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Rising Waters
Fourth graders rank balls by size from smallest to largest and from lightest to heaviest and then by how much they made the water rise. They then discuss why certain balls make the water rise higher than do other balls.
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Erosion
Students design and conduct an open-ended investigation using a variety of earth materials to answer a questions posed by the teacher: How does the erosion of sand compare with the erosion of gravel? After producing evidence that...
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Suburban Ecosystems
High schoolers conduct simple sampling of plant and insect biodiversity at ground level in two contrasting environments of their own choosing. They recognize and record different species then compare and contrast species numbers in the...
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Hurricane Scavenger Hunt
Students explain how hurricanes are formed, why they are so dangerous, and how they can be tracked. Students work with a partner to investigate the Internet to answer questions about hurricanes.
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Types of Matter
Students analyze different types of matter according to its general and specific properties. They design an experiment to classify matter. Students are shown cornflakes and raisins. They are asked what type of substance is each...
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Inference Makes the Difference
Students explore how archaeologists make inferences from artifacts to explore what life was like in the past. In this archaeology lesson, students work in groups and make inferences about an imaginary household based on modern day...
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Lift Relationships
Students use FoilSim (downloadable) to determine how lift is affected by varying parameters on the Airfoil simulation.
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Epidemiology: Graphing and Analyzing Health Data
Students graph data on fetal and infant mortality rates collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They identify trends in the data and propose potential causes for the trends.
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Animal Encyclopedia Search
Learners use an online encyclopedia to gather information about animals. They identify habits of ten animals they find interesting. They share their information with the class.
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Oil Slick Emergency
Students examine how to recover and remove oil from an oil spill. In this oil spill clean-up lesson students use role play and act like a committee to determine how to clean up an oil spill.
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Hominoid Cranium Comparison
Students describe, measure and compare cranial casts from contemporary apes (chimpanzees and gorillas, typically), modern humans and fossil "hominids" (erect and bipedal forms evolutionarily separated from apes).
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Graphing Climate Information
Seventh graders plot the data for the average monthly precipitation for three cities. They make a graph using a spreadsheet.
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Teaching Matter with The Wild Christmas Reindeer
Second graders learn the proper way to take measurements, explore the properties of objects and expand their vocabulary.
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The Periodic Table
Students research an assigned element using the library, an encyclopedia, the Internet and other appropriate resources in order to write a research paper, a project, and an oral presentation.
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Electricity Newsletter
Students create a newsletter about electricity. They view a completed newsletter and discuss its information and format and research the Internet to find facts about electricity. After researching their facts, they write a rough draft of...
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Introduction to Biomes
Fifth graders use scientific skills and processes to recognize how living things depend on one another and on the environment for survival and the human use of natural resources impacts the environment. Explain how Earth's surface...
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Crime Scene Investigation: Hair Analysis Lab
Students participate in a hair analysis lab. Using a digital microscope, students compare and contrast hair samples. They determine if the hair samples are human or animal. After completing lab results sheets, students share their...
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Waves Through Earth: Interactive Online Mac and PC
Students participate in a JAVA activity to vary the seismic P and S wave velocity through each of four concentric regions of Earth. They match "data" for travel times vs. angular distance around Earth's surface from the source to detector.
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Organ Systems: Excretory, Digestive, Immune, and Nervous
Eighth graders identify and describe the components of various body systems. They create vocabulary flash cards identifying the excretory, digestive, immune, and nervous systems and describing their functions. Students complete a...
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Oat Seed Lab: A Model Scientific Experiment
Students investigate seed germination. In this lesson on scientific prediction, students conduct a scientific experiment using oat seeds.
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All About Safety
Learners create a safety podcast. For this safety lesson, students in a robotics lab are introduced to the safety rules for each station. They create a podcast about one station explaining the rules with video, graphics, voice and sound...
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Planets in Balance
Students study the solar system by researching the planets. For this exploratory lesson students divide into teams and create mobiles.
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Hide and Seek
Students explore animal characteristics by creating a poster presentation in class. In this animal habitat instructional activity, students visit the local zoo and identify which habitats certain animals are most comfortable in. Students...
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Life in a Log
Young scholars identify insects living in rotting logs. In this decomposition lesson, students observe pieces of a rotting log, they look at the insects that have inhabited the log and create a chart that shows their findings.