Curated OER
Why Do We Have Night?
Learners engage in a fun, creative way to discover how the Earth moves. This lesson helps students explain why there is day and night. It can also create curiosity to further study the solar system and eclipses!
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Weather
Students explore the earth's atmosphere, weather, and climate. They begin class with a discussion about weather patterns, atmosphere, and the layers of the earth. After the class discussion, students rotate through four stations to...
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Introduction to the Day and Night Sky
Students explore space science by participating in a sky observation activity. In this astronomy lesson, students define a list of astronomy vocabulary terms and examine star charts of the four seasons. Students gather with their...
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Stations of Light
Student groups rotate through four stations to examine light energy behavior: refraction, magnification, prisms and polarization. They see how a beam of light is refracted (bent) through various transparent mediums. Young scholars...
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Wind Power
Fourth graders develop an understanding of how engineers use wind to generate electricity. They will build a model anemometer to better understand and measure wind speed. They discover that engineers design wind turbines that generate...
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Motion Near Earth
In this motion activity, learners will match 5 physics vocabulary words relating to motion with their definitions. Then, they will review 9 statements of different motion scenarios to determine is the statement is true or false. Finally,...
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Rotational Dynamics
In this motion worksheet, students calculate the initial angular acceleration, and the angular speed before and after impact for different objects. This worksheet has 3 problems to solve.
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Taking a Voyage away from Home
Students experience and participate in a journey through a "Voyage" exhibition of the Solar System and the frontier it covers. They build a dynamic model of the Earth and Sun. Descriptions are given on the relative sizes of the Sun and...
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Foucault's Pendulum
High schoolers investigate how the motion of the Foucault pendulum proves that the Earth is rotating. They research the Internet about pendulums and conduct an experiment online. They view a multimedia presentation about pendulums and...
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A New Slant On The Seasons
Students identify how the tilt and position of the Earth causes the seasons. After a discussion of the seasons and when they begin. Using themselves as the objects in the universe, they role play how the rotational movement of the...
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Our Solar System
In this solar system worksheet, students complete a database comparing the 9 different planets' mass, surface temperature, rotation period, orbital period, moons, and distinguishing features. This worksheet is a graphic organizer.
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Jupiter
Young astronomers read an informational text on the gas giant, Jupiter. Then they answer four multiple choice questions based on what they read.
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Plasmasphere
In this plasmasphere activity, students determine how long the plasmasphere takes to rotate around the Earth using two satellite images taken three hours apart.
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Sky Pictures
Students investigate constellations. In this space science lesson, students view transparencies of constellations and identify the zodiac constellations. Students research the legends connected with the constellations.
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Our Universe: Always Moving, Always Changing
Students explore the main concepts of astronomy through the eleven lessons of this unit. The past, present, and future methods of studying the science are examined in this unit.
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CHARTING A COURSE
Students model how a gyroscope works with string, an old phonograph record and crayon.
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WHAT HOLDS US TO EARTH?
Learners they imagine they are Galileo and try to duplicate Galileo's experiments and results.
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Astronomy
Students complete a unit of lessons on our solar system, its stars, and astronomers. They record information in a space journal, design constellations, define key vocabulary, observe the phases of the moon, and create a group planet...
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Charting Seasonal Changes
Students research the Earth's patterns of rotation and revolution, create a chart and graph of these patterns and use them to explain the causes of night and day and summer and winter.
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Solar System: Let's Take a Trip
Third graders consider outer space. In this introductory solar system lesson, 3rd graders complete a KWL chart and listen to the story The Magic School Bus: Lost in the Solar System, by Joanna Cole & Bruce Degen. They will contribute...
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Losing An Island
Students examine carbon dioxide and determine the impact of greenhouse gases on the earths spheres. In this pollution lesson students complete a lab activity to see the impact of gases on the environment,
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Learning Lesson: Moonlight Serenade
Students complete experiments as they act as the earth. They observe how different angles affect the phases of the moon seen by us. They discuss the differences in light and dark.
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Color Recognition
Students envision how space observatories make use of monochromatic filters to collect data on the color of objects in space. They see the actual colors of objects when they are in monochromatic light.
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Modeling Day and Night
Students complete a science experiment to study the role of night and day on sleep patterns. In this sleep patterns lesson, students brainstorm about night and day and the causes for the rotations on Earth. Students work in groups to...