Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Laws of Motions

For Teachers 7th
Seventh graders explore the Laws of Motion. They define friction and explain the concept of inertia. Students explain what happens when a force is exerted on an object that is in equilibrium. They state the second and third laws of motion.
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Exploring Magnetism in Solar Flares

For Teachers 8th - 12th
Students apply concepts of magnetism to help them understand the production of solar flares. For this solar flare lesson, students complete activities and graphic organizers to help them learn about magnetic fields on the surface of the...
Lesson Plan
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Lunar Field Trip

For Teachers 4th - 8th
Students take a virtual tour on Google Moon of what human life would be like on the moon. In this moon lesson plan, students also compose web diagrams, make charts, make a time line, investigate problems, and more.
Lesson Plan
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Exploring the Interstellar Medium

For Teachers 9th - Higher Ed
Learners investigate the Interstellar Medium and the Local Bubble that the Sun is inside. They read and discuss a handout, answer discussion questions, observe a demonstration of light scattering, and conduct an experiment on the...
Lesson Plan
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Reef Attack

For Teachers 3rd - 6th
Students identify the locations of coral reefs. In this oceanography lesson, students use the Coral Reefs website to locate the coral reefs on a world map and discuss ways to help protect the coral reefs.
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Rock Collecting

For Teachers 2nd - 4th
Students practice classifying rocks in the categories sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic. They bring personal rock collections to school, then correctly label the three types of rocks on posterboard.
Lesson Plan
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Animal Adaptations

For Teachers 4th
students in groups to work on bulletin board, making a list of animal adaptations. They write an example of each body covering and find pictures of animals with these coverings. They mount pictures and label the covering. They should be...
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Waste Management

For Teachers 4th - 6th
Students explore the impact on waste on the environment, and the impact of the 3R's (reduce, reuse and recycle) as a means of diminishing the waste created by humans.
Lesson Plan
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Rock Around the World

For Teachers 4th - 9th
Students take pictures and write a paragraph about a rock they have found. In this rock lesson plan, students also send their information to the Mars Space Flight Facility.
Lesson Plan
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Celestial Seasonings

For Teachers 3rd - 6th
Students review and discuss video about the relationships between the Earth, Sun and Moon. They create a HyperStudio stack about the Earth, Sun and Moon including created animation. Students present their finished product to the class.
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Third from the Sun

For Teachers 4th - 9th
Students examine images from space.  In this third from the Sun lesson, students examine images from, Landsat, the satellite launched by NASA in 1972.   
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Seasons' Journey : Putting it All Together

For Teachers 3rd
Third graders complete a diagram of the revolution of the earth around the sun and write a one paragraph explanation of the factors that cause seasons.
Lesson Plan
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Extraterrestrial Communication: Can We Talk to Anybody Out There?

For Teachers 5th - 6th
Students examine the possibilities of communication with other living organisms within our solar system through research and hands on activities, as well as observing and analyzing teacher demonstrations.
Lesson Plan
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Science: Not just Gold

For Teachers 9th - 12th
High schoolers articulate a possible relationship between arsenic and gold deposits in a written statement using data to substantiate the relationship they describe. They use real data to determine the source of the arsenic in the...
Lesson Plan
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Retrograde Motion

For Teachers 7th - 12th
Learners study the motions of the heavenly bodies.  In this space lesson students use models to show a variety of schemes explaining the motions. 
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"I, Robot"

For Teachers 7th
Seventh graders define vocabulary and discuss the characters in a movie.  In this solar station instructional activity students explore robots on the Internet. 
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Science: Headline

For Teachers 9th - 12th
High schoolers are able to identify questions they need to answer to comprehend a specific news article. They are pushed to question how they know that their drinking water is safe.
Lesson Plan
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Sampling the Ocean Floor

For Teachers 3rd - 12th
Students sample goodies from an unseen ocean floor and try to accurately describe their composition. This simulation helps students explain the limitations of sampling and the problem of obtaining representative samples of sea floor...
Lesson Plan
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Ecosystems and Remote Sensing

For Teachers 6th - 8th
Middle schoolers obtain remote sensing data to compare and contrast global biomass data with global temperature data.
Lesson Plan
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Cooking with the Sun

For Teachers 3rd - 5th
Learners explore using energy from the sun for heating and cooking as they build and compare the performance of four solar cooker designs. This excellent two-day lesson has groups of students build and test a variety of solar cookers....
Lesson Plan
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Galaxy Adventure

For Teachers 4th - 6th
Working in groups, learners create a mnemonic device, give an oral presentation, and create a pictorial representation of the correct sequence of the planets and asteroid belt from the sun. An assessment rubric is included in the...
Lesson Plan
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Understanding the Water Cycle

For Teachers K - 2nd
Investigate the water cycle and how water moves from the land to the air and back to the land. Create a terrarium and observe the water cycle at work. Define weather terms including evaporation, condensation, and precipitation.
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Trends of Snow Cover and Temperature in Alaska

For Teachers 9th - 12th
Students gather historical snow cover and temperature data from the MY NASA DATA Web site. They compare this data to data gathered using ground measurements from the ALISON Web site for Shageluk Lake. They graph both sets of data and...
Lesson Plan
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Modeling Patterns and Cycles in Our Lives

For Teachers 3rd - 4th
Students explore how building a model can help them better understand the natural world. They identify common cycles or patterns in nature as well as examples of models in the classroom. After discussion, they choose a pattern or cycle...