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Make Your Own Recycled Paper
Paper Lesson Plan - Students discover how paper is made. Working together, they make their own paper. This activity introduces students to recycling; what it is and its importance. Students study the process of how paper is made, and...
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Environment: Wild Wind Direction
Young scholars examine the different types of wind patterns. Using common materials, they construct weather vanes to measure and record wind direction over a two-week period. After analyzing the data, they draw conclusions about the...
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Design a Parachute
Students engage in a discussion about what a parachute is and how it works. They create a parachute using different materials that they think will work best. The students test their designs, which will be followed by a class discussion...
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Tornado!: Types and Formation
Students discuss the different types of tornadoes and how they form. Working in groups, they record journal entries by conducting experiments with water bottles simulating vortex formation.
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I Feel Renewed!
Students participate in a simulation of the equal and unequal distribution of the earth's renewable resources. They discuss renewable resources and how food resources can increase and decrease, participate in the simulation, and analyze...
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Wind Energy
Learners explore wind energy by making a pinwheel to model a wind turbine. They experiment with their turbine by placing it in different locations for optimal energy.
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Aqua-Thrusters!
Students construct their own rocket-powered boat called an "aqua-thruster." These aqua-thrusters will be made from a film canister and will use carbon dioxide gas - produced from a chemical reaction between an antacid tablet and water -...
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TE Activity: Northward Ho!
Students design a simple compass. They examine how the Earth's magnetic field has both horizontal and vertical components. They determine how a compass works and work with cardinal directions.
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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...
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Lunch in Outer Space!
Students explore the challenges astronauts face while eating in outer space. In small groups, they design and construct an original model device to assist astronauts eat in a microgravity environment.
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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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TE Activity: Yogurt Cup Speakers
Sixth graders build a speaker as they investigate the roles of electricity and magnetism. They discover the properties of magnets, create an electromagnet, and determine the direction of a magnetic field. They show cause and effect...
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Hovercraft Racers!
Students gain first-hand experience on how friction affects motion. They build a hovercraft using air from a balloon to levitate a craft made from a compact disk (CD), learning that a bed of air under an object significantly reduces the...
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Thar She Blows!: Wind Power
Students examine how wind energy is transformed into electrical energy. In pairs, they build miniature wind turbines and measure how much electrical current they produce. They asses the importance of design and position in energy...
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TE Activity: Super Spinners!
Students make spinners to investigate rotational inertia, rotational speed, angular momentum, and velocity. They make two sets of spinners that have different mass distributions and shapes. They complete a worksheet while experimenting...
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A Recipe for Air
Students create a pie graph using M&Ms to demonstrate the composition of air. They label each section of the graph, and list the fractions from largest to smallest.
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Stop Heat from Escaping
Students explore the uses of insulation and describe how insulation helps to conserve energy. They work in groups and use plastic, wool, paper and aluminum to experiment with the heat-retaining properties of various materials.
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Wheeling It In!
Students use everyday materials (milk cartons, water bottles, pencils, straws, candy) to build a small-scale transportation device that incorporates the wheel and axle and the lever. They race their carts/trucks, measure distance, time...
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Red Light, Green Light
Students investigate the friction between tires and the road and how it affects the movement of cars while driving. They discuss and define friction, experiment with sandpaper and wax paper to determine which material provides the least...
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Bombs Away!
Students design and build a device to protect and accurately deliver a dropped egg. They review and study a number of vocabulary words that are associated with this lesson. They work in a small group in order to develop a successful...
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Bulbs & Batteries in a Row
Students investigate simple series circuits and their properties. In small groups they draw a circuit diagram on their Series Circuit Building worksheet, follow step-by-step directions to construct a simple series circuit, and solve...
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Completing the Circuit
Young scholars use a battery, wires, small light bulb and a light bulb holder to learn the difference between an open circuit and a closed circuit, and understand that electric current only occurs in a closed circuit. They describe the...
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Dangerous Air
Students investigate how pollution is a global issue. They locate the countries affected by radiation from Chernobyl, sequence the progress of radiation transport from Chernobyl and plot the pollution points on a world map, and read and...
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I Can't Take the Pressure!
Students explore the concept of air pressure. Using candy or cookie wafers to model how air pressure changes with altitude, they conduct an aluminum can crushing experiment, compare the magnitude to gravitational force per unit area,...