Teach Engineering
Weather Forecasting
According to the Farmers' Almanac, the weather will be nice today. Class members examine how weather forecasting plays a part in their lives with a resource that provides information on the history of forecasting, from using cloud...
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Skateboard Disaster
Students conduct a hands-on experiment with collisions between two skateboards of different masses. They are introduced to the concept of conservation of momentum in collisions and consider how their observations might help engineers...
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Leaving on A Jet Plane
Students create an airplane by listening to directions. They also to measure the pieces for the airplane and compare and contrast their test flights.
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The Crash Scene
Fifth graders explore geography by participating in a mapping activity. In this engineering lesson, 5th graders identify the differences between latitude and longitude and practice locating precise points on a globe or map. Students...
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Telling Time
Young learners participate in activities which help them understand analog clocks, and the vocabulary of telling time. They examine the values of the intervals of minutes and hours by making a human clock.
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How Long is a Hot Dog? Weight, Weight! Don't tell me!
Primary learners participate in activities that help them explain how different things are measured. They create their own access number chart.
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Investigation - Peg Race
Students explore time by comparing the duration of an egg timer with how many pegs they can put in a pegboard. They experience one on one correspondence, as they place a peg in the whole. Students discover estimation of time and number...
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A House is a House for Me
Students evaluate the impact climates have on the building of structures. They research the different types of materials used to build houses in various climates and build small models of houses which are tested against different climates.
Teach Engineering
Racing With the Sun - Creating a Solar Car
Here's an exciting and innovative lesson that's sure to get your charges fired up! In it, they use engineering design principles to construct and test a fully solar powered car. One caveat: the kits that each group needs to make their...
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Everything was Up to Date in 1628
Students examine the life and lifestyles of New England colonists in the year 1628, and then investigate what life was like in their own area during the same time period. They watch segments from the PBS hands-on history series COLONIAL...
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Fuel Mystery Dis-Solved
Students describe how temperature and surface area exposure affect the rate at which fuel is consumed. They explain why engineers want to know about the properties of a fuel when designing rockets. They create a bar graph of result data.
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Customary Measurement Conversions
Fifth graders discover in hands-on activities the relationships between the measures. They work in groups to create conversion tables using familiar measuring tools. Students solve problems requiring conversions.
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Daily Time Ratios
Students track and record how much time they spend on each activity. In this spreadsheet instructional activity, students apply different functions using Microsoft excel to format cells and calculate the sum of their total time...
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New Boxes From Old
Middle schoolers find the volume and surface area of a rectangular box (e.g., a cereal box), and then figure out how to convert that box into a new, cubical box having the same volume as the original. As they construct the new,...
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How Many Penguins Does It Take? Studying Carrying Capacity and Limiting Factors
How does a population's habitat determine the size of that population? Teach learners about carrying capacity and limiting factors with an engaging roleplay activity. Class members pose as a colony of penguins who must gather food amidst...
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Hunter Fred's Quest for Dinner
Learners solve problems using trigonometric functions, specifically a problem about a tree stand. Pupils try to maximize the distance of hunting sight given certain restrictions. They use the Pythagorean Theorem, sine, cosine, and...
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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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Electricity: Will It Conduct?
Students build conductivity testers and investigate which solids and solutions conduct electricity. Working in groups, they predict which items will conduct electricity and record their answers on worksheets.
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Swing in Time
Learners examine the motion of pendulums and come to understand that the longer the string of the pendulum, the fewer the number of swings in a given time interval. They see that changing the weight on the pendulum does not have an...
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Exploring the Exponential Function
Learners collect and analyze data regarding exponential functions of the form y = abx. Students explore the affects of changing parameters on the graph of the function.
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Heredity Mix 'n Match
Students randomly select jelly beans that represent genes for several human traits such as tongue-rolling ability and eye color. Then, working in pairs (preferably of mixed gender), students randomly choose new pairs of jelly beans from...
Teach Engineering
Can You Resist This?
Some things are hard to resist. Small collaborative groups build circuits and calculate the voltage using Ohm's Law. Budding engineers explore the connection between the voltage across different resistors and linear...
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How Much is There to Eat?
Students examine food production related to population density. For this interdisciplinary lesson, students gather data regarding food production in the American South and in India. Students follow the outlined steps to calculate the...
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Explorations in Measurement
Students define length and area. They identify materials that can be measured with a rule and yardstick. They measure length and area when given an object.