PBS
Human Tree: Ratios
Create a personal tree. By visiting an exhibit at the National Museum of Mathematics, the resource introduces the idea of fractals. The exhibit takes an image of the person and creates a tree by repeating scaled images on the shoulders...
PBS
The Lorax
Accompany a reading of Dr. Seuss' tale, The Lorax, with a five-item worksheet. Questions challenge scholars to list characters' names, use text details to answer inquiries, and describe the moral of the story.
PBS
Using Video to Create Setting and Mood
Writers have long used words, the sound of words, and the images created by their words to describe the setting and establish the mood of their stories. To gain a more in depth understanding of how settings can be used to develop a...
PBS
Lesson Plan: Divided Opinions
To gain a more in-depth understanding of the tumultuous 1960s, young historians examine video clips, listen to music, examine images, and interview survivors. Once they have a foundation of information about the period, class members...
PBS
Scale City — Proportional Relationships in the Real World
Strive to determine your stride. Scholars first view an informative video on the Kentucky Horse Park and the 28-feet stride of the Man o' War. They then work together in groups to find the length of their own strides by using the number...
PBS
Scale City — Inverse Proportions and Shadows in the Real World
Bring the resource out from the shadows. Viewers of a short video learn about drive-in theaters and how operators project images onto a large screen. They then perform an experiment to determine the relationship between the distance of...
PBS
The Lowdown — Living Wages in CA: Ratio and Rate in the Real World
How much money is enough money? Future wage earners explore the minimum hourly wage and then use it to calculate monthly and yearly earnings. They use an interactive to consider living costs and determine whether earning a minimum wage...
PBS
The Lowdown — Exploring Changing Obesity Rates through Ratios and Graphs
Math and medicine go hand-in-hand. After viewing several infographics on historical adult obesity rates, pupils consider how they have changed over time. They then use percentages to create a new graph and write a list of questions the...
PBS
The Lowdown — Examining California's Prison System: Real-World Ratio
Free yourself from the shackles of traditional math lessons. Young mathematicians investigate race, gender, and age differences in California's prison system. They use provided graphics to compare the prison population with the state's...
PBS
Real-World Proportional Relationships: Gender Wage Gap
When will the gender wage gap disappear? Scholars use a provided infographic to see trends in wage gap over time. They use ratios of women's wages to men's wages to determine which decades had the greatest change in the wage gap. The...
PBS
Scale City — Scaling up Recipes and Circles in the Real World
What a great big skillet you have. The resource introduces the class to the world's largest stainless steel skillet. The class creates a model of the skillet and a typical 12-inch skillet and compares the relative sizes of their areas....
PBS
Opioids in Our Community—Middle School
How do opioids affect the lives of families and individuals within a community? Scholars explore the topic with a series of informative, thought-provoking videos. They also complete worksheets and discuss the effects of the opioid...
PBS
The Last Generation: Climate Change and the Marshall Islands
Are some families down to their last generation? The final segment of a two-part climate change series investigates the vanishing Marshall Islands. Scholars divide into research teams to analyze three different individuals whose lives...
PBS
The Last Generation
How does climate impact the town, city, or area where people live? Scholars research the concept of climate change as it pertains to the Marshall Islands. The opening lesson of a two-part series uses interactive online resources and...
PBS
Impact Craters on Earth
What does it look like when a meteorite strikes Earth? A slideshow resource gives pupils a firsthand view of common meteorite strikes. Using the ages of the craters, scholars analyze how the shapes erode over time.
PBS
Seasons on Earth and Mars
Winter, spring, summer, and fall—Earth experiences them all! But what about Mars? Scholars compare the planets in terms of distance, tilt, and rotation during a lesson from PBS's Space series. Great visual models of Earth and Mars, plus...
PBS
Regional Patterns of Climate: Pacific Northwest
Climate systems involve sunlight, ocean, atmosphere, ice, land forms, and many other factors. Scholars explore each of these variables related to the Pacific Northwest rain forest. They use an online interactive to investigate the polar...
PBS
Earthquakes and Volcanoes
Earth's surface constantly changes thanks to a variety of geological forces; in fact, Australia currently moves faster than GPS technology. Scholars connect the idea of continental drift to earthquakes and volcanoes with the help of an...
PBS
Coastline Change
Continental drift happens over millions of years, but new perspective shows much faster changes. An informative resource offers a short term perspective using a series of satellite images. Viewers observe major changes to a coastline in...
PBS
Why Isn't There an Eclipse Every Month?
Searching for an eclipse activity that sends scholars over the moon? Try an interesting interactive to get their minds active! The resource, part of an extensive Space series from PBS Learning Media, uses modeling and data analysis to...
PBS
Making a Difference in the Midst of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
What can individuals do to give peace a chance in the Middle East? Through a series of activities including viewing segments from a PBS video, class members learn about the complex history of the conflict and about efforts to promote...
PBS
Rain Shadows
Satellite images from NASA help scholars focus on the similarities on the planet rather than the differences. The photos from the installment of a larger PBS series exploring weather and climate compare geological formations in the...
PBS
Mountain Weather: Orographic Lift
Why do so many mountain ranges exist next to a desert? As part of a larger series, PBS 6-8 Weather and Climate answers this question. The presentation offers diagrams and photographs of the development of a rain shadow. From Oregon to...
PBS
The Landscape of the Pacific Northwest
The Pacific Northwest includes four mountain ranges and one rain forest. Explore the breathtaking scenery using a instructional activity from a larger series from PBS covering climate and weather. Starting with photographs taken from the...