Fifth graders experiment with student-made aluminum boats to test for buoyancy. They design a boat and determine how many marbles it takes to sink it while recording their data in a spreadsheet. They design a graph using the data and...

Eighth graders design and construct a safe and efficient human powered watercraft that can be used on a trip on the Great Lakes. Students utilize math and measurement skills to design and cut the pieces for their boat. Working in...

Students participate in an experiment to determine if a toy boat will sink or float. They make the boats out of different materials and determine its carrying capacity by adding pennies. They graph their findings on a classroom graph.

Fourth graders, in groups, experiment with density and the displacement of water by creating and designing their own boats and seeing which boat holds the most centimeter cubes without sinking..

Young scholars explore the principles of buoyancy and Archimedes' Principle and design their own flotation device. They compare the dimensions of a model to the real object to determine scale and analyze the models to suggest improvements.

Learners design and make products and take into account how the products will be used. In this problem solving lesson, students use a range of sources of information to test their design thinking while creating a canal vessel that can...

Students examine what naval architects and marine engineers do.  In this engineering lesson students work in teams and design a boat with a sail structure. 

Want to get your students motivated in science class? Given only a piece of aluminum foil, assign groups the task of designing a "barge" that will support the weight of a bunch of pennies.  The group who is able to put the most...

Students experiment with buoyancy as a force. In this buoyancy lesson, students access an assigned website to examine the sailing vessels that came to the New World. They work as teams to build boats out of aluminum foil to see which...

A well-designed, comprehensive, and attractive slide show supports direct instruction on how sonar and echolocation work. Contained within the slides are links to interactive websites and instructions for using apps on a mobile device to...

Much and many are two words that often get misused in our language. This fine presentation addresses that fact by giving learners clear direction of when each word should be used, and many opportunities to practice using them correctly....

This three-page worksheet is designed to be used by the Weblos of Boy Scouts of America. They are given 13 choices of academic activities that involve the use of maps, geography, math, and money. They must complete five of the activities...

Students work in groups and note similarities and differences between their boats: size, shape, color, and unique features. They discuss 3 typical means of propulsion: propellers, sails, and paddles then share their charts with the class.

Students explore and analyze the relationship of buoyancy and displacement needed to make an object float. They examine various boat designs, then design and build clay and aluminum boats that hold a cargo of marbles.

Middle schoolers work together to design an Egyptian funerary barge. They discover the importance of the afterlife to Egyptians. They create their boat and share their design with the class. They compare and contrast the technology of...

Foot, bus, bicycle, boat. Transport and travel words are targeted in this plan designed for ESL/ELD classes. The packet is packed with practice exercises and performance prompts.

Whatever floats your boat. Young engineers learn about density by measuring the masses and volumes of boxes filled with different materials. Using their knowledge of densities, they hypothesize whether objects with given densities will...

This overview of Theodore Taylor's The Cay is designed as an introduction for teachers who are considering using Theodore Taylor's novel for whole-class and/or book circle study. 

What better way to learn how to use a microscope than building your own? A lab investigation has scholars use lenses from magnifying glasses and sheets of cork to design their own compound microscopes. They calculate focal length...

This vocabulary-in-context strategy can be applied to any book that learners read with you; however the activity here is designed around Byron Byrton's fiction book, Airplane. First, introduce the new words you will learn: attendant,...

Did you know that modern Chinese literature “grew from the psychoanalytical theory of Sigmund Freud”? Designed for a world literature class, seniors are introduced to “One Evening in the Rainy Season,” Shi Zhecun’s stream of...

Designed for teachers who use Theodore Taylor's The Cay, this 11-page packet includes a synopsis of the story, chapter-based quizzes, and an answer key.

Home, though, smoke. Help readers develop phonemic awareness, the conscious awareness of the sound structure of words, with an exercise that asks them to identify and highlight the /oe/ sound in a list of 39 words. The exercise...

Students build a boat. They explore and examine the types of materials used in boat building. In groups, pupils copy their plans onto the plywood and begin to build the boat. During this fifteen day program, students follow instructions...