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Students explore the varying roles people can play to save endangered species. Students create an eco-artist social media profile sharing information about artists who encourage conservation through their work. This lesson is part of the Engaging in the Fight Against Extinction unit.

This resource shows an example of a convergent boundary plate.  At a convergent plate boundary, lithospheric plates move toward each other. The west margin of the South American continent, where the oceanic Nazca Plate is pushed toward and beneath the continental portion of the South American Plate, is an example of a convergent plate boundary. This resource shows an example of a convergent boundary plate. 

Children will learn about physical science and motion and stability with gravity in this game from Ready, Jet, Go. Play basketball with Mindy on Earth and across planets with this game from Ready, Jet, Go. Players must tweak each level's obstacles so that the ball can be guided into the hoop, all while experimenting with force and gravity levels from planet to planet.

In this lesson, the teacher will use a small candle flame to demonstrate a chemical reaction between the candle wax and oxygen in the air. Students will see a molecular animation of the combustion of methane and oxygen as a model of a similar reaction. Students will use atom model cut-outs to model the reaction and see that all the atoms in the reactants show up in the products.

Students will be able to explain that for a chemical reaction to take place, the bonds between atoms in the reactants are broken, the atoms rearrange, and new bonds between the atoms are formed to make the products. Students will also be able to explain that in a chemical reaction, no atoms are created or destroyed.

A bioblitz is a short, intensive study of the biodiversity of an area. In this activity, students investigate and analyze local biodiversity using iNaturalist observations. They collaborate in small groups to explore observations and identification of various taxon groups. Then students create a class graph of data and draw inferences about biodiversity, invasive species, and endangered species in their local park. 

This is how you touch: Nerve cells throughout your body respond to external stimuli by sending nerve impulses to your brain. To put it another way, your skin’s nerve cells respond to the things you touch, allowing you to feel them.

This resource presents a short slide show about how humans interpret and respond to things they touch. After utilizing this resource, the students can complete the short test to assess their understanding.

Learn about motion, forces, and sources of energy as you direct a train to the finish line in Rail Rally from Dinosaur Train.

In this PhET Activity, students will explore the relationships between the pressure, volume, temperature, and density of ideal gases. As an extension, students can visualize, using graphs, how the temperature and pressure of a gas impact the speed and kinetic energy of particles. This activity can be used as an exploratory introduction to the behavior of gases, as a digital lab, or to reinforce student knowledge of confined gases.

The teacher will present an informational text from the website, ReadWorks. Students will 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 introduce students to the concept of eclipses, serve as reinforcement after students have already learned this concept, or be used as an assessment at the conclusion of a lesson. 

In this first episode of Crash Course Physics, Dr. Shini Somara introduces us to the ideas of motion in a straight line. She talks about displacement, acceleration, time, velocity, and the definition of acceleration.

Students make observations and analyze data to investigate how the duration of daylight changes throughout a year. They consider their own experiences in addition to evidence gathered from videos, data tables, and a line graph to describe the pattern in the changing duration of daylight from January to December.

The associated lesson plan Investigating Daylight Throughout a Year provides more support for teachers and students, including handouts and materials for diverse learners, as well as information for customizing the data to your location.

Cows have adapted to an incredible range of environments as they have provided people with milk, meat, leather, and draft power. As a response to the many uses and habitats of cattle, a wide variety of breeds have been developed. Breeders of beef and dairy cattle carefully select cows from known breeds that will yield the most meat and milk. In this video from Nature, learn about the most desirable traits in both beef and dairy cows.

In this game, students will learn how carbon atoms move through different carbon reservoirs during the carbon cycle. Students can play the game as a single-player or join others in a multiplayer format. Students will begin to understand the delicate balance of the carbon cycle while playing this game. 

We learn a lot about our surroundings thanks to sound. In this episode of Crash Course Physics, Dr. Shini goes over some of the basics (and some of the not so basics) of the Physics of Sound.

Jump in with both feet as you watch oobleck (cornstarch and water mixture) videos and learn about three states of matter: solids, liquids, and gases. Learn to use captions and charts to make reading comprehension less messy and loads of fun.

In these Hero Elementary activities, children explore solid and liquid materials. They observe, compare, and describe solid and liquid materials. They sort materials as solid or liquid. They find out how hot and cold can change the state of materials.

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. This learning activity includes a StepRead: StepReads are less complex versions of the original article. StepRead1 (SR1) is less complex than the original article, and StepRead2 (SR2) is less complex than SR1. This will allow the teacher to use this learning activity with students of varying ability levels. 

In this episode of Crash Course Physics, Megneto helps Dr. Shini explain what induction is, how it works, and why magnetism is so seemingly complicated.

Students learn about four factors that describe different types of weather—temperature, wind, precipitation, and sunlight and clouds—as they explore various weather conditions and find evidence that describes each type of weather in this interactive lesson by WGBH. Interactive activities engage students as they observe and identify evidence of changing weather conditions and record factors evident in various types of weather.  

Students investigate why summer days have more daylight hours than winter days, using data, observational videos, models, and informational text. They relate quantitative and qualitative data to models of the Earth-Sun system to discern a reason for the difference in the amount of daylight on a summer day and on a winter day. An extension activity enables students to apply learning to explain daylight differences in a southern hemisphere location. Investigating Daylight Throughout a Year can be used to provide foundational knowledge for this lesson. In that lesson, students use observations and quantitative data to characterize the differences in the amount of daylight in summer and in winter.

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 data about solid water (ice and snow) found on Earth. This activity includes a question set on cause and effect, which will help students describe the connection between scientific ideas and processes. 

Dihydrogen monoxide (better known as water) is the key to nearly everything. It falls from the sky, makes up 60% of our bodies, and just about every chemical process related to life takes place with it or in it. Without it, none of the chemical reactions that keep us alive would happen, none of the reactions that sustain any life form on earth would happen, and the majority of inorganic chemical reactions that shape the surface of the earth would not happen either. Every one of us uses water for all kinds of chemistry every day--our body chemistry, our food chemistry, and our laundry chemistry all take place in water. In this Crash Course Chemistry, we learn about some of the properties of water that make it so special. We explore its polarity and dielectric property; how electrolytes can be used to classify solutions; and we discover how to calculate a solution's molarity as well as how to dilute a solution using the dilution equation.