California Department of Education
What’s A Hot Job?
What jobs are the next best thing? Curious career scholars explore their options in activity three of a five-part series. Pupils research job trends and labor statistics before discussing the factors that influence occupation trends.
California Department of Education
Telling My Story
Entrance essays are the ultimate sales pitch! Show your seniors how to market themselves in the first of six college and career readiness lesson plans. Pupils discover the do's and don'ts of writing personal statements through research,...
California Department of Education
Gaining by Giving
Community service is a win-win! Scholars discover how to gain valuable career skills through helping others using a lesson about volunteer work. Second in a six-part career and college readiness series, the activities focus on...
California Department of Education
Studying for Careers
How can good study habits set someone up for a successful career? Learners explore the relationship between study skills and job skills in the fourth installment of a five-part college and career readiness lesson plan series. The group...
California Department of Education
Workplace Skills
What skills do employers look for in potential employees? Introduce scholars to the skills that pay the bills during the second of six career and college readiness lesson plans. Once they have defined critical 21st-century skills, groups...
Newseum
The Medium Shapes the Message
Where do you get your news? Have learners examine four different publications and decide which one they would choose to read on their own time. The resource includes a list of publication types to supply and a worksheet for groups to...
Civil War Trust
Civil War Play
Raise the curtain to a class play that depicts the Civil War through both factual information and literary devices. The performance showcases the Battle of Antietam (Battle of Sharpsburg) and brings attention to women's roles, as well as...
Teach Engineering
Design Step 1: Identify the Need
What exactly does an engineer do? Learners find out through a lesson that asks them to solve a problem that affects a target population. Aspiring engineers learn the steps of the engineering design process as they apply it to a challenge...
Curated OER
Fitness plan: number 3
Students monitor their fitness levels for six weeks of their P.E. course through the use of an Excel spreadsheet. They also research the obesity epidemic among youth in the U.S. today, presenting their findings to the class. This lesson...
Curated OER
Recipes for Foreign Foods
Upper graders choose a foreign country to research. They use the computer to locate three recipes from the country of their choice. Next, they link the information in each recipe to what they know about nutrition and food. Note: This...
Curated OER
How Photocells Work
Give small groups of physical scientists tokens that represent electrons in a photovoltaic cell. They play a dice game in which they move the tokens around, representing the flow of electrons through the p-n junction of a semiconductor...
Curated OER
Energy Efficiency Ambassadors
Definitely for high schoolers, this lesson is an open-ended exploration of energy efficiency. Groups of two to three junior environmental engineers design an experiment to test for efficiency. They prepare a full lab report and poster...
Curated OER
Measuring Precipitation
A little engineering design is mixed into this lesson on precipitation measurement. Groups plan and construct a rain gauge, and use it to collect precipitation. As part of the PowerPoint presentation, learners view a satellite map of...
National Wildlife Federation
I’ve Got the POWER Wind Energy Potential at Your School
The 20th lesson in a 21-part series connects the wind data and expectations of a turbine to whether such devices should be built in your area. Scholars begin with estimating the wind potential at school by using long-term climate data...
National Wildlife Federation
Get Your Techno On
Desert regions are hotter for multiple reasons; the lack of vegetation causes the sun's heat to go straight into the surface and the lack of moisture means none of the heat is being transferred into evaporation. This concept, and other...
National Wildlife Federation
I’ve Got the POWER! Solar Energy Potential at Your School
Should every school have solar panels? The 19th lesson in a series of 21 has scholars research the feasibility of using solar panels at their school. They begin by gathering data on the solar energy in the area before estimating the...
Curated OER
Designing a Crew Exploration Vehicle
Take your class on an out-of-this-world adventure with this fun engineering design lesson. Working in small groups, young scientists design, build, and test crew exploration vehicles using some creativity, teamwork, and an assortment of...
National Wildlife Federation
Why All The Wiggling on the Way Up?
Some of the CO2 emitted by burning fossil fuels is removed from the atmosphere by natural sinks, such as the ocean. The fifth engaging lesson in the series of 21 examines the CO2 data from three very different locations. It then makes a...
National Wildlife Federation
Quantifying Land Changes Over Time in Areas of Deforestation and Urbanization
Is qualitative or quantitative research more convincing when it comes to climate change? In the eighth lesson during this 21-part series, scholars begin by performing a quantitative analysis of deforestation and urbanization. Then, they...
National Wildlife Federation
Ghost Town
Around 93 percent of the reefs on Australia's Great Barrier Reef have been bleached, and almost one quarter of them are now dead. Scholars research the sea temperatures, especially around the areas with coral reefs, to make connections...
National Wildlife Federation
What is DBH?
When measuring the circumference of a tree, does it matter how high you place the measuring tape? Most scholars have never considered this question, but scientists know that measurement techniques must be standardized. The 13th...
National Wildlife Federation
Stifling, Oppressive, Sweltering, Oh My!
Looking for a hot date? Pick any day in August, statistically the hottest month in the United States. The 15th lesson in the series of 21 instructs pupils to investigate the August 2007 heat wave through NASA data, daily temperature...
National Wildlife Federation
When It Rains It Pours More Drought and More Heavy Rainfall
Which is worse — drought or flooding? Neither is helpful to the environment, and both are increasing due to climate change. The 16th instructional activity in a series of 21 covers the average precipitation trends for two different...
National Wildlife Federation
Conceptualizing Module III
Many researchers focus on one impact of climate change in isolation, but researchers gain a global perspective when they come together. A timely lesson teaches scholars about the projected impacts of global temperature increases. Then...