How do you calculate your Body Mass Index, and why is this information a valuable indicator of health? Class members discover not only what BMI is and practice calculating it using the height and weight of six fictitious individuals, but...

Send youngsters home to survey how they use water in their homes. Then bring them together to discuss which uses are essential for our health and which are not. A helpful video offers teaching tips for this lesson, and a presentation...

What can layers of rock teach us about the climate? Young scientists solve a mystery about who stole a cookie by applying the law of superposition. Then, they apply the same concept to solve a more difficult mystery, trying to determine...

Explore optics using an inquiry-based experimental approach! Young scholars use a set of materials to design and build a unit capable of focusing a beam of light. They experiment with different lenses to determine the best approach to...

What kind of organisms are living in the stream? After an explanation on how to use a dichotomous key, groups of three to four use the keys to identify macroinvertebrates from a local freshwater stream. Using the the concept of...

Using NASA's Live Access Server, earth scientists compare the temperature, precipitation, and normalized difference vegetation index for four different locations. They use the data to identify the climate zone of each location using...

Don't shine like a diamond, refract light like a diamond. Young scientists use an acrylic block and a laser light to observe refraction. Advanced scholars figure the sine of the angles of reflection and incidence as well as mastering...

Learners use an interactive simulation to explore the connection between force and air pressure. They adjust the mass of a vehicle and air pressure in its tires and predict the result. As the vehicle's mass increases, the tire pressure...

Are weather troubles caused by El Nino? An installment of a larger series presents a five-part lesson on El Nino. First, scholars learn to read sea surface temperature maps. Then, they compare them to data on graphs before determining if...

Approximately 93 percent of the individual reefs in the Great Barrier Reef suffer from coral bleaching. Scholars learn how scientists monitor coral bleaching around the world as part of a larger series. They use actual data to answer...

Do polar opposites attract? After an introduction on the polarity of molecules, pupils are asked to design a self-assembling model using materials with different polarity. The challenge should motivate learners to develop a workable...

Geometry—it's not just for the math classroom! Learners explore the field of forestry through a mathematical lens. An instructional resource explains how forest workers collect data about trees such as height, diameter, and age...

Give every type of learner in your physics class an opportunity to demonstrate what they have learned throughout the year. From analyzing tables and graphs to evaluating diagrams and solving problems, there is an outstanding variety of...

Using a pinhole in an index card, learners of light find that it can be used as a magnifier. 

This is a stellar overview of everything light and quantum! There are 30 multiple choice questions, none of them requiring any mathematical computation. There are a few diagrams to analyze: light rays striking reflective and refractive...

Sixth graders classify candy according to observable characteristics. They use a dichotomous key to identify their bag of "treats." Thus, describe how dichotomous keys help to the identifying of organisms. Design a self-generated...

Looking for an interesting text to share the world of microbes with your middle school classroom? The edition contains explanations, worksheets, experiments, discussions, and links to outside sources for a true and complete...

Help your class make sense of nutrition labels with the ninth lesson of this series. After explaining the different information provided on packaged food labels, perform an activity that demonstrates the amount of sugar in a single can...

Young scholars are able to discuss the difference between a proton, a neutron and an electron. They also can explain the difference between an ionic and a covalent bond. Students know the main structure of atoms and molecules. Student...

Models are an important part of science; they help us see the world on a scale that works for us. In the first of five lessons on HIV, learners make a paper model of the HIV virus that is about 500,000 times larger than the actual virus....

Acceleration, velocity, mass, and gravity all play a role in the motion of a rocket. Young scientists explore the connection among these components using an interactive tutorial. They adjust the mass and thrust force to experiment with...

Let your physics learners take this electromagnetic radiation exam home to show what they know. You could also use it in class or assign it as a review. The content covers concepts pertaining to color, wavelength, frequency,...

In cooperative groups, middle schoolers contemplate the probability of 18 different situations occurring. After they make predictions, they compare them to the actual risk factors. This eye-opening exercise demonstrates that the odds of...

Pupils create trading cards for elements in the Periodic Table. Initially, they are introduced to the Periodic Table of Elements and the concept of elements in the world around us. After dividing into groups, learners use the Visual...