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Landfills: Building Them Better
Middle schoolers investigate the three methods of waste disposal. They listen to a teacher-led lecture, answer discussion questions, and write a letter to the E.P.A. from the viewpoint of an environmental engineer.
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Create a Country
Young scholars work in small groups to list features and elements found on a variety of grade- appropriate maps. They develop a class list of map features and elements to draw from as they create a map of an imaginary country.
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Creative Homework Assignments Can Motivate Students
Teachers can make homework more meaningful by giving students interesting and motivating assignments.
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A World of Information
Students analyze data and statistics about countries around the world. They read graphs and charts, color a world map to illustrate the top ten statistics about the world, and write a paragraph to summarize their information.
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Map-A-Buddy
Students investigate the concept of tracking and spatial movements of animals in relation to the environment in which they live. They participate in an interactive activity by tracking one another over a pre-defined region, record the...
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Welcome to School
Students are welcomed to their new school by reading a book created by their peers. They discover the daily operations and procedures they need during the school year.
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Rocking the Boat
Students work together to discover the concepts of stability and equilibrium. They examine how equilibrium is related to an item's center of mass. They create their own action scene in a literacy activity.
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The Air We Breathe
Students discover the cuases of pollution. They investigate different pollutants that exist. Stsudents research technologies developed by engineers to reduce the amounts of air pollution. Upon completion of assigned activities,...
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Will There Be a White Christmas This Year?
Young scholars examine historical weather data, and create map and color key that illustrates the likelihood of a white Christmas in different locations across the United States.
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Acid Rain Effects
Get out the goggles and conduct a simple experiment to model and explore the harmful effects of acid rain (vinegar) on living (green leaf and eggshell) and non-living (paper clip) objects. Young chemists observe and describe the harmful...
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Map that Habitat
Students participate in an activity that replicates the creation of sea floor bathymetry by taking a simplified form of soundings in the classroom. They discuss sea floor mapping technologies, sonar, soundings, and remote sensing,...
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From Curiosity Cabinet to Museum Collection
Students study binomial nomenclature and museum-based research. They create a curiosity box, label the objects in their curiosity box , develop a classification scheme for the objects, and create a database of all objects collected by...
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Are You a Super Sign Speler or Speller?
Why is spelling important? Develop your class' spelling skills. They examine examples of homonyms, heteronyms, and creative spelling. They also photograph misspellings in the real world in order to discover the importance of spelling...
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TE Activity: Don't Crack Humpty
Students perform mathematical calculations to design safety device or enclosure to protect an egg as it is rolled down a ramp at increasing slopes.
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Bedroom Redecoration Project
In this bedroom redecoration project, your young mathematicians become interior designers. They plan, draw, and determine finances for the project. They apply their knowledge of working with decimals, geometric shapes, and problem...
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Newspaper Reporting and Writing
Students will examine advertisements, explore ways to inform, locate pictures of Hemingway, read sports articles, and follow directions to create a finished project - a newspaper. their newspapers are multifaceted with not only...
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Design Your Own Rube Goldberg Machine
Middle schoolers design and construct a Rube Goldberg machine that accomplishes a simple task in at least ten steps. They view and discuss various Rube Goldberg designs, identify types of simple machines, and in small groups produce a...
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TE Activity: Pollution Politics
Students examine how a bill becomes a law in the US Congress. They investigate legislation about global warming. They determine the role of engineers as they educate Congress, the public and other government institutions about global...
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Spin Me a Story
Students examine the motif of spinning and weaving in myths and folktales. They read various myths, complete a WebQuest, develop a mind map of story elements, and write an original "spider" story.
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Good News - We're on the Rise!
Students build and observe a simple aneroid barometer to discover changes in barometric pressure and weather forecasting. They graph changes in barometric pressure for two weeks and make weather predictions.
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Engineering Pop-Ups
Students explore the art of paper engineering and pop-up-books. They listen to a teacher-led lecture on pop-up books, discuss the process of paper engineering, and plan, design and construct an original pop-up book.
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TE Activity: Hot Cans and Cold Cans
Middle schoolers work on problems in which they investigate conduction, convection, and radiation. They attempt to maintain the warmth in one can of soda while cooling the other as much as possible in a thirty minute period. They examine...
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It's Really Heating Up in Here!
Students create and observe a greenhouse effect model and discuss the implications of global warming theory for engineers, themselves and the Earth. They discover that Global warming is becoming an increasing concern as we learn more...