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Language with Linguistic Legos
Middle schoolers visualize and manipulate sentences as building blocks, and, given a key, use Legos™ to demonstrate how to construct sentences of variety (simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex).
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What Plants Need in Order to Survive and Grow: Light
Students conduct an experiment to evaluate whether plants need light to survive and grow. They observe and gather data about plant responses to different growth regimes, analyze the data, and make conclusions about basic plant needs.
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Turning the Air Upside Down
Students analyze how engineers study temperature inversions and convection currents to understand why pollution levels may be higher in some areas than others. They participate in an experiment that allows them to build simple models to...
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Wind
Students conduct an experiment. In this wind measurement instructional activity, students learn about instruments that measure the wind and then make a weather vane. Students record wind speed over a few days.
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Alexander Calder: Master of Balance
Students build simple mobiles. For this equilibrium lesson, students investigate the functions of three types of levers as they analyze artwork by Alexander Calder. Students then create their own simplified mobiles.
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DEW POINT
Fourth graders investigate conditions causing saturation and measure the dew point of the atmosphere performing simple experiments.
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I've Got That Sinking Feeling
Students design a simple boat and predict how much weight it can carry. They should also discover why objects float or sink and how this can be determined experimentally. A great lesson on buoyancy!
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Wet Pennies
Students conduct a simple test to determine how many drops of water, rubbing alcohol and vegetable oil can be placed on a penny before spilling over. They consider how varying surface tensions allow for different amounts of each liquid...
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What's Air Got to Do with It?
Students use M&M's to create a pie graph that expresses their understanding of the composition of air. They watch and conduct several simple experiments to develop an understanding of the properties of air (it has mass, it takes up...
Alabama Learning Exchange
Can Plants Be Grown in Space?
Students investigate finding a solution to growing plants in space. They define key vocabulary terms, conduct an experiment growing plants, explore various websites, and participate in a live video conference with NASA regarding the...
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Lifting a Load
Students experiments with levers to determine if the amount of force needed to lift a load is always the same. For this physics lesson, students use Lab-Pro data collector as they experiment with the fulcrum placement to measure the work...
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What's a Resistor?
Students determine what a resistor does as they construct parallel circuits. In this circuitry lesson, students experiment with batteries, alligator clips, a resistor and a three-way switch to find out what a resistor does. They continue...
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Inertia
Students conduct a simple inertia demonstration by spinning a hardboiled and raw egg. They push a wagon to demonstrate inertia. They explore Newton's first and second laws of motion.
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What Plants Need in Order to Survive and Grow: Soil
Students conduct an experiment to evaluate whether plants need soil to survive and grow. They plant two seeds, one with soil and one without, make predictions, and record and analyze the seed germination results on a worksheet.
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Dark Skies: Volcanic Contribution to Climate Change
Young scholars examine how volcanic eruptions affect global climate. They listen to first-hand accounts of the effects of a large volcanic eruption and illustrate a landscape to show understanding. They experiment with the loss of light...
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Microbe Experimentation
Sixth graders conduct a microbe experiment. In this microbe lesson plan, 6th graders develop an experiment with micro-organisms, complete the associated worksheet, and complete a table showing the results.
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A Constructivist Version of the Snail & Elodea Lab
Students explain the importance of having a control when setting up an experiment.
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You've Got to Be Cool to Make Igneous Rocks
Students describe how igneous rocks are formed, design a classification system to group igneous rocks and develop a controlled experiment to prove that the rate of cooling affects the size of the crystals.
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Buoyant Boats
Students design and construct a boat out of aluminum foil and a few other simple materials. The boats then be tested by floating them in water, then adding mass until they sink. They explore the various shapes of boat construction.
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Color Dots 2
Students develop simple observations. They observe bleeding of colored inks with water, to understand mixtures, and to make generalized inferences from their observations.
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Research Ethics
Students develop an ability to distinguish between simple error, misconduct and fraud. Students are lead to consider a widening circle of the consequences of misconduct and fraud. They expand their knowledge on the self-regulating...
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Juicing the Differences
Seventh graders investigate the vitamin C content of orange juice. In this chemistry lesson, 7th graders analyze the variables that cause result variation in their experiment. They design a new experiment to test variables in question.
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Leaf Stomata as Bioindicators of Environmental Change
Students, in this experiment, collect leaves from two species of trees and the stomatal index on the upper and lower epidermis of each leaf be determined.
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Leaf Stomata as Bioindicators of Environmental Change
Students perform an experiment to determine the stomaltal index on the upper and lower epidermis of two species of leaves. Stomatal densities change in response to changing atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide and to annual rainfall.