Baylor College
Needs of Plants
What better way to learn about plant life than by creating a class garden? Young botanists start with a brief discussion about radishes before planting seeds and watching them grow. To determine the importance of water,...
Curated OER
Scientific Method- "The Big Ahah"
Students experiment with water, dropper and a coin to study the scientific method. In this scientific method lesson plan, students are in groups, each with a coin, water and a dropper. They investigate how many drops of water can fit on...
Curated OER
Energy and Changes of State
Students complete a variety of labs to help them explain how energy affects the changes in states of matter. They also be required to collect and record data, graph data, and apply interpretations of that data.
Curated OER
Cool Cars
Young scholars travel one at a time in a straight-line path and attempt to maintain a constant velocity. While one student walks, jogs, or runs, the other group members time the "runner" while standing at five-meter intervals along the...
Curated OER
Wind
Students make a wind vane, anemometer, wind spiral, and wind streamer to calculate wind movement. In this wind lesson plan, students test each of their wind instruments, and graph the results of the wind speed in different locations.
Curated OER
Graphing And Data Presentation
High schoolers engage in a study of science and mathematics with the practice of creating graphs. A guest speaker comes to the class to share statistics from the community and the students are shown how he uses the coordinate system in...
National Museum of Nuclear Science & History
Nuclear Popcorn
Make your lesson on radioactive decay pop with this lab exercise. Using popcorn kernels spread over a tabletop, participants pick up all of those that point toward the back of the room, that is, those that represent decayed atoms. As the...
Curated OER
Back In The "Old Days"
Fifth graders collect data during their worker interviews while in groups to compile job changes. They analyze the data to determine the categories of changes, patterns/trends of change and future projections. Each group then develops a...
Curated OER
How Many Frogs?
Students explore the concept of linear regression. In this linear regression activity, students find the line of best fit for a set of data pertaining to a frog population. Students use their line of best fit to predict the frog...
Curated OER
Waves
Light waves and sound waves are the focus of this science lesson designed for 5th graders. Besides discovering how these waves travel, learners also discover the basic properties of waves, and analyze data tables and graphs. The...
Curated OER
How Does Your Blue Bonnet Grow?
Students explore the conditions needed to grow Texas Blue Bonnets. In this Blue Bonnet planting instructional activity, students recognize the differences in Texas Blue Bonnet. Students record their findings in a graphs and analyze their...
Polar Trec
Who Will Melt First?
If the Greenland ice sheet melted, sea levels would rise by about 20 ft; if the Antarctic ice sheet melted, sea levels would rise by 200 ft. Scholars explore ice melting through the analysis of different ice samples, clean and dirty ice....
Curated OER
How Toxic Is It?
Learners participate in an activity in which they investigate the scientific method and seed germination as well as practice graphing and metric measuring skills. Students examine toxicity by exposing Wisconsin Fast Plants seeds to toxic...
Polar Trec
Playground Profiling—Topographic Profile Mapping
The Kuril islands stretch from Japan to Russia, and the ongoing dispute about their jurisdiction prevents many scientific research studies. Scholars learn to create a topographic profile of a specific area around their schools. Then they...
Curated OER
Basketball Bounces, Assessment Variation 2
This un-scaffold summative assessment tasks learners to use the height of a bouncing basketball, given the data in graph and table form, to choose the model that is represented. Learners then use the model to answer questions about...
NASA
Newton Car
If a car gets heavier, it goes farther? By running an activity several times, teams experience Newton's Second Law of Motion. The teams vary the amount of weight they catapult off a wooden block car and record the distance the...
Curated OER
Basketball Bounces, Assessment Variation 1
This highly scaffolded, summative assessment tasks learners to choose the model that represents the height of a bouncing basketball given the data in graph and table form. Learners then use the model to answer questions about the...
SRI International
The Water Crisis
Water, water, everywhere, right? Wrong. Learners assess their own knowledge of water availability on Earth. Then, through a reading, a teacher-led presentation, and an activity, pupils learn about the importance of available clean...
Curated OER
Beverage Tests
Students investigate the pH of a liquid. In this middle school mathematics/science lesson, students collect and analyze data regarding the pH of various liquids. Students display their data in various types of graphs as they...
National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science
Identical Twins, Identical Fates?
Can different personal experiences affect our genes? Find out in an intriguing case study about one twin who is diagnosed with mental illness and her identical twin who fears she may suffer the same fate. Designed for college-level...
Alabama Learning Exchange
Jelly Beans Add Up
Students explore counting, sorting, and graphing skills. For this data analysis lesson, students sort jelly beans by color, count the jelly beans, and create a bar graph of the jelly beans according to color.
Messenger Education
My Angle on Cooling—Effect of Distance and Inclination
When exploring Mars, spacecrafts are exposed to 5-11 times more sunlight than when near Earth. Groups of pupils complete a hands-on activity to explore how distance and angle of the sun affect temperature. Through discussions, they then...
Curated OER
You Light Up My Life
Students examine the relationship between solar activity and the Earth's geomagnetic field in producing the phenomena known as aurora borealis (Northern Lights) by reading and discussing "Earth, Wind and Fireworks." students graph data...
Curated OER
Earth Energy Budget Pre Lab
Learners explore energy by conducting an in class experiment. In this climate change instructional activity, students conduct a water vapor experiment in a soda bottle. Learners utilize graphs and charts to analyze the results of the...