Lesson Plans

Students will conduct an experiment to determine the effect of mass on the distance a toy car will roll. Students will calculate the effect that mass has on the acceleration of the car (the distance the car will roll). Students will also make a prediction of how far the car will roll if more mass is added. 

This lesson results from a collaboration between the Alabama State Department of Education and ASTA. 

This lesson will develop the knowledge of squared and cubed numbers. The students will know when to use the square root and cube root to solve an equation. The students will memorize perfect squares and some cube roots. The answers will be left in radical form. Finally, the students will be able to identify the radicals as rational or irrational.

This lesson results from the ALEX Resource Gap Project.

Students are drawn in by a classic story of guilt or innocence as they discover the Western town of Moon Dance, Montana, home of Al, a young man who begins to doubt the innocence of his mentor and father figure. Could Mr. Baumer be guilty of murder? Students are introduced to all the elements of a short story and forget that they are learning how to write an argumentative essay in their zeal to defend their opinion with evidence from the text. 

The third installment of a three-part lesson on Newton's Laws of Motion, this lesson focuses on Newton's 2nd Law and offers review of all three laws. Students will complete graphic organizers to demonstrate their understanding of the three laws of motion. Students will work in tiered groups to prepare a brief presentation to share with the class on a real-life scenario demonstrating Newton's 2nd Law.

This lesson results from a collaboration between the Alabama State Department of Education and ASTA.

This lesson is designed to teach the students that some quadratic equations will have imaginary solutions. The lesson will examine the concept of complex numbers in terms i. The student will use the quadratic formula to solve the equations and write the the solutions in the form a +bi.

This lesson results from the ALEX Resource Gap Project.

Students will design and conduct an experiment to see how temperature can affect the particle motion of water. The students will test molecular motion in different temperatures of water by adding food coloring to the water and observing the motion of the water molecules. This investigation will allow the students to see the movement of food coloring in water and how an increase or decrease in temperature will affect that movement.

This lesson results from a collaboration between the Alabama State Department of Education and ASTA.

This lesson is designed to develop knowledge about the angles of a triangle. This lesson will prove that the interior angles of a triangle will have a sum of 180 degrees. This lesson will prove that an exterior angle is the sum of the remote interior angles. This lesson will show the relationships of the angles of parallel lines and transversals.

This lesson results from the ALEX Resource Gap Project.

As the second installment of a series of lessons on Newton's 3 Laws of Motion, this lesson focuses on Newton's Third Law. Students will take part in an activity exploring the motion of colliding objects. Students will photograph these collisions as a demonstration and explain how Newton's 3rd Law and balanced & unbalanced forces relate to their collision.

This lesson results from a collaboration of the Alabama State Department of Education and ASTA.

This lesson will be completed in one class period. This lesson, the third in the series, will focus on another way of solving linear systems, the elimination method. When using this method, the students will multiply one or both of equations to make one of the variables equal. Afterward, the students will add the equations to eliminate the variable.  

This lesson results from the ALEX Resource Gap Project.

In this lesson, students will investigate the relationship between mass, acceleration, and force as described in Newton’s Second Law of Motion.

Students will work in teams to use a wooden car and rubber bands to toss a small mass off of a car. The car, resting on rollers, will be propelled in opposite directions. Students will vary the mass that is being tossed by each car and change the number of rubber bands used to toss the mass.  Students will then measure how far the car rolls in response to the action force generated.

This lesson was created as part of the 2016 NASA STEM Standards of Practice Project, a collaboration between the Alabama State Department of Education and NASA Marshall Space Flight Center.

In this lesson, the teacher will demonstrate how to use the Pythagorean Theorem to find distance between two points in the coordinate system. In the coordinate plane, the difference in the x- and y-values will determine the numbers to calculate the distance. This lesson will use online graphing tools as well as graph paper to plot the points. This lesson can also be used to show the relationship between the distance formula and the Pythagorean Theorem.

This lesson results from the ALEX Resource Gap Project.

This lesson is the first part of a series of lessons based on Newton's Three Laws of Motion. This lesson introduces the laws and specifically centers on developing a video as a model for students to demonstrate and explain Newton's First Law of Motion.

This lesson results from a collaboration between the Alabama State Department of Education and ASTA.

This lesson is the second part of solving systems of linear equations. The lesson will be taught in one class period. The concept for the lesson is to solve one equation in terms of "x" or "y" and substitute the results into the other equation. Calculating the final solution to the system will take a few more steps. This lesson will describe the remaining steps as well as examples to follow. 

This lesson results from the ALEX Resource Gap Project.

This is a hands-on, cooperative learning activity where students are using items purchased from a grocery store to design a device and construct a shock-absorbing system out of paper, straws, and miniature marshmallows that will protect two astronauts when landing on Mars. Students are able to develop engineering skills to develop a spacecraft to land on Mars, a mission NASA is currently working on. Students propose a model of a spacecraft to land astronauts safely on the moon, test it, and then revise.

This lesson was created as part of the 2016 NASA STEM Standards of Practice Project, a collaboration between the Alabama State Department of Education and NASA Marshall Space Flight Center.

Students will begin this inquiry-based lesson by accessing their prior knowledge about the distinguishing characteristics of different substances. Using ideas from the students, the teacher will create a list of physical and chemical properties that can be used to recognize different substances. Next, the teacher will assist the students in planning an investigation that will test methods to determine the identity of substances based on their characteristic properties. Lastly, students will carry out the investigation they planned with the aim of identifying "mystery" substances using their unique physical and chemical properties.

This lesson results from a collaboration between the Alabama State Department of Education and ASTA.

Students will design a roller coaster using marbles and foam pipe insulation to observe the relationship between potential and kinetic energy. Students will calculate the average speed of the marble and relate that speed to the potential and kinetic energy of the marble. Students will use various angles and track designs to see the impact it has on marble speed.

This lesson results from a collaboration between the Alabama State Department of Education and ASTA.

Systems of Equations will be taught over a three-day period: the first day will include a lesson regarding equations that can be solved by graphing, the second day will include a lesson regarding equations that can be solved by substitution, and the third day will include a lesson regarding equations that can be solved by elimination. The students will graph two lines on the same coordinate axis and determine where the two lines cross. The teacher will be able to rock the teenage world with the website "DESMOS". Solving the equations graphically will enhance the graphing skill of the students. The lesson will explain all the ways to graph a line.

This lesson results from the ALEX Resource Gap Project.

The Black Death affected every member of society in the Middle Ages. In this lesson, students will watch a video about The Black Death and read an excerpt from Sarah Himes' diary to be able to understand how The Black Death brought about political and economic changes in the late Middle Ages. Students will discover the true meaning behind the children's song "Ring Around the Rosy".  Finally, students will collaborate with a partner to compose their own song about the impact the Black Death had on either the family, the church, or the economy during the Middle Ages.  

This module was authored by the Auburn University NanoBio MSP Fellows Will Haynes, Hannah Taylor, and Catherine Wolfe under the review and guidance of Drs. Virginia Davis and Chris Schnittka. This lesson is about compounds, mixtures, and solutions and relating those to synthetics, with the focus being plastics. This lesson focuses on how plastics are made and the negative impacts of some plastics. It goes on to explain how the addition of nanoscale particles can be the solution for these problems. This lesson includes a lecture and a hands-on activity where the students are creating plastic from the milk protein casein.