Montana State University
Meet Mount Everest
Learning about one landform might seem boring to some, but using the resource provided practically guarantees scholar interest. The second in a sequential series of eight covering the topic of Mount Everest includes activities such as a...
Montana State University
Who’s on Top?
What's it like to climb Mount Everest? An educational resource encourages an in-depth knowledge of Mount Everest's scientific missions through a variety of activities, including an analysis of maps, a KWL chart, videos, a simulation, and...
West Corporation
Making Inferences – Use Your Mind to Read!
How can you tell if someone is happy? The lesson works with elementary and middle school scholars to activate their schema and pay attention to details to make inferences in their daily lives, poetry, and other literature. Cleverly...
Science Matters
Oh Heron
Two teams—the environmentalists and herons—play four rounds of the game, Oh Heron. Using hand symbols to represent food, shelter, and water, players locate their match to produce more herons while those unmatched decompose.
NASA
Eclipse Activity Guide
Ever made solar s'mores? Or recreated the solar system using peanuts? Astronomers young and old investigate all things solar using a variety of activities. Explore how the sun works, types of light it emits, and methods of charting the...
PhET
Balloons and Static Electricity
Like all electricity, static electricity flows at the speed of light, or 186,282 miles/second. The interactive simulation shows how like charges repel like charges and opposites attract. The user can choose either one or two balloons, a...
TryEngineering
Exploring at the Nanoscale
Discover a world too small to see. In the instructional activity, young scientists learn about nanotechnology and brainstorm ideas for new applications of it. They perform an activity to determine how surface area changes when objects...
Computer Science Unplugged
Tablets of Stone—Network Communication Protocols
Show your learners that the game of Telephone isn't the only way messages get mixed up. Pairs transform into the sender and receiver of a message sent in packets. At least one pupil is the messenger who either delivers, delays, or fails...
Computer Science Unplugged
Computing: Databases Unplugged
How do databases store and retrieve information? The activities in the resource provide fundamental concepts of databases by introducing an approach that teaches the basics without using computers. The pupils act as the actual data that...
NASA
Project X-51
In a nose-cone to nose-cone competition, which rocket will prevail? Teams form rocket companies to design and build a rocket while competing against other teams in an economic challenge. The team that comes up with the best benefit/cost...
Curated OER
Hazards: Fourth Grade Lesson Plans and Activities
Learn about damage associated with earthquakes and materials that best withstand a quake. A lab engages class members in the experimental design and construction of sturdy structures that can endure various earthquake intensities. Groups...
Curated OER
Plate Tectonics: Fourth Grade Lesson Plans and Activities
The pre-lab portion of the lesson introduces emerging geologists to the various layers that make up Earth. After completing a sheet on the identification of the layers, class members simulate plate boundaries and their...
Curated OER
Earthquakes: Fourth Grade Lesson Plans and Activities
Examine earthquake intensities and ways to measure an earthquake through the comparison of the Mercalli and Richter scales. After completing the pre-lab worksheet, fourth graders compare high and low intensity quakes by testing the...
NASA
The Case of the Wacky Water Cycle
Join the tree house detectives in learning about the processes of the water cycle, water conservation, water treatment, and water as a limited resource.
Wilderness Classroom
Ocean Life
Our oceans are composed of many complex relationships. Young oceanographers explore relationships between organisms, understand the world ocean's currents, and discover the effects of water pollution and how it behaves. There are three...
Curated OER
Moon Mining
Go on a moon mining expedition from the safety of your classroom with this space exploration simulation. Using simple models of the moon's surface prepared ahead of time by the teacher, young scientists are challenged with locating and...
Curated OER
Those Who Have Come Before Me
Class members are transformed into explorers as they work in groups to locate hidden items and map their journey along the way. They then leave clues for other groups of students to follow, and ultimately discover how past explorations...
National Constitution Center
Fourth of July (Grades 3-5)
Bring history to life for your young scholars with a Fourth of July lesson series. After a class reading of the Declaration of Independence, students translate this pivotal document into layman's terms before working in small groups to...
NOAA
Sustaining Our Ocean Resources
Lead young scientists on an investigation of fishery practices with the final installment of this four-part unit. Using a PowerPoint presentation and hands-on simulation, this lesson engages children in learning how fish populations are...
NOAA
Seafood and Human Health
Whether your young biologists realize it or not, humans play a significant role in marine ecosystems. To help them understand this fact children first create graphical representations that show homo sapiens' place in marine food chains,...
Curated OER
Food Chain Activities
Transform young biologists into grasshoppers, lizards, and hawks as you teach them about food chains in an interactive life science simulation. Working collaboratively to act out three different scenarios involving these creatures,...
NOAA
Into the Deep
Take young scientists into the depths of the world's ocean with the second lesson of this three-part earth science series. After first drawing pictures representing how they imagine the bottom of the ocean to appear, students investigate...
Outside Education
Water Cycle Adventure
Evaporation, transpiration, condensation, precipitation, accumulation. Steam, clouds, rain, lakes. Guide your class members on an imaginary journey through the water cycle with a water cycle adventure script.
American Institute of Architects
Architecture: It's Elementary!—Fifth Grade
Young citizens construct an understanding of urban planning in this cross-curricular unit. Covering every aspect of city development from the political, economic, and social influences to sustainable building practices, this 10-lesson...