The focus of this lesson is to provide an opportunity for children to develop oral language skills and to record their oral language to share with others.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
This template supports STEM teachers and librarians in working collaboratively to create lessons that build science practice and STEM inquiry skills in alignment with state and national science standards, and that address the Common Core literacy shifts around close reading and building textual evidence.
Material Type: Lesson
Through this lesson and its associated activity, students explore the role of biomedical engineers working for pharmaceutical companies. First, students gain background knowledge about what biomedical engineers do, how to become a biomedical engineer, and the steps of the engineering design process. The goal is to introduce biomedical engineering as medical problem solving as well as highlight the importance of maintaining normal body chemistry. Students participate in the research phase of the design process as it relates to improving the design of a new prescription medication. During the research phase, engineers learn about topics by reading scholarly articles written by others, and students experience this process. Students draw on their research findings to participate in discussion and draw conclusions about the impact of medications on the human body.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
In this lesson students will practice comprehension skills as they make predictions while listening to the story and recall and sequence events. They will understand how a healthy diet and exercise can increase the likelihood of physical and mental wellness.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
Learn how to read and draw phylogenetic trees, or cladograms. Created by Sal Khan.
Material Type: Lesson
After researching nutrition and analyzing food advertisements, students work in cooperative groups to create their own advertisements for food products.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan, Unit of Study
After listening to Russell Hoban's story "Bread and Jam for Frances", students will illustrate their favorite food and add it to the Food Pyramid Graph.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
This activity will help students learn to make healthy food choices.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
Students explore the motivation behind characters' actions in "To Kill A Mockingbird" by creating psychological profiles for characters from the novel.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Students are introduced to the structure, function and purpose of locks and dams, which involves an introduction to Pascal's law, water pressure and gravity.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
Groundwater is one of the largest sources of drinking water, so environmental engineers need to understand groundwater flow in order to tap into this important resource. Environmental engineers also study groundwater to predict where pollution from the surface may end up. In this lesson, students will learn how water flows through the ground, what an aquifer is and what soil properties are used to predict groundwater flow.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Students explore the outermost planets of our solar system: Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. They also learn about characteristics of Pluto and its interactions with Neptune. Students learn a little about the history of space travel as well as the different technologies that engineers develop to make space travel and scientific discovery possible.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Students learn the decibel reading of various noises and why high-level readings damage hearing. Sound types and decibel readings are written on sheets of paper, and students arrange the sounds from the lowest to highest decibel levels. If available, a decibel meter can be used to measure sounds by students.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
Students create and analyze composite materials with the intent of using the materials to construct a structure with optimal strength and minimal density. The composite materials are made of puffed rice cereal, marshmallows and chocolate chips. Student teams vary the concentrations of the three components to create their composite materials. They determine the material density and test its compressive strength by placing weights on it and measuring how much the material compresses. Students graph stress vs. strain and determine Young's modulus to analyze the strength of their materials.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
A photographer trails elephants in Kenya in this video segment from Africa.
Material Type: Lecture
A close reading of the beginnings of the Declaration of Independence to identify ideas of natural rights, social contract, limited government and popular sovereignty in the text.
Material Type: Lesson
Students will read and observer ants to discover how ants are the same and different than people.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Students explore the biosphere's environments and ecosystems, learning along the way about the plants, animals, resources and natural cycles of our planet. Over the course of lessons 2-6, students use their growing understanding of various environments and the engineering design process to design and create their own model biodome ecosystems - exploring energy and nutrient flows, basic needs of plants and animals, and decomposers. Students learn about food chains and food webs. They are introduced to the roles of the water, carbon and nitrogen cycles. They test the effects of photosynthesis and transpiration. Students are introduced to animal classifications and interactions, including carnivore, herbivore, omnivore, predator and prey. They learn about biomimicry and how engineers often imitate nature in the design of new products. As everyday applications are interwoven into the lessons, students consider why a solid understanding of one's environment and the interdependence within ecosystems can inform the choices we make and the way we engineer our communities.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
WW2 Encryption is explored with a focus on the Enigma. Read more here. Created by Brit Cruise.
Material Type: Lesson
A close reading of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from a Birmingham Jail."
Material Type: Lesson
