Curated OER
Shedding Light on Watersheds
Students discuss what a watershed is, complete online activities showing them how to take care of a watershed, and create a model of a watershed that they experiment with to see what happens when it is disrupted by civilization.
Curated OER
Running on Renewables
Students investigate the costs and benefits of switching their school to sustainable technology energy production. They use software called HOMER developed by the National Renewable Energy Lab to do the cost/ benefit analysis. They then...
Teach Engineering
Alloy Advantage
Mix it up by using an intriguing resource that teaches young metallurgists that alloys are a metal mixture. They learn about the advantages of using alloys over pure metals and investigate titanium alloys as an example to finish the...
Teach Engineering
May the Force Be with You: Weight
Too much material will weigh you down. The sixth segment in a series of 22 highlights how weight affects a plane. Pupils learn that engineers take the properties of materials, including weight, when designing something.
Dick Blick Art Materials
Matisse Prints du Soleil
The sun provides the link between this art and science activity. Kids use sunlight (or light from an artificial source) to produce heliographic prints on fabric or paper.
Teach Engineering
Dress for Success
Dressing for success is not always about looking sharp. Sometimes it is about staying warm and dry. Present your class with an activity that challenges groups of pupils to design a layered material for blizzard conditions. The teams test...
Teach Engineering
Piezoelectricity
What effect makes children's shoes light up? Answer: Piezoelectric effect. Here is a PowerPoint presentation that describes piezoelectric materials as being able to convert mechanical energy to electrical energy. Individuals learn how...
Teach Engineering
Floaters and Sinkers
Whatever floats your boat. Young engineers learn about density by measuring the masses and volumes of boxes filled with different materials. Using their knowledge of densities, they hypothesize whether objects with given densities will...
Teach Engineering
Designing Bridges
Introduces your class to the types of loads experienced by a bridge. Groups calculate the ultimate load combinations to determine the maximum load requirement. Using this information, builders then determine the amount of material...
National Security Agency
Systems of Equations and Inequalities
High school classes can use manipulatives too! Offer hands-on, interactive lessons that venture away from the typical day in your algebra class. Young mathematicians will be involved in collaborative learning, visual...
Teach Engineering
Show Me the Money
Class members learn how to estimate the total costs involved to design and build a bridge by including design, material, equipment, and labor costs. The activity includes a discussion about the trade-off between cost and aesthetics.
Discovery Education
Clutter Cutter
Challenge young learners to cut the clutter with this fun engineering project. As employees of a home and office supply company, young engineers are asked to develop devices that organize everyday items. After participating in a...
Teach Engineering
Beating the Motion Sensor
I bet I can cross the room without having the lights come on. Class members set up an experiment in which they try to determine what materials will mask motion detected by a sensor. Groups predict how materials will interact with...
Teach Engineering
Magnetic Fluids
Teams work as material engineers to create ferrofluids, whose shape is influenced by magnetic fields. The activity, which is the fourth in the six-part series, has the teams create magnetic ink and use it to write, testing it with a...
K12 Reader
Step by Step Instructions
Here's a worksheet that not only provides readers with information about crafting step-by-step directions for a science project, but also serves as a reading comprehension exercise.
Teach Engineering
Exploring the Lotus Effect
The Lotus Effect ... is it not some kind of yoga pose. In the last installment of a nine-part series, young scientists observe the Lotus Effect on lotus leaves and water-repellent cloths. They observe how motion and damage affect the...
Teach Engineering
Bone Mineral Density Math and Beer's Law
Hop into a resource on Beer's Law. A PowerPoint presentation introduces Beer's law as part of calculating bone density from X-ray images in the sixth instructional activity in the series of seven. Individuals work on practice problems...
Teach Engineering
Boxed In and Wrapped Up
If cubes have the smallest surface area, why aren't there more cube-shaped packages? Scholars take a box in the shape of a rectangular prism, cut it up, and make new boxes in the shape of cubes with the same volume. They then brainstorm...
Teach Engineering
Edible Rovers
The good thing about building this rover is you get to eat it afterwards. Pairs determine rover parts they want to include in their design based upon their cost and usefulness. The teams design their rovers, build them from edible...
August House
The Archer and the Sun
Reinforce reading comprehension with a instructional activity about The Archer and the Sun, a Chinese folktale. Kids learn some background information about Chinese culture before reading the story, and answer literacy...
Exploratorium
Pixels, Pictures, and Phones
Take a real close look at your phone screen. What do you see? Here's an activity that provides guidance on how to look at a smart phone screen in order to see the pixels and to see how the phone creates colors and motion on the...
Achievement Strategies
CCSS Unit Design Template for PE
From baseball and tennis to capture the flag and four-square, here is a great document that will help you design your next unit on a sport-related activity.
University of Wisconsin
Analyzing Presidential Campaign Propaganda
Campaign propaganda has evolved from 1952 through the presidential election of 2008. A social studies activity prompts class members to analyze the devices used in ads and political cartoons, noting strategies they believe would work to...
Teach Engineering
Edible Algae Models
Sometimes it's okay to eat your science experiment. A hands-on activity has pupils create models for algae to learn about its cellular structure. The best part of the experiment? The resulting juice-filled gels are edible—yum!