Serendip
Food, Energy and Body Weight
High schoolers learn why humans need calories, how they control weight with food choices, and the impact of exercise on energy. Scholars then apply their understanding to a case study of lunch choices and exercise.
Serendip
Evolution and Adaptations
Survival of the fittest isn't just for the movies! A five-part lesson plan explores several different species with known adaptations and analyzes them for their survival strategies. Using both video and research data, scholars draw...
Serendip
Carbohydrate Consumption, Athletic Performance and Health – Using Science Process Skills to Understand the Evidence
Should athletes carb load before an event or consume carbohydrates during the competition? Scholars discuss how to set up a hypothesis and experiment to answer a question relating carbohydrates and athletic performance. Then, they read...
Serendip
How Do Muscles Get the Energy They Need for Athletic Activity?
Every muscle movement requires energy, but where does that energy come from? Scholars answer this question and more as they complete a worksheet. By following the directions, completing research, and discussing it as a class, they begin...
Curated OER
What Happens to Our Bodies When We Get Sick?
Seventh graders explore ways in which they become sick. They find out ways that there bodies fight off bacteria. Students watch a video from the Magic School Bus series:"Inside Raphie." After reviewing video students can openly discuss...
Curated OER
Gallery Walk Questions on Earth's Radiation Balance
Questions that can be used in a lesson on Earth's radiation balance are suggested in this resource. It is not a lesson plan, per se, but it is a list of questions for stations within a "Gallery Walk" lesson. The link to how Gallery Walks...
Alabama Learning Exchange
Mix it Up! Exploring the Commutative and Associative Properties of Addition
Examine commutative and associative properties with your class. They'll explore the relationships between addition and subtraction and investigate patterns as they solve addition problems. Links to an assessment and a table game are...
EMC
The Inn of Lost Time Reader's Resource
Introduce "The Inn of Lost Time" by Lensey Namioka to your middle schoolers with a reader's resource page. It includes links to different activities, including a creative writing prompt about losing fifty years of your life, and a...
AGTV
Ein Interkulturelles Projekt!
Get your class in touch with other students of German (or German students) through this intercultural project. Your pupils can correspond with others in any or all of the ways listed here. The resource provides links to special programs...
Curated OER
Finding Verbs
In this grammar learning exercise, students review how to recognize verbs in sentences and then find and circle the verbs in twenty sentences.
Nuffield Foundation
Measuring Rate of Water Uptake by a Plant Shoot Using a Potometer
How quickly does a plant transpire? Learners explore this question through measuring water uptake with a potometer. They time the movement of a bubble a set distance to understand the motion and rate of speed.
Nuffield Foundation
Effect of Size on Uptake by Diffusion
Cell size is limited by the surface area to volume ratio, but why is this true? Scholars measure the surface area and volume of cubes before placing them into liquid. After a set amount of time, they measure the uptake by diffusion for...
Nuffield Foundation
Observing Osmosis, Plasmolysis, and Turgor in Plant Cells
Create the perfect conditions for osmosis. Young scholars use a microscope to observe plant cells exposed to distilled water or sodium chloride. They observe how osmosis creates turgid or plasmolyzed cells.
Serendip
Where Does a Plant's Mass Come From?
Where does the mass for a growing tree come from? Scholars consider a few different hypotheses and guess which is correct. They then analyze data from different experiments to understand which concepts science supports.
Serendip
Homeostasis, Negative Feedback, and Positive Feedback
So many bodily activities depend on homeostasis! Give learners a solid background to understand the basic process of the human body. Scholars first examine negative feedback loops contributing to body temperature regulation and then a...
Serendip
DNA Structure, Function and Replication
Before a cell replicates, its DNA must replicate. Take advantage of a hands-on guided lesson to teach budding scientists how this happens. Using a set of nucleotide cards, learners become the DNA and work to create matching strands...
Serendip
How Eyes Evolved – Analyzing the Evidence
Octopodes existed for hundreds of thousands of years before humans, yet our eyes share many similarities. Scholars analyze the evidence to determine if the evolution of eyes best fits a homology or analogy model. They discuss the issue...
Curated OER
Darwin’s Bees
What do you call a bee born in May? A maybe! This first instructional activity in a series of four begins with a starter activity to get scholars thinking about the topic. Then a circus, or circuit of seven activities, show Darwin's...
Curated OER
Socratic Seminar on Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Letter From Birmingham Jail
Key in the struggle to gain the rights of democratic citizenship was the April 1963 arrest of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for civil disobedience. To deepen their knowledge and understanding of events during the civil rights movement,...
Curated OER
Making Sense of the World Economy
Students apply the economic principles of supply and demand, market economy, competition, unemployment rate, exports and imports and currency exchange rate to China's present economic success and Russia's economic strife.
Curated OER
A Fallen Giant
Students investigate the economic concepts related to the fall of Enron in order to begin unraveling this complex scandal. They do research in small groups to identify such things as the Securities Exchange Commission.
Curated OER
Mining For Descriptive Gold
Learners describe places using language that is as vivid as possible. They will examine the writer's craft in describing a place by reading and discussing "Resurrecting the Miner's World." They will then revise their descriptive pieces...
Curated OER
Legal Rights, the Charter, and Canada's Constitution
Students explore the issue of human rights in Canada and compare and contrast the Bill of Rights and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. They debate whether Canadians are giving up certain democratic rights in exchange for the greater good.
Curated OER
The Interview of a Lifetime
Students study the process of creating an interview by role playing as a reporter who has the opportunity to interview one of the survivors of the Titanic disaster. They ask only five questions in this interview of a lifetime therefore...