National Library of Medicine
Your Environment, Your Health: The Great Debate—Bottled Water vs. Tap Water in Our School
Should bottled water be sold in schools, or should they only provide tap water? The summative unit in the six-part series encourages scholars debating this topic. The lessons teach how to build an argument, how to gain background...
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Engaging Young Scientists with Inquiry: Part One
Building inquiry into your science lessons will make science concepts more concrete for your class.
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"The Emperor's New Clothes and Mahler's Ninth Symphony" Writing to Explain, Confidently and Efficiently, Even Physics!
Students combine their study of physics with their study of best practices when writing to inform. They communicate with experts using e-mail before creating a brochure based on their study of universal gravitation.
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Sink It
Introduce your class to the concept of sinking and floating. In groups, they classify objects after making predictions about which materials will sink or float. They record their results and create graphs and charts to share with the class.
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Exercise in creating drawings for field notebooks
Students (with a partner) draw and describe a leaf in its natural setting, and then re-find leaves drawn and described by classmates. The point is to have them start to think about observations in science, what to put in a field...
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We're Environmentally Friendly
Fourth graders examine written works dealing with environmental issues and resolutions during a 5 week unit. They create posters, poems, and rap songs demonstrating authorship and knowledge of the environment.
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Student Experiment Flies On NASA Space Shuttle!
Students design and construct an experiment that will be launched into space aboard a NASA research shuttle. How better to gain and appreciation for (and, hopefully, a love of) scientific investigation than to do real science and be...
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Plants Under Attack
Third graders will identify the four needs for plant survival and gain skills and confidence in using scientific measurement tools, probes as well as the spreadsheets and graphing capacity of a computer to represent and analyze data.They...
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Sensing Energy: Designing to Stay Cool
Students examine the energy the sun produces on a daily basis. In groups, they discover the properties of visible and invisible light. They also adjust the exposure time to change the properties of various objects. To end the lesson,...
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The Lift Equation
Students use the FoilSim educational software program to complete an activity regarding lift. They solve a multivariable equation for each of the variables and apply the results to various problems in different situations.
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Weather Watchers
Students conduct Internet research of their community's weather and compare it to the weather in another location. After conducting research, students become weather reporters by reporting their findings to the class by using a...
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How BIG is 400?
Students solve problems using dimensional analysis. In this chemistry lesson, students choose a problem and present it in class. The rest of the class will evaluate the solved problem on the board.