Curated OER
What Do You Think? Analyzing Points of View About an Issue
"How might multiple perspectives of standardized testing impact me as a student?" is an example of an essential question that a researcher might use as a basis for this lesson on how to research and present a written stance on a...
Serendip
Carbohydrate Consumption, Athletic Performance and Health – Using Science Process Skills to Understand the Evidence
Should athletes carb load before an event or consume carbohydrates during the competition? Scholars discuss how to set up a hypothesis and experiment to answer a question relating carbohydrates and athletic performance. Then, they read...
Curated OER
Microfishing
Students use a simple method to collect living microorganisms from natural and/or artificial environments and develop skills in microscopy, observation, drawing, speculation, hypothesizing, oral presentation, and raising questions.
Curated OER
Appearances Are Deceiving
Young scientists study creeks around their area to see how clean the water really is. One way to tell is by the invertebrate populations that are present. This lesson introduces a game which learners simulate a variety of species found...
Curated OER
Glenbrook South High School Science Scoring Rubric: Student Laboratory Reports
Here is an unexpected, but practical resource. It is not a worksheet, but rather an outline of what a science laboratory participant should include in a report. Especially valuable is a grading rubric that spells out what is expected for...
Curated OER
My Personal Wellness
Merge technology and wellness. Class members complete inquiry-based research on a personal wellness issue and create an annotated bibliography, uploading their completed work to their personal wellness websites. Prior to beginning, your...
Mathematics Assessment Project
Discovering the Pythagorean Theorem
Young mathematicians join the ancient order of the Pythagoreans by completing an assessment task that asks them to find the area of tilted squares on dot paper. They then look at patterns in the squares to develop the Pythagorean Theorem.
Math Wire
How Many Winter Paths Do You See?
Is the path through December, January, and February the only path through winter? Not in a holiday math activity based on Pascal's Triangle! Middle schoolers study a triangle made of the letters from the word winter and decide how many...
LABScI
Catapult: Flight of the Marshmallows
Watch your marshmallows fly. The engaging STEM activity has groups create a catapult to launch marshmallows. After testing their prototypes, they consider improvements and redesign their catapults.
Mascil Project
Parachute Food Drop
Drop a perfect project into your lesson plans. Groups use different building materials to create models of parachutes for food drops. After testing out their prototypes, they make improvements to their designs.
Mascil Project
Epidemics: Modelling with Mathematics
The Black Death epidemic is responsible for more than one million deaths in the United Kingdom. An inquiry-based activity has young scholars explore the rate of disease spread. They then analyze graphs showing data from epidemics such as...
Curated OER
Proportionality: The X-Plane Generation
Young scholars meet NASA researchers who describe the relationship between force, energy and motion. They discuss how NASA's experimental X-plane is being tested to make space travel more reliable and show how proportionality and ratios...
Curated OER
Examine the Data
Seventh graders examine a teacher-created database and identify specific variables and develop hypothesis statements as to their possible effect. They create a summary statement either proving or disproving their hypothesis.
Curated OER
Addition: How Many Ways?
In this addition worksheet, students make number sentences out of the 4 numbers given to them. Students are given numbers 2, 4, 6, and 8 and can use each number 3 times.
Curated OER
Can You Do It?
Young scholars create a simple machine to help with the design of the traditional can opener. In this simple machines lesson plan, students analyze the can opener, and use the design process to solve problems.
Curated OER
One, Two, Three...and They're Off
Students make origami frogs to race. After the race they measure the distance raced, collect the data, enter it into a chart. They then find the mean, median, and mode of the data. Next, students enter this data into Excel at which time...
Curated OER
Incline Planes
Students determine the forces necessary to move a truck on an inclined plane with weight and slope as variables. They identify the cheapest way to transport trash to local garbage disposal sites.
Curated OER
Tadpoles
Students examine tadpoles at various stages of development. Questions in observation category assess students' ability to use a variety of senses to observe data in a certain way-scientific way.
Curated OER
Employee Payroll Simulation
Students simulate creating and calculating employees payrolls using hourly wages, deductions, and proper taxes.
Curated OER
Surface Areas of Prisms, Pyramids and Cylinders
Students identify and use appropriate formulas to find surface areas of solid figures, practice using formula sheet to solve textbook problems, construct solid figures of given surface area using TABS+ software program, and use Internet...
Curated OER
Dominoes
Fourth graders solve a dominoes word problem, calculating all the possible outcomes for a sequence of events. They discuss the problem, apply counting strategies, create a tree diagram, and write an explanation of how they solved the...
Curated OER
Battery Power
Sixth graders examine how much energy they use in the form of battery power. They examine the cost of using regular vs. rechargeable batteries and examine the effect on the environment of the two types of batteries. They discover that...
Curated OER
Causes of World War I
Ninth graders identify and explain the six major causes of World War I. They explore the events leading up to WWI, the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and why they were the culmination of everything. Students discuss the...
Curated OER
Fractals, An Inquiry: Day 4
Students put their growing understanding of the scientific inquiry process to work. They use paint to implement their plans to experiment with how changing one aspect of the fractal making process influences their appearance.