Curated OER
Birds and Migration
Students actively simulate bird migration. In this animal migration lesson, students participate in an activity that simulates the migration of birds. The teacher discusses with the class the hazards and difficulties birds face during...
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Acid and Rain and Its Effects
Students work in groups for up to three weeks to investigate the possibility of acid rain in your area and to investigate the damage that acid rain can do to buildings, monuments, and plants. Each group prepares a report to local...
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Tree Cookies
Young scholars identify heartwood, sapwood, and a tree's annual rings, infer from a tree's rings what damage or stress might have occurred in its life, and make a time-line of human history that coincides with a tree's rings.
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Create Your Own Fog
Students conduct an experiment. In this science lesson, students create their own fog. Students observe the results.
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Create Your Own Lightning
Young scholars conduct an experiment. In this lightning instructional activity, students use a blanket and a dark room to simulate lightning.
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Guetemala's Changing Forest
Eighth graders compare their local ecological zone to the tropical rainforest. In this natural ecology lesson, 8th graders complete an activity about the differences in ecological zones. They compare their biome to the Guatemalan...
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A Day in the Life of a San Francisco Native Animal
Learners write from an animal's perspective. In this writing lesson students explore the landscape of San Francisco prior to the arrival of the explorers. Learners research animals indigenous to the area.
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Solar Cycle
Learners explore the solar cycle through a series of experiments. In this space science lesson, students construct and evaluate solar cycle graphs. They explain how this phenomenon affects the Earth.
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Animals, Soil, Trees
Fourth graders describe the various kinds of soils and how plants and animals are affected by them. They describe the baic needs of plants, scoring at least a 3 or 4 on a 4-point rubic. Students are able to predict and/or infer what...
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Forest Succession
Students research environmental change and why forests cannot stay the same for long. In this environmental growth lesson, students discuss the life cycle of a tree and examine tree cookies to discover the age of these specimens....
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Making Sense of Unusual Findings
Students work on the development of observation skills and seeing how they can be used in different contexts. The lesson is good for helping the beginner and novice, along with encouraging and reminding the expert observer of right...
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Trees: Are They Thriving or Surviving?
In this trees survival lesson plan, 8th graders discuss what trees need to grow, brainstorm things that could adversely affect tree growth, and compare characteristics of thriving trees vs. surviving trees. Students learn about the trees...
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What is Drought?
Students explore and conduct an experiment on the effects of drought on the environment. They define what drought is and the impact that a shortage of rainfall can have on agriculture, municipal water supplies, tourism, recreation, etc.
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Time and Cycles - Dendrochronology
Students investigate the lives of trees by examining ring cycles. In this plant life lesson plan, students identify the field of study known as dendrochronology and discover its history. Students investigate a simulated tree ring and...
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Methuselah Tree
Students examine how scientists determine the age of living and non-living trees. They simulate the role of a tree-ring scientist, crossdating tree-ring samples and determining which sample is the oldest and the age of the samples.
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Australia, Oceania, and Antarctica Today
Students explore the importance of research in Antarctica, then explain how snow becomes part of the Antarctic ice cap. They explore Antarctica's harsh environment and discover how scientists drill ice cores and what information ice...
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The Blizzard of 1993
Pupils read and interpret the information from a barograph from a major winter storm. This task assesses students' abilities to interpret and analyze graphs, construct data tables and graphs, generalize, infer, apply knowledge of...
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Formation of Rain
Students sequence the steps leading to the formation of rain, and design a model to represent these steps. This task assesses students' abilities to classify, generalize, infer, interpret and communicate data, and construct a pictorial...
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Formation of Wind
Students correctly sequence the steps leading to the formation of wind, and describe the cause and effect relationships involved in the formation of wind. This task assesses students' abilities to classify, generalize, infer, interpret...
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Beautiful Bovine
Students compare and contrast a human body to a cow. Using a diagram, they label and identify the functions of the cow's numerous parts. In groups, they create a Venn Diagram to compare the various types of cows with one another. They...
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The Many, Varied, and Unusual Places and Things on Earth
Students discover how energy flows through communities because of the relationship between producers, consumers and decomposers. Examining various ecosystems, they identify the materials that cycle continuously through them. They label...
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World Wide Winds
Students recognize that global winds move in specific directions in specific latitudes and describe that in a written form. They relate the motion of the wind belts to historical navigation.
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The Rifting of Pangaea and the Gettysburg Battlefield
Eleventh graders analyze and interpret an animated model of Earth’s rifting processes. In this Earth Science lesson, 11th graders connect Earth’s rifting processes with the Earth’s surface in the Gettysburg battlefield. Students apply...
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Analyzing Journey North Maps
Students analyze what's happening and interpret why it's happening as the season progresses.