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Does One Tree a Forest Make?
Students take a walk around the schoolyard looking at and identifying the trees. One leaf for each tree is collected. A chart is developed that represents the population of trees on the school ground. They keep journals and write an essay.
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El Nino
Students explain what El Nino is, where it is located and how it is created. They describe the weather changes caused by El Nino. They draw the patterns of El Nino on a world map. They predict economic effects El Nino has on the areas it...
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Frozen Out
Students investigate how climate changes affect top predators in Arctic marine ecosystems. Students complete a worksheet and write a report based on their responses to a scientific paper.
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Cherishing the Water of Life
Learners work in small groups to brainstorm a list of all creatures, plants, natural, and artificial processes that use or depend on fresh water. The class views an aquarium filled with water representing all the water in the world. The...
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Meet Meteorology
Students explore meteorology, discuss Earth's atmosphere, create drawings of the water cycle, create meteorology journals, and role play forecasters. Nine lessons on one page; includes unit test.
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Deforestation, Fragmentation, and the Edge Effect
Students participate in an activity to demonstrate how deforestation, fragmentation, and habitat edges may affect native animal populations. Students accomplish this by playing a game from a provided worksheet and completing a graphing...
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Introduction to Restoration Lesson
Middle schoolers explore how pollution and invasive plants disrupt the ecosystem. In this restoration lesson plan students list materials that pollute wetlands, how people can keep them clean and ways in which invasive plants establish.
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Hi, Deer!
Students collect, organize by table, and examine census data in a simulation, estimate the size of the population in the simulation and make predictions based on the collection of census simulation data.
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Biology-Genetics
Students predict the probable mode of inheritance from a pedigree diagram showing phenotypes. They study the genetic basis for Mendel's laws of segregation and independent assortment. They give a Power Point slide show demonstrating the...
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Blackout!
Students read news reports and first-person accounts of a blackout in a large city and keep weblogs or journals. They take on different roles of people who live in the city or commute there to work and then use their journal accounts to...
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El Nino
Middle schoolers recognize that El Nino is caused by changes in the atmospheric and ocean content. They conduct a simple experiment, visit websites and create a class poster using individual storyboards.
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A Geological Puzzle
Young scholars compare and contrast the various types of rocks on each continent. In groups, the calculate the rock ages and types to determine if the continents, in their opinion, were joined at one time. They develop two imaginary...
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Why is a salt marsh important?
Middle schoolers discuss the salt marsh. They define the following terms: habitat, water, land and air. Students work in small groups. They are asked why are they going to a salt marsh? Middle schoolers discuss whose habitat is it at...
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Finding the Deep Water Masses of the Atlantic Ocean
Students describe the role of density in driving deep ocean currents and the density layers of the ocean. They determine that the ocean is one continuous body of water with global currents that interact, with water surrounding all...
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GPS Treasure Hunt for Knowledge
Students examine themselves as being part of a global community. In this global community lesson, students investigate GPS systems. Students gain knowledge on how the device works. Students discover that satellites provide information...
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Jr. Chef Club Super Snacks Lesson 6
Students explore healthy snacks. In this nutrition and cooking lesson, students observe and identify food groups on USDA's MyPyramid food guide. Students discuss how fiber helps our digestive system and follow a recipe using yeast to...
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Ecology of The Sonoran Desert Soil Crusts: Biology, Geology
This lesson is designed after research done on the ecology of soil lichen in the Tucson Basin area during the summers of 1997 and 1998. Its purpose is to guide students into adopting the problem solving thinking of ecologists. The lesson...
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Rollin' on The River - the Hudson River!
Students examine how the Hudson River was important to the development of the United States. They examine the role of steamboats played in the development of the Hudson River Valley.
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One Path
Students discover that charge movement through a circuit depends on the resistance and arrangement of the circuit components. In a hands-on activity, students build and investigate the characteristics of series circuits. In another...
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A Year (a Day or a Week) In My Life as a Shorebird
Learners describe the basic life history of one shorebird common to their area. They use the writing process which includes brainstorming, rough draft writing, peer editing, and re-writing to create a factually and grammatically...
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Endangered Relationships
Students study the interrelationship between the horseshoe crab and red knot. In this ecology lesson, students explain why several species became extinct. They research about endangered species found in their region.
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Is There Liquid Water on Mars?
Students assess whether there is liquid water on Mars by analyzing images and data. In this planetary lesson students analyze temperature and pressure graphs and hypothesize about how water could have flowed on Mars.
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Power Point Lesson Plan
Students create a multimedia animal research presentation based on the include criteria for both information and sideshow format. They follow directions on slide set-up from creating a slide to transitions and musical insertion.
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Sewage Spill into Biscayne Bay
Students use a hypothetical case study to learn about environmental health issues associated with water, recreational water, and sewage. They use an inquiry-based learning module to generate questions, draft a research plan, and generate...