits and relate this information to ground water capacity of sediments found in Dutchess...
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How Much Water is in That River?
Students practice measurement using the Hudson River. They calculate the discharge measurement at a location on the Hudson River using ingenuity and a topographic map.
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Dark Matter In The Universe
Middle schoolers investigate the concept of dark matter and how it occurs in the universe. They conduct research using a variety of resources. Students use the information by reading at least two articles about dark matter. They also...
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Coffee Cooling
Students explore the factors that affect how long coffee stays hot. They develop a question and a testable hypothesis for one factor such as initial temperature or size of opening of the container. Then they design and conduct an...
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The effectiveness of Antacids
Students design and conduct a scientific experiment to test which of four antacids would be most effective for neutralizing acids. They rank the antacids in order from most effective to least effective and explain how they determined...
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Insulators
Students design and carry out an investigation to test which materials is the best insulator: they predict which way heat energy flows in a system and analyze the flow of energy in a system from one point to another and from one form to...
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Water-holding Capacity of Earth Materials
Young scholars design and conduct an experiment to test their ideas about how to speed up or slow down the rate of an enzyme-catalyzed reaction. They have access to an array of physical and chemical factors that might influence enzyme...
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Ice Cold
Students design and conduct an experiment to investigate what happens when salt and ice come together and to determine if one form of salt is better for melting ice on steps and sidewalks.
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Unknown Liquids
Learners must design and conduct an experiment to determine which unknown liquid has a greater density based on basic information about the liquids and containers. Students are given specific materials to work with.
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Hlf-Ball
Students investigate Newton's Laws of Motion and the Law of Conservation of Energy. They examine how a ball and half-ball behave and relate these laws to what happens to the ball. Students produce a graph of the data collected and...
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Current Thinking About Magnets
Young scholars construct their own magnet and wire device. In this inquiry lesson, students investigate the factors affecting the strength of magnetic forces. They manipulate different variable to determine their effect.
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Predicting: Making a Hypothesis
Students analyze information from various sources to create a hypothesis about the origin of a family artifact. Students create a hypothesis about the origin of the item and write a paragraph explaining why they believe the hypothesis is...