Discovery Education
Jets in Flight
This Discovery Education activity provides the information needed to understand the basics of flight. Before taking off, young pilots learn the eight stages of the engineering design process. Small groups then design and build...
Curated OER
Ecology
Students explore, experience and experiment identifying the human impact on the environment of vegetative differences within the same biome. They assess what causes deserts, rain forests, savannahs, tundras and saguaros and how these...
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The Environment
Students explore the issues that influence our environment and research ways to decrease the negative impact that humans have on the environment. Misconceptions about environmental issues are addressed in this instructional activity.
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...
NASA
The Search for Critical Questions
A puzzle isn't about the individual pieces, but how they work together. Scholars assemble a puzzle and discover missing pieces. They write a description of what they expect these pieces to look like, including as many details as...
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Survival
Young scholars determine the best material from which to make a jacket to keep the body warm in a cold, dry, windy climate. This task assesses the student's abilities to perform an entire investigation.
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A Cut Above the Rest Administration Procedures
Students analyze how the Law of Conservation of Energy applies to the design and use of scissors. Working in groups, they determine the output work for a standard pair of scissors.
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What Can We Lose? What Do We Lose as we Gain Force With A Lever?
Third graders view a demonstration of a teeter totter as a basis for assessing pre-knowledge of a lever. They create a KwL chart. Students work in small groups to conduct a variety of experiments. The first requires students to tie books...
Curated OER
How Effective is Perspiration at Cooling?
Students collect data on the cooling of water in two different test tubes, one that is wrapped in wet newspaper and one in dry newspaper. They then relate this cooling effect to the body's perspiration.
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Are Enzymes Specific for Their Substrates?
Students discover enzyme to substrate specificity. The experiment uses samples of glucose and lactose in combination with the enzyme lactase. Students observe the reaction between the lactose and the lactase; the lack of a reaction...
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Opposites Attract
Students demonstrate the attraction of small pieces of paper to a charged plastic rod and conduct experiment with other objects to determine whether they can hold a charge. They then use online applets to apply their experiments to...
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Suburban Ecosystems
High schoolers conduct simple sampling of plant and insect biodiversity at ground level in two contrasting environments of their own choosing. They recognize and record different species then compare and contrast species numbers in the...
Curated OER
Car Wash
Students determine the most appropriate site for a car wash, based on each site's soil characteristics (chemical, physical) and topographic features. They perform an experiment to determine the changes to three different soil types when...
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Seed Growth
Young scholars develop an independent procedure to investigate the germination of two types of seeds. Students must construct data tables or charts to record observations and results, graph the data, and analyze the data.
Curated OER
Electromagnetic Spectrum/Spectroscopy
Students examine the electromagnetic spectrum and demonstrate the elements within. In this investigative lesson students complete a demonstration and calculate the energy of a photon.
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The Greenhouse Effect
Seventh graders investigate the temperature change in open and closed containers. In this earth science lesson, 7th graders relate this lab activity to greenhouse effect. They create a line graph from data collected in the experiment.
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Bird Populations
Students gather data about bird populations. They study bird migratory patterns using the methods that researchers use. They write an essay explaining the differences between the four types of population movements.
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The Captain And Lake Wilmar
Tenth graders examine the ecosystem of Lake Wilmar through three coordinated performance tasks. They first investigate the effects of pH on freshwater animals by comparing the zooplankton counts from three different areas. They then...
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Let the Sunshine in
Students collect and analyze data to study wavelengths of visible light. They cover Styrofoam cups with three different colors of sun filtering products and shine a lamp directly on the cups. They determine the most effective filtering...
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Paper Chromatography
Small groups of students perform paper chromatography to separate food dyes into their component colors. Students perform the experiment and collect, organize, and represent their data to form an explanation of their outcomes. Students...
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Water Regulation
High schoolers use their basic knowledge of physiology to analyze graphical data of paramecia under diverse conditions. From the data analysis, Students develop explanations of the animal's response to the concentration of different...
Curated OER
Are Fruits And Vegetables Really Made of Cells?
Students design and carry out an exercise to determine if a given fruit or vegetable is composed of cells. They dissect out sections of the fruit or vegetable, prepare stained slides, and make observations under a compound microscope.
Curated OER
The Nutritional Content of Food
Students are given three unknown samples and must perform two chemical tests in order to determine if the samples contains protein and/or starch. Students work with corrosive or toxic reagents.
Curated OER
Pooling Around
Students complete a unit of lessons on computing area and volume. They play a Jeopardy game of basic area formulas, calculate surface area of shapes, develop a Powerpoint presentation, and conduct a simulation of finding the surface area...