Is It Slimy? Does It Have Fur? Is It Really a Bird?

How did the beginnings of genetic research influence the Nazi party? A thorough, engaging unit incorporates the work of Gregor Mendel, the study of inherited traits, and the use of racism and discrimination during the Holocaust.

Students act globally by reducing, reusing, and recycling, but now they take it to the next level by upcycling. Middle school students design a proposal to eliminate waste by exploring the new material cycle and applying their knowledge...

Determining whether or not something is living can be more difficult than it seems. Put your young scientists to work defining their own criteria to identify life, then work with three samples to see if they are alive or not. 

The earth only revolves around one thing — and it's not any of your pupils. The lesson includes two activities dealing with the distance to the sun and the moon. First, scholars create a pin hole camera and use the rules of similar...

Want your class to digest text more thoroughly? Middle schoolers learn about the digestive system in the lesson and reinforce informational text reading skills through a variety of strategies. They engage in a close reading approach,...

Ideal for your electricity unit, especially with middle schoolers, this lesson gets engineers using multimeters in electrical circuits to explore the relationships among voltage, current, and resistance. Older learners may even plot data...

In case of earthquake, go to a safe place before posting on social media. The unit includes 12 lessons, most with hands-on activities or experiments. The first six lessons cover the physical process of earthquakes and volcanoes. Lessons...

The more things change, the more they stay the same. This unit includes seven lessons starting with physical change and moving through to chemical change. Conservation of matter is explained clearly with multiple hands-on activities and...

Students explain the role of different organisms in the food web. In this ecology instructional activity, students participate in a game to simulate mineral cycling through the web. They discuss the importance of recycling minerals and...

How is the wind up there? The class builds a topography model using materials available in the classroom, then place wind flags in different locations on the landscape. Using a fan as a wind source, pupils collect data about how wind...