Clay itself sinks, but clay boats float. Why? Young engineers build clay boats to learn about buoyancy. They test the weight the boats can hold using washers and then tweak their designs to make improvements, following the engineering...

Scholars build a boat using an assortment of materials such as foam plates, aluminum foil, and skewers, then test its buoyancy with pennies. Challenge boat builders to construct the strongest or fastest boat in a healthy competition with...

Eureka! Using the clay boats made in the previous lesson, learners investigate the idea of buoyancy and water displacement to finish the last installment of five in a Floaters and Sinkers unit. Their observations during the activity...

Use whatever material floats your boat. Working in groups, scholars decide on a type of metal and a type of coating to use for building a boat. They test their creations by leaving their boats in a pool of water for several days before...

Keep one's dream of becoming an engineer afloat. Learners apply the engineering design process to build a boat out of aluminum foil. They start with a square boat, then consider whether boats of different shapes would be able to hold...

Harness the power of rubber bands of all things. A hands-on activity has scholars design and build paddle boats. They learn how the elastic potential energy of rubber bands can be converted to the kinetic energy associated with motion.

Present the class with a question on whether the water level of a pond will rise they take a large rock out of a boat and drop it into the pond. Groups come down on all sides of the question and try to justify their answers. The activity...

Potentially get all the way across the water. The fourth of five design challenges asks pupils to develop a plan for a paddle-powered boat that will store its energy. Given a limited number of supplies, the class members design, build,...

Whatever floats your boat—with some additional weight. The first activity in a five-part series challenges pupils to design a boat to hold pennies. Using the design process, learners design, build, and test their boats, making sure they...

Ever feel like you're headed up the down escalator? Don't let your pupils get stuck in that rut! Practice writing equations to solve a problem using an engaging lesson. A video presents information that allows learners to determine how...

A whole-group discussion kicks off a hands-on activity that challenges young engineers to build a sailboat using reusable materials. Participants gather recycled items to assemble their one-of-a-kind sailboat and test its ability to...

Your young boaters will enjoy writing and solving inequalities, and representing the solution graphically in this task set in the context of renting a boat.

Boat ramps move with waves and changes in water level. Scholars decide on the proper length for a ramp so the angle connecting both sides is appropriate. They visualize the situation and use a simulation to view the results with their...

Don't just sink the boat. Using a closed container as a submarine, pupils experiment to see what to add to the container to make it float, sink to the bottom, and hover in the middle. After finding one option, learners see if they can...

Students complete various activities based on the Flat Stanley books. In this Flat Stanley lesson, students brainstorm a list of supernatural qualities as an introduction to the book, then create story webs based on the book characters...

You sank my battleship! The iconic cry of the time-honored game, Battleship will be heard in classrooms with this learning game that requires only grid paper, pencils, and an introductory knowledge of the first quadrant of the coordinate...

Rhymes are a great way to help your scholars with phonemic awareness and word relationships. Kids work with partners to match cards from a stack to their rhyming counterparts on a game board. There are six different boards, so this will...

Here is the perfect resource to support learners in designing comprehensive first aid kits tailored to their unique location, budget, and needs. This is an excellent supplement to your instruction on emergency preparedness!

Here is a phoneme segmenting game which incorporates drawing for your more artistic learners. Assemble the spinner using a brad and lay out the picture cards face up. Partners take turns spinning to get either two, three, four, or five....

Here's an awesome unit that uses The Cay as the anchor text. The 16-page packet is loaded with teaching ideas, activities, and suggested adjustments.

What stories can a desk paperweight and picture frame possibly tell us about the president of the United States? Pupils are transported to the desk of President John F. Kennedy through an engaging interactive site. The guide offers...

This resource is part of a series which expects participants to be familiar with graphing inequalities on a number line. It is a word problem that asks your class to graph a discrete solution set and interpret it in the context of an...

In this everyday editing instructional activity, students correct grammatical mistakes in a short paragraph about a giraffe walking to Paris. The errors range from punctuation, capitalization, grammar, and spelling.

Reading readiness can be a fun skill to foster. Scholars manipulate phonemes to change one word into another. They pick picture cards, say the object's name on the card, then change the final phoneme to create a new word. They then find...