Players strive to create a balanced desert ecosystem in which each animal has enough food to survive over a period of 12 days, in this interactive game from PLUM LANDING™. Players see how the different species of plants and animals in a desert depend on one another. They also experiment with how changing the amount of one resource affects the whole ecosystem.
In this lesson, students will design an experiment to see if temperature affects the amount of dissolving of the sugar coating of an M&M.
Students will be able to identify and control variables to design an experiment to see whether the temperature of a solvent affects the speed at which a solute dissolves. Students will be able to explain, on the molecular level, why increasing temperature increases the rate of dissolving.
This lesson uses hands-on activities to discuss water filtration. Students will have the opportunity to explore water filtration by filtering water through a variety of materials and using potatoes to grow and test the bacteria levels of the water.
With a focus on nanotechnology, this lesson discusses the benefits of embedding silver ions in filters to kill harmful bacteria. At the end of this lesson students will have the opportunity to put their knowledge to the test in a written discussion by designing a solution to a mock water crisis.
This module was authored by the Auburn University NanoBio MSP Fellows Will Haynes, Chelsea Lindskog, Hannah Taylor, and Catherine Wolfe under the supervision and guidance of Drs. Virginia Davis and Chris Schnittka.
Students will complete a guided research activity about electronic cigarettes and vaping and their effects on the respiratory system. Students will read and take notes on two articles retrieved from the Alabama Virtual Library. After taking notes, students will organize the information according to Statistics, Health Effects, Pros and Cons (related to conventional cigarette smokers), and Other Information.
This learning activity was created as a result of the ALEX - Alabama Virtual Library (AVL) Resource Development Summit.
Students will discuss the effects of sunlight. Next, they will be introduced to the task of designing and constructing a device to reduce the effect of sunlight. In groups, students will design and then construct a tent that will keep an ice cube from completely melting before the uncovered control ice cube melts. Students will test the effectiveness of their tents.
This lesson results from the ALEX Resource Gap Project.
Use this Kahoot! to test your students' knowledge of climate change. Kahoot! is a free game-based learning platform that makes it easy to create, share and play learning games or trivia quizzes in minutes. There is no need to sign up or log in to Kahoot. You can click "Continue as guest" on this interactive and it will take you to the Kahoot set up page for this game.
In this lesson, students will be able to identify the producers, consumers, and decomposers and sort them with their group to create a food chain.
In this interactive game, children are prompted to help the animals get dressed for each season. The earth changes with each season, and children can enjoy and learn from these changes. Observing the ways in which these changes take place can be a wonderful tool to introduce concepts such as evaluation and very basic problem solving.
Students will create a video mash-up that illustrates climate change. A video mash-up includes images, text, narration, and music to convey a message. They will present the video to the class. The lesson has a student hand-out that can be downloaded and attached to a digital classroom assignment.
In this lesson, students will use technology to construct a model of a balanced ecosystem that shows how energy cycles from one organism to the next by completing research and writing short passages about their ecosystem. Students will then compare their balanced model ecosystem and describe a change or introduce an invasive species to show how the balance of their model ecosystem will change to adapt. As students are designing their model they will also describe the relationships of the components that make up an ecosystem and causes/effects of unbalanced ecosystems.
This lesson results from a collaboration between the Alabama State Department of Education and ASTA.
After researching the wetlands ecosystem using the Pebble Go Online Encyclopedia. Using knowledge gained from the online encyclopedia source, students will create a trifold brochure. Following completion of the trifold brochure, students will reflect on their learning using an emoji reflection rubric.
This learning activity was created as a result of the ALEX - Alabama Virtual Library (AVL) Resource Development Summit.
In this activity, students will discover ways that scientists and engineers can use rovers to explore places where humans cannot go. Students will construct a science rover using the LEGO WeDo 2.0 kit and program the rover using WeDo 2.0 Software or a compatible programming app. Students will also document completion of the programming task and evidence of learning how the rover can help scientists make discoveries.
This activity was demonstrated during the Exploring Today's Classroom (ETC) Summit.
In this activity, students describe their experiences with beaches, compare and contrast photographs of beaches, and brainstorm how humans living near the ocean affect ocean plants and animals.
The teacher will present an informational text from the website, ReadWorks. Students will interact with this non-fiction text by annotating the text digitally. This learning activity can introduce students to the concept of gravity and celestial bodies or serve as reinforcement after students have already learned this concept.
Students brainstorm how land is used along a river in their watershed. They arrange pieces representing places along a river from source to mouth, and discuss impacts "downstream" in a watershed.
Students use and develop models of the Earth–Sun systems to demonstrate an understanding of how the Sun illuminates the hemispheres differently during summer and winter. Visual supports (video, images), data graphs, and informational text provide students with multiple entry points to investigating the phenomenon of the changing duration of daylight. This interactive provides the context and sources of data students can use to gather evidence that supports an explanation of why summer days have more daylight than winter days.
The associated lesson plan Investigating Why Summer Days Have More Daylight provides more support for teachers and students, including materials for diverse learners.
Investigate how the orbits and relative positions of the Moon, the Sun, and Earth produce eclipses using this interactive lesson. Students will work with a variety of models of the Earth-Sun–Moon system to understand the mechanics of lunar and solar eclipses and explain why they are rare.
This resource was developed through WGBH’s Bringing the Universe to America’s Classrooms project, in collaboration with NASA.
The associated lesson plan Experience a Solar Eclipse includes more supports for teachers and students, including handouts and materials for diverse learners.
This is an art activity to reinforce which materials allow light to pass through. This activity should be completed after teaching a lesson on opaque, translucent, and transparent. Students can complete this project individually, with a partner, or in a group.
