Don't let your eyes play tricks on you ... use scale to keep your eyes in check! Young scholars observe images without scale and try to identify the structure. Then, they look at the same image with a scale bar and assess whether their...

Challenge your class to use their understanding of the engineering design process to design and build a small-scale, off-road prototype for an assistive technology device. Teams select materials to build their scale models, and, using...

Now that your class knows about the life cycle of a butterfly, it's time to discuss how an adult butterfly survives in the wild. The class diagrams and labels the parts of a butterfly, discusses how butterflies survive, and then make a...

Before maps went mobile, people actually had to learn how to read maps. Pupils look at map elements in order to understand how to read them and locate specific locations. Finally, young cartographers discover how to make aerial maps.

The first lesson of a five-lesson unit designed for eighth graders has class members reading and watching a video of Edgar Allen Poe's narrative poem, "The Raven." They then craft their narrative poem, illustrate it, and share their work...

Why do you weigh more in space? Each individual in your class explores this question and others as they determine the mass and weight of different objects using two types of scales. They perform conversions and discuss their...

Set up a listening center, record the provided script, and see how well your class can manipulate phonemes based on the instructions you've provided. This center-based activity builds the phonological awareness and phoneme manipulation...

Mammals are some of the newest organisms to appear on Earth. Young scholars complete an activity that results in a timeline showing the appearance of different types of living organisms. Provided with a list that spans from prokaryotes...

Learn about damage associated with earthquakes and materials that best withstand a quake. A lab engages class members in the experimental design and construction of sturdy structures that can endure various earthquake...

Your pupils may believe that you and their parents are the oldest things in the universe, but surprise! There are elements of the universe that are even older. Elementary scientists create a class timeline to demonstrate the...

The backbone of Latin American music is the beat! Young musicians work on blending Afro-Latin rhythms and beat patterns before incorporating the major pentatonic, minor pentatonic, and blues scales in their own compositions.

Scale up your lessons with a performance task. Young data analysts work through an assessment task on scaled bar graphs. They answer questions about a given scaled bar graph on favorite colors, analyze a bar graph to see if it matches...

Before digital microscopes, scientists hired artists to draw the things visible in the microscope. Through training in neuroscience and art, Cajal revolutionized the way we view the beautiful brain. The third lesson in a series of four...

Find a seat at the table. Learners design a non-rectangular picnic table given constraints on the number of people that should be able to sit at the table. They draw blueprints and build scale models of their tables. After researching...

An activity focuses on final sounds sorting. Scholars pull objects out of a bag, identify what letter sound the object ends with, then draw the picture under the appropriate column.

Population density, it is not all that it is plotted to be. Pupils analyze a scatter plot of population versus area for some of the states in the US. The class members respond to eight questions about the graph, specific points and...

What's missing from most studies of the American Revolutionary War is information about the role African Americans played in the conflict. To correct this oversight, middle schoolers research groups like the Black Loyalists and ...

How do you find the area of an irregular shape? Class members calculate the area of an irregular shape by finding the area of a random sampling of the shape. Individuals then utilize a confidence interval to improve accuracy and use a...

Explore how resizing an object affects its area. The set of lessons challenges young mathematicians to design a mascot for electronic devices. These designs undergo resizing to determine how scale factors of dilation affect area.

Weathering is not necessarily a result of the weather. Scholars conduct an experiment to explore the effect of surface area and volume on the weathering process. They create their own sugar cube rocks using the same number of cubes—but...

Your learners combine their knowledge of real and imaginary numbers and matrices in an activity containing thirty lessons, two assessments (mid-module and end module), and their corresponding rubrics. Centered on complex numbers and...

Inspire your class to look at their environments as if they were seeing them for the first time in order to gain a better understanding of the concept of perspective. After exploring their communities and keeping a journal of major...

Are congruent shapes compatible? Congruent shapes are identical to one another, and throughout the assessment, young mathematicians identify given shapes as congruent.

As part of a study of how visual metaphors are used in set design, class members examine an image of designer Josef Svoboda's 3-D scale model for the opera Idomeneo, re` di Creta. They then find another example that employs a visual...