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Life Cycle of Brassica Plants: Planting Seeds
Students explore botany by participating in a calendar class activity. In this plant observation lesson, students examine a diagram of a Brassica plant and identify its anatomy before planting their own seeds and viewing the changes over...
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Eat Your Plants
Students explore fruits and vegetables. For this fruits and vegetables lesson, students work in small groups investigating plant parts. Students discover that fruits and vegetables originate from different parts of plants.
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Water Quality Tests Explained
Students identify the eight tests done to check for water quality. In this ecology lesson, students explain why it's important to test water in rivers. They explore sources of river water pollution.
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Matching Flowers With Their Pollinators
Students match flowers to pollinators and construct models of
flowers to demonstrate why different kinds of flowers need different kinds of
pollinators. They use their flower models and the "Scientific Method Format" included in the...
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Living Corn Necklace
Fifth graders explore heredity and observable traits through experimentation. They view several different types of corn and record their observation of physical traits on a class chart. They create a corn necklace by sprouting dried...
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Dishing the Dirt Part 3
High schoolers collect and examine different soil samples. They test for specific types of soil elements and the pH level. They answer questions about optimum growing conditions as well.
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Skates
Students gain understanding of structure, characteristics, and basic needs of living things and their role in world, identify parts of skate, observe details of skate's body and skate egg case, and identify unique characteristics of skates.
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Germinating Seeds on Gelatin
Students germinate seeds in unflavored gelatin to which liquid house plant food has been added. Students observe and record plant growth in this medium with a variety of variables in a number of experiments.
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Don't Trust Your Eyes
Students brainstorm a list of possible actions that they could do to protect the water resources from pollution. They create hypotheses and conclusions by completing experiments and observing different pollutants.
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Point Source vs. Non-point Source Pollution
Students define and differentiate between point source and non-point source pollution. Students discuss various types of pollution including air, water and land pollution, analyze demonstrations and complete a worksheet.
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Soil Composition
Learners investigate how soil composition affects plant growth. In small groups, they plant various seeds in different soil mixtures, record plant and seed growth, and analyze the results.
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Water Pollution Lesson Plan: Don't Trust Your Eyes
Students develop a list of actions they could perform that would protect our water resources from pollution. They formulate hypotheses, conduct experiments and draw conclusions about actual pollutants found in our water supply.
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Water Pollution Graphing Activity
Students describe and identify the link between land use activities within a watershed and water quality. They evaluate the quality of a "water sample" ( a bag of skittles), graph their results, and form a hypothesis about the land use...
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Ammonium Nitrate - Heat of Solution
Students quantify the relationship between temperature, energy and heat
and define an endothermic reaction. They measure the energy change caused by dissolving one mole of ammonium nitrate in water.
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Graphical Determination of Density
Students determine the density of metal shot by a graphical method using significant digits in making measurements and calculations. Students graph a seris of laboratory measurements and determine density from a mass verses volume graph.
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We are where and what we eat
Young scholars explore concepts of plants they eat, where and how they grow and are introduced to genetic diversity. They examine seed characteristics, look at their different sizes, shapes and germination time. They also set up seeds...
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Com-Post With Us?
Students discuss the importance of reducing, recycling and reusing materials to help the environment. As a class, they create a worm bin and observe how it turns material in to compost. They use the internet to research the...
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The Compost Bucket
Students recognize that plants and soils have a close relationship. They view a photo essay on the common practice and natural process of composting. Afterwards, they observe the process of plant decay over the course of several days.
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Do Human Practices Affect Water Quality?
Students determine if human practices have any noticeable effects on the quality of stream life as measured by the presence of certain macroinvertebrates. They collect, preserve and identify macroinvertibrate samples and quantify the data.
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Clean Kansas Water
Students gain an understanding of ways we can be responsible custodians of our water supply. Students explore the governor's clean water initiative involving the Lower Kansas/Republican river basin and the pollutants present there.
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The Principles Of Composting
Students put items in a plastic bag and watch the effects of composting. While completing the experiment, students answer questions and ask permission to start their own compost pile at home.
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Multiplying Microbes
Middle schoolers examine environmental conditions that effect bacteria growth. They culture bacteria, design and conduct an experiment, and identify the conditions that effected the bacteria growth using the scientific method.
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Compost Columns
In this unit of lessons, students examine the role of compost columns and recycling. They create a KWL chart about garbage in Chicago. They also examine life cycles and packaging of everyday products.
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What Are We?
Students describe different types of water pollutants. They complete experiments in which they observe the affects of water pollution on algae. They also brainstorm and list three causes of each water pollutant.