Oh, no! An asteroid is on a collision course with Earth!. Class members must rise to the challenge of designing a shelter that will protect people from the impact and permit them to live in this shelter for one year. In this first lesson...

Engineering design projects serve as great opportunities for collaborative problem solving. In this case, students work in small groups designing, building, and eventually testing a structure that meets a teacher-specified objective. It...

Challenge individuals to compete as many tasks as possible. Lower-level tasks have pupils apply costs and rates to solve problems. Upper-level tasks add algebraic reasoning and conditional probability to the tasks.

Investigate the attributes of polygons. A thorough set of lessons presents problem scenarios for elementary through high school classes. The first lessons focus on basic characteristics of polygons, including the line of symmetry. As the...

What are the unwritten rules of formality in different social situations? Help learners identify when it is the appropriate time to be silly, funny, or serious with this collection of illustrated panels and cards.

What if you had a design problem you wanted to solve, but were unable to draw because you were unable to see? Teach your learners with visual impairments that they can use Wikki Stix®, a braille ruler, Legos®, and Constructo Straws to...

Challenge young learners to cut the clutter with this fun engineering project. As employees of a home and office supply company, young engineers are asked to develop devices that organize everyday items. After participating in a...

Here's your chance to save the world. The eighth lesson in a 25-part Energy Systems and Solutions unit has young scientists come up with ideas for individual or group projects. They identify ways to solve the energy crisis. Hope they...

The engineering design process meets laparoscopic surgical robots with an activity that is the last part in a series of 10 and brings all the lessons of the unit together. Teams design and build a remotely controlled laparoscopic device....

Build a function to solve problems rooted in archeology. A comprehensive set of five lessons presents problems requiring individuals to use functions. The initial lesson asks learners to find the possible number of dinosaurs from a...

Groups work together to design a lighthouse, from designing and drawing the wiring diagram, to creating prototypes of the switch and circuit, to envisioning and building a scale model along with a blueprint. By including different...

Space, the Final Frontier. The nine NASA-created challenges in this unit are designed to teach class members the engineering design process. Each challenge comes with teacher and student pages that can be used individually or as a...

What is black and white and re(a)d all over? Class members build a table out of rolled newspapers. Pupils follow the design process to design, build, and test their paper tables in the second challenge in a series of five.

Guide the way to a better understanding of lighthouses. Young scholars first read a story about lighthouse and consider the problem that lighthouses try to solve. They then identify parts of a lighthouse and draw daymark patterns. As a...

Build problem-solving skills with science! Step-by-step videos walk investigators through each stage of completing a science fair project. Scientists learn to formulate a testable question, design an experiment, collect data, draw...

Teach solving for unknowns through a problem-solving approach. The grouping of five lessons progresses from finding an unknown through simple reasoning to solving simultaneous equations involving three and four variables. Each lesson...

Need some activities to go along with your unit? A collection of hands-on activities from PBS offers opportunities to add to your electricity, sound, and force units. The electricity activities revolve around building a...

One of the hardest skills for many young geometers to grasp is to move beyond just declaring obvious things true, and really returning to fundamental principles for proof. This brief exercise stretches those proving muscles as the...

Close your eyes and picture a time where you decided to tell the truth to someone. What were you wearing? How did you feel? Such prompts begin a guided imagery activity for Zach's Lie. Directions for creating an environment conducive to...

Mike and Kellie, a team of electrical engineers, demonstrate how to to design a contraption that accurately drops a marble onto a target. The materials needed and general instructions are provided on the website or via a downloadable...

Your class is asked to use inverse operations to solve eleven equations for unknown variables or to rearrange formulas to highlight a quantity of interest. By using the same reasoning as solving one- and two-step equations, algebra...

After reading about how engineering has made adaptive devices possible for people with disabilities, pupils work in groups to discuss different devices to determine whether or not they are adaptive. They also disassemble a pair of...

What makes number pairs perfect? The resource provides five problems regarding perfect pairs of numbers, the definition of which changes in complexity with each task. Solutions require pupils to apply number sense and operations, as well...

Sound engineers investigate the structural design of a musical instrument, the recorder. They work in collaborative groups to choose an instrument to build out of everyday craft materials. It must be able to repeat a three-note sequence...