Pulitzer Center
Extractive Industries
Here is a chance for environmental studies classes to take a critical look at crises occurring around the globe by reading articles and viewing video clips. The human activities under scrutiny are the extraction of oil, logging, and...
Curated OER
Evaluating Information on Food Labels
What kinds of foods include corn? Corn syrup? Start by viewing a clip of Food Inc. with your middle or high schoolers. Then, study a list of corn-derived ingredients, encouraging your class to see how many food products contain corn. A...
Curated OER
Utah's Children's Health Insurance Program (chip): How Well Are We Doing?
Students analyze Utah's CHIP program. They compares it to other states in terms of benefits and customer satisfaction. They examine how rules and regulations at the federal level shape state-level program operations. They research and...
Curated OER
Treatment Through Time
Seventh graders explore how disease prevention and treatment changed throughout history. In this life science lesson, 7th graders create a classroom exhibit about this topic. They present their project to visitors.
Curated OER
Family Fitness
Learners visit sites that contain information about a variety of health and fitness activities. They analyze the activities according to several criteria, and describe how their particular activity choices can contribute to a healthy...
Curated OER
Calculating Your Foodometer
Students explore environmental issues by completing a food production class activity. In this carbon footprint lesson, students discuss the types of foods they eat, where they come from and what types of methods are used to transport...
Curated OER
Community Gardens and Propaganda Posters
Students research community gardens. In this community garden lesson, students discover the history of community gardens and assess the benefits of locally grown food. Students create propaganda posters aimed at inviting discussions...
Curated OER
Teen Driving: Skills, Responsibilities and Reactions
As an introduction to the skills required for and responsibilities of driving, pre-teens and teens engage in a series of activities, chart their response times, and analyze how variables effect these reaction times. Class groups use the...
Curated OER
High-Tech Food: Science in Your Shopping Cart
Kids are given a lot to think about, as they delve into the world of high-tech foods. They discuss GMOs, biotechnology, food enhancements and domestication. They view videos, engage in class discussions, complete worksheets, and learn...
Baylor College
Drugs, Risks and the Nervous System
In cooperative groups, middle schoolers contemplate the probability of 18 different situations occurring. After they make predictions, they compare them to the actual risk factors. This eye-opening exercise demonstrates that the odds of...
Curated OER
Career Trek: Agricultural Careers
What is agriscience and could it hold a potential career opportunity? Learners define agriscience and explore careers that involve both agriculture and natural resource fields. The instructional activity includes several web links, a...
Sacramento Country Day School
7th Grade Character Development Workshops
Be proactive. Begin with the end in mind. Synergize. These are just a few strategies outlined in Sean Covey's ground-breaking best-seller, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens. With a series of five character development workshops...
Curated OER
Fracking: Positive or Negative Impact?
Your teenagers may have heard of fracking, but do they really know what it is? And could they debate the benefits and risks? Educate your environmental science class with a activity about hydraulic fracturing, non-renewable energy...
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Understanding the Epidemiologic Triangle through Infectious Disease
Introduce infectious diseases and the epidemiologic triangle. A helpful resource describes the agent, host, and environment from the three vertices as well as the time factor, which is in the middle. Scholars complete a simple...
American Physiological Society
Sit On It
How do product designers come up with the variety of things we see in stores and on TV every day? They identify a need, then create something that meets that need. Sounds simple, right? A two-week lesson puts seventh graders in that role...
Alabama Department of Archives and History
A Worse Death: War or Flu?
In a lesson that integrates history and mathematics, class members create graphs that compare military death statistics from World War I with those that resulted from the influenza pandemic of 1918.
American Physiological Society
Thermal Insulators: Keep it Hot!
There's nothing like a cup of hot chocolate on a chilly winter's day. Except for when that hot chocolate quickly becomes lukewarm chocolate ... or even cold chocolate. What material provides the best insulation to keep the chocolate from...
Curated OER
A Design You’ll Dig: Designing a Habitat for Worms
Middle schoolers discover how worms contribute to the balance of the environment. In this composting lesson, students study the composting and decomposition processes. Middle schoolers then create habitats for worms that allow them to do...
Rochester Institue of Technology
Patient Flow
It's time to redesign the healthcare system. The seventh installment of a 9-part technology/engineering series teaches future engineers about patient flow and how to design healthcare centers to improve flow. Classroom simulations allow...
Nuffield Foundation
Investigating Transport Systems in a Flowering Plant
Some weddings have flowers in a unique, unnatural color to match the theme. Young scientists take part in this process to learn about the function of the xylem as they observe colored water moving through a flower. Then, they experiment...
Baylor College
Milestones in Microbiology
Life science learners read a set of six short Discovery Readings that describe historical events in the field of microbiology. For each, they identify clues about when the event occurred and then they try to arrange events in...
Curated OER
MATERIALS, Using What’s Local: Native Materials, Local Sources
Students consider the development of different societies. In this environmental building lesson, students consider local resources and how societies choose to use them. Students use their findings to design a 'green' building for use in...
Baylor College
Microbes and Disease
Discuss how diseases have impacted human history. Divide your class into groups and assign each group one of the following: tuberculosis, malaria, plague, cholera, smallpox, and AIDS. They read up on, complete a concept map, and present...
Curated OER
My Anti-Drug
Learners discuss and then create a bookmark and/or poster with a drawing and/or words on it which is their personal "anti-drug"--an alternative for them to using drugs.