This activity was created as a result of the Arts COS Resource Development Summit.
In this lesson, students will investigate the design behind William Kamkwamba's windmill. Using his design ideas, students will design, construct, and test their own windmill.
This lesson results from a collaboration between the Alabama State Department of Education and ASTA.
This interactive game will lead students through the carbon cycle and describe the different reservoirs where carbon is held on Earth. Students will take on the role of a carbon atom and travel through the cycle until they visit all of the possible reservoirs.
The more we learn about waves, the more we learn about a lot of things in physics. Waves can help explain everything from earthquakes to music. This video explores waves and how they travel.
Dig into reading practice and meet a cute little mole who loves dirt. Learn about finding the main idea in an informational text about the components that make up soil and get the dirt on how details can support the main idea.
In these Hero Elementary activities, children explore the ways that a strong push or a weak push makes an object move. They investigate how fast an object moves after a strong push or a weak push. As children observe different types of pushes and pulls, they discover that objects move in different directions. This collection includes a video and two learning activities.
This activity provides the students with a visual description of the four types of chemical reactions using cartoon illustrations and then allows them time to interact with their peers so they will understand the components of each reaction. Students will also create a flip-book for the following reactions: synthesis, decomposition, single, and double replacement in order to describe the conservation of mass. Finally, students will use a digital tool to produce a "Cartoon Chemistry" artifact which will allow them to demonstrate their understanding of chemical reactions.
This activity was created as a result of the DLCS COS Resource Development Summit.
Students will construct and test pendulums with varying weights, string types, release positions, and lengths. They will collect, graph, and analyze data to see which variables affect the speed of the pendulum in order to predict the movement of new pendulums. Then they will then use this data to solve a real-world problem and explain their thinking.
This lesson results from a collaboration between the Alabama State Department of Education and ASTA.
The teacher will present an informational text from the website, ReadWorks. The students and teacher can interact with this non-fiction text by annotating the text digitally. The students will answer the questions associated with the article as an assessment. This learning activity can be used to introduce students to the physical properties of different materials, serve as reinforcement after students have already learned this concept, or be used as an assessment at the conclusion of a lesson. This learning activity will provide important background information before students collecting and evaluating their own data regarding physical properties of matter.
Hans Christian Oersted had just discovered the connection between electricity and magnetism. Meanwhile, a French physicist named André-Marie Ampère was experimenting with some wires, trying to learn more about the connection between currents and the magnetic fields they create. Ampère would discover one of the most fundamental laws of electromagnetism. This video will discuss Ampère’s Law.
Experiments are cool with a curious baby polar bear and his who, what, when, where, and why questions about the three states of matter. In this interactive lesson, students get hands-on with ice and record their observations through drawing and writing.
Students have likely observed that the Moon is at different positions throughout the day. However, they likely have not seen the full arc of its path in a day to recognize a pattern. In this lesson, students will build on their own observations and previous learning of Earth’s rotation, observe a time-lapse video of a moonrise to moonset, explore a simulation of the Moon’s path, and interpret physical and digital models. By the end of the lesson, students will be able to construct an explanation about why the Moon appears to moves across the sky from east to west, and recognize that the phenomenon is a pattern.
How do I know if a substance is an acid or base? In this activity, the students will use a digital simulation model to explore and gather evidence on how acids and bases dissociate in solution. The students will also gather data on how pH and conductivity change with the strength of an acid or base. Finally, they will develop their own working definition of acid, base, indicator, and pH scale by gathering data during the simulation. This activity is an introductory activity to acids and bases and no prior knowledge is needed to complete the simulation.
Note: The PhET simulation is a free resource that is copyrighted by the University of Colorado. The handout and lesson format are teacher-created.
This activity was created as a result of the GAP Resource Summit.
After researching the formation of each type of rock, students use the evidence from knowledge of the rock cycle to write a story about a pet rock. The story will include the rock changing from magma to each type of rock including igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic. Students will present their pet rock story to the class.
This lesson results from a collaboration between the Alabama State Department of Education and ASTA.
The teacher will present an informational text from the website, ReadWorks. The students and teacher can interact with this non-fiction text by annotating the text digitally. The students will answer the questions associated with the article as an assessment. This learning activity can be used to provide information regarding geologic events that happen over a short period of time, serve as reinforcement after students have already learned this concept, or be used as an assessment at the conclusion of a lesson.
Stoichiometry is the relationship between the relative quantities of substances taking part in a reaction or forming a compound, typically a ratio of whole integers. Chemists need stoichiometry to make the scale of chemistry more understandable. In this video, Hank is here to explain why and to teach us how to use it.
Earth’s most magnificent and enormous landforms are all on the ocean floor. Volcanoes and earthquakes change the ocean floor, creating new landforms. Erosion on land also deposits minerals and animal matter on the ocean floor.
The classroom resource provides a slide show that will describe the landforms on the ocean floor and how they are created through geologic processes. There is also a short test that can be used to assess students' understanding.
In this lesson, students will develop an understanding that objects and materials have characteristics or properties. Students will be able to recognize similarities between the properties of certain objects and materials and will be able to group the objects based on these similarities.
Students are introduced to the idea that objects and materials have certain “properties” or “characteristics” that can be used to describe them. After working with a simulation to help students understand the meaning of properties and characteristics, students are given a variety of small common objects to sort based on observable properties. Working in groups, students sort objects and record their groupings on an activity sheet. Students are then guided to come up with different criteria for one more set of groupings. Students participate in a class discussion of the different properties used to make the groupings.
