Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College
Serc: Outcrop Investigation: What Can Our Rocks Tell Us About the Past?
By looking at an outcrop, students make observations and prediction about Earth's history in this activity. Students will also make hypothesis about the past environment based on the observations from the outcrop.
Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College
Serc: Investigation a Food Web: Producers, Consumers, and Decomposers
Being field scientists, students will explore a wooded area in their community and journal about their observations. Students will collect information about producers, consumers, and decomposers in the ecosystem. They will then construct...
Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College
Serc: Investigating Ponds and Streams: How Clean Is Our Water?
In this field lab, students investigate the differences in three city ponds. Students will compare pond life, temperature, pH, Ammonia, dissolved oxygen, and Nitrate. The student use the pond sheets (Flinn Scientific Catalog 2007) to...
Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College
Serc: Investigating Our Surroundings: Observing the Outdoors
Students will observe, describe, measure, compare, and contrast leaves, rocks, grass, and soil using observation and tools.
Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College
Serc: Investigating Lava Flows and Their Imapct on Shoreline Features
For this field geology activity, young scholars will explore basaltic lava flows along the shoreline of Lake Superior, and begin to gain an understanding of the geologic story of Minnesota's North Shore. They will make observations about...
Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College
Serc: Investigating Sound: A Lesson in Length and Pitch
In this classroom guided inquiry lesson, students will rotate through five stations of various sound instruments to look at how length affects pitch. The five sound stations include: straw flutes, xylophone, water phone, palm pipes, and...
Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College
Serc: Physics of Sound: How Does Length Affect Pitch?
Students investigate how pitch varies with the length of instrument in this activity. Activity includes procedure and background information.
Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College
Serc: Investigation of Newtonian Forces on Plate Tectonics
An investigation for students to understand plate tectonics by using models to see how motion and forces act on the plates. Students can use these models to see the connection between Newtonian Laws to Earth materials. Lesson plan...
Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College
Serc: Investigating the Magnetic Force Field: Calculating Magnetic Pull
In this classroom activity, the students will investigate the magnetic pull of a bar magnet at varying distances with the use of paper clips. Students will hypothesize, conduct the experiment, collect the data, and draw conclusions that...
Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College
Serc: Investigating Leaves: October Leaf Collection
In this activity, students use observational skills to compare and discuss the changes in leaves from September to October.
Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College
Serc: Investigating Patterns: An Introduction to Mendeleev
In this activity, learners investigate a puzzle. They are given a set of cards with various properties. Each card has anywhere from 2 to 6 different properties depending on the level of the students and each set of cards has one or two...
Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College
Serc: Investigating Sounds: Identifying Vibration, Pitch, and Volume
In this investigation, students will observe and experiment with how sounds are made. They will use various elementary music instruments as well as tuning forks, combs, rubber bands, books, bottles, etc. They will collect data on how...
Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College
Serc: Investigating Minnesota Tree Leaves
In this biology field exercise, young scholars will collect leaves, describe differences seen in casual and detailed observation and give reasons for the importance of trees. Students will use their five senses to take a closer look at...
Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College
Serc: Investigating White Light: What Colors Make Up White Light?
Two different hands-on activities that explore white light and the colors that make it up. In one activity students will create white light by using a color wheel. In the other activity students discover the colors that make white light...
Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College
Serc: Tracking the Sun: Observing the Path of the Sun Throughout the Year
Over the course of the school year, young scholars collect weekly data about the sun's position at a specific time of day, resulting in creating a figure "8" that shows the path of the sun called an analemma.
Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College
Serc: Kool Aid Chemistry
An investigation where students learn about dilutions by studying different dilutions of kool-aid with their five senses.
Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College
Serc: Investigating Osmosis Using Water and Gummy Bears
In this biology classroom lab, students investigate the affect of soaking a Gummy Bear in water. They collect measurements of height, width, and mass before and after the soaking of the candy overnight. Students calculate % change for...
Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College
Serc: Leaf Investigation and Classification
Students will learn about classification of leaves by collecting