Kenan Fellows
Saving Those Who Save Us: Exploring the Use of Sensors with Data Visualization
Sensor technology is amazingly accurate and useful. Combining the sensor technology and mathematical knowledge, scholars design experiments to answer a question they have developed. Questions may focus on light sensing, temperature...
Curated OER
Lesson Plan: A Guided Tour
Albert Bierstadt's painting Wind River Country shows viewers how a reader progresses through a story. Your class studies the light and dark areas, how the eye moves across the painting, and what attracts the audience to the work, and...
University of Colorado
Patterns and Fingerprints
Human fingerprint patterns are the result of layers of skin growing at different paces, thus causing the layers to pull on each other forming ridges. Here, groups of learners see how patterns and fingerprints assist scientists in a...
NASA
Down to Earth
There are only 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who don't. The lesson includes four activities in which students learn binary, convert binary to images, understand CCD arrays, and interpret...
Teach Engineering
Pushing it Off a Cliff
Focus on the conservation of energy, specifically looking at gravitational potential energy and kinetic energy, with a lecture that involves having friends throw light objects at each other to determine which has more kinetic energy and...
Curated OER
Rain Sticks
Artists of all ages construct a three-dimensional form and fill it with rice to make gentle, percussive sounds. They discover that Native South American tribesmen would harvest dead branches from cactus plants, fill them with small...
Media Smarts
Thinking About Television and Movies
As part of their study of the influence of TV and films, class members consider how music, lighting, costumes, camera angles, etc. are used to influence the response of viewers.
Scholastic
Groundhog Day
A simple activity for a simple, but special, holiday. Young learners read a brief history of Groundhog Day, practice reading aloud, and then discuss how shadows are formed.
Science Matters
Up and Down Fault Blocks
The Sierra Mountains in Nevada and the Tetons in Wyoming originally formed as fault block mountains. In order to visualize these fault blocks, pupils use construction paper to create layers of earth. They cut the paper models and form...
Curated OER
For The Sake Of Security: U.S.A. Patriot Act & Bill of Rights
A substantive New York Times article about the U.S.A. Patriot Act, military tribunals, racial profiling, and the Bill of Rights forms the basis for a discussion of the complex interplay of fundamental American rights and the aftermath of...
Curated OER
Getting the Meaning in Pop Music
Critical thinkers compare the impact of visual versus aural perception in how they comprehend artistic intent. They consider the meaning of a set of pop lyrics first by reading them, then by listening to them orally, and finally viewing...
Teach Engineering
Stay in Shape
Using their knowledge of right triangles, pupils find out how far a ship is from a light house. Class members determine how far around the world a ship would be sailing at a constant speed.
Curated OER
Gap Filling 4: Context Clues
Help your English learners strengthen their use of context clues in this straightforward worksheet. Twenty questions provide learners with multiple choices for completing several sentences. They choose the option that has the correct...
Curated OER
Flame Tests
Students perform flame tests on 12 elements. In this flame tests lesson plan, students experiment with elements to observe their visible light spectra emitted as electrons jump from one energy level to another. Students record their...
Curated OER
Spherical Mirrors
Some formatting issues will need repair (a few overlapping text boxes and pictures), but overall this is a comprehensive presentation on how light reflects off of spherical mirrors. Both convex and concave mirrors are explained,...
Exploratorium
Circles of Magnetism IV
Hang a strip of foil on a stand and form a loop out of it. Then attach the clips of a battery-operated circuit to the loop to see its sides repel each other. This simple demonstration is applicable and easy to add to your lecture on...
Novelinks
The Hobbit: Directed Reading - Thinking Activity
An in-class reading of Shel Silverstein's The Missing Piece Meets the Big O introduces class members to the journey motif that forms the basis of The Hobbit.
Biology Junction
Evolution – Diversity of Life
Scientists noticed animals with backbones share similar bone structure despite having different forms, such as fins, arms, and wings. Young scientists gain an appreciation for evolution by understanding the history of the theory. They...
Curated OER
Cell Phone Radiation
Should people be more worried about cell phone radiation? Scholars read extensive background information about the issue to prepare for a class discussion or debate. As they explore the website, they learn the main arguments for and...
University of California
Heating and Cooling of the Earth's Surface
Scholars collect data from heating sand and water before forming testable hypotheses about why sand heats up faster. Afterward, they develop and run experiments to test their hypotheses.
Pingry School
Chemical Equilibrium
We know about the light spectrum, the age spectrum, and sound spectrum, but do chemical reactions also occur on a spectrum? Young scientists experiment with partial reactions on a spectrum and observe the color changes. Then, they...
Curated OER
Reading Comprehension - Short Stories
Much more than a simple reading assessment, this resource can form the basis of a review of comprehension strategies, as a instructional activity that models for readers how to employ strategies to answer questions based on passages, or...
Teacher's Corner
Limerick
Young poets try their hand at one of the most popular fixed poetry forms, the limerick. The eighth in a series of ten poetry writing exercises.
CK-12 Foundation
Exponential Decay: Cool Sunglasses
Who wouldn't want to wear four pairs of sunglasses? Each pair of sunglasses reduces the percent of incoming light by one-half. An interactive tutorial helps young mathematicians build a graph that models this scenario. They...