Light is energy and color is a part of the light. In this video, students will learn more about how light behaves and why we see red.
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.
Investigate a prairie inhabitant—the bee. Students gather information about a bee’s internal and external parts and use this information as evidence to make a claim about how the bee’s internal and external parts work together as a system to ensure survival. The lesson supports diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility by focusing on an insect familiar to learners in most environments and providing contextual definitions for vocabulary as well as illustrations and video, helping learners from areas without prairie to engage with and understand the lesson.
This NET Nebraska student lesson uses the photographs, observation notes, and online blog from the Nature Conservancy’s Science Director, Chris Helzer. Helzer's photography is featured in his book, Hidden Prairie: Photographing Life in One Square Meter.
Students observe waves propagate through deep water in videos and animations showing that waves transport energy, not matter. Students can make observations to describe wave motion through the water. This is a great engaging activity to use to introduce waves.
In this activity, students will sequence the life cycle of a plant. After reading the story students will work in small groups to put the life cycle in order using sequence cards and then add movement to their life cycle.
This activity was created as a result of the Arts COS Resource Development Summit.
Students will collect data on an investigation where two or more substances are mixed together. Students will analyze the investigation to decide the type of change, chemical or physical, that occurred during the investigation. Students will use their observations from the investigation to create a short movie where they will describe the data they used to determine the type of change that occurred during their investigation. This lesson will work best for classrooms equipped with classroom tablets or schools that allow students to bring their own device.
This lesson results from a collaboration between the Alabama State Department of Education and ASTA.
In this unit, students are introduced to systems, systems modeling, and systems thinking. The activities provide opportunities for them to explore how systems modeling and systems thinking are used to address complex problems and to apply their knowledge and skills to a challenge in their own lives. During the unit, students build an understanding of real-world systems by analyzing parts of an urban farm system, using an online tool to model a subsystem of the urban farm, developing and modeling an example of a system, and generating ideas for mitigating the negative effects and/or elaborate on impacts to the system.
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 concepts of recycling and conservation, serve as reinforcement after students have already learned this concept, or be used as an assessment at the conclusion of a lesson.
Did you know that at a certain point on a moving wheel there's no motion? It's all relative, right? Prepare to have your mind blown in this episode of Crash Course Physics where Dr. Shini delves into the world of rotational motion!
It’s all about families in this happy lesson full of illustrations, charts, diagrams, and photographs. Learn how inherited and acquired traits make families special. Meet some PURRfectly adorable cat families.
The sound produced for a radio broadcast may take three different forms and travel dozens of miles before it comes out of your loudspeaker. This illustrated essay from A Science Odyssey Web site explains the conversion of electrical signals to radio waves.
This activity covers the rock cycle. It incorporates the transformation of rocks into sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic. It also incorporates activities for identification of sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic rocks. It includes videos (with questions) that reinforce the rock cycle.
This activity results from the ALEX Resource Gap Project.
In this hands-on activity, the students will become Linnaeus by dividing into groups to create their own "Six Kingdom" classification system using various types of fasteners. They will group the fasteners based on similar characteristics and divide them into domains, kingdoms, phyla, classes, orders, families, genera, and species. They will also have to "name" each taxon for their classification system as well as give the scientific name for each "species" of a fastener.
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 explain why the sun is visible during the day and other stars are visible at night, serve as reinforcement after students have already learned this concept, or be used as an assessment at the conclusion of a lesson.
Electric current works somewhat like a river. Instead of flowing based on elevation, electric current works a little differently. In this episode of Crash Course Physics, Dr. Shini talks to us about electric current, voltaic cells, and how we get electric charge.
Earthquakes are caused by geologic movement in the earth’s crust. They occur in faults, or cracks, located on the Earth’s surface.
The classroom resource provides a video that will describe how and why earthquakes occur at certain locations on Earth. There is also a short test that can be used to assess students' understanding.
In these Hero Elementary activities, children learn about animals’ body parts. This includes humans! Children observe different animals. They notice how animals’ bodies are alike and not alike. They compare animals’ body parts and notice patterns. They find a way to solve a problem by copying how animals use their body parts.
This learning activity should be used as an engage activity to introduce a lesson or unit on how animals use their senses to process information and respond to it. The students will watch a humorous, wordless media arts clip of how a cat solves a problem. The students will discuss the meaning of the clip and how the cat used its senses to solve his problem.
This activity was created as a result of the Arts COS Resource Development Summit.
In this inquiry-based lesson, students will investigate how rainfall changes the land and causes runoff. The students will simulate a stream table to show how rainfall erodes the land.
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. 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.
Why is e=mc2 a big deal? What about probability? In this episode of Crash Course Physics, Dr. Shini attempts to explain a little more on the topic of quantum mechanics. She explores wave-particle duality, probability density function, and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.
Oceans contain 97% of the water on the Earth and are home to a huge number of living creatures. Most of these creatures, about 90% of them, live near the water’s surface, where the pressure is not so great and they can get some light.
The classroom resource provides a slide show that will explain why the ocean is salty and describe different organisms that live in the ocean. There is also a short test that can be used to assess students' understanding.
In this lesson, students think about what might happen to plants and animals if their environment changed and they were faced with conditions to which they were not well adapted. First, students read The Great Kapok Tree: A Tale of the Amazon Rain Forest by Lynne Cherry. Then they watch a video about camouflage and learn that praying mantises are well suited for life in the rain forest. Next, students play a predator/prey game to simulate what might happen to the praying mantis if the rain forest were cut down. Finally, they use a Web activity to explore what would happen to living things if the concentration of oxygen in the air changed.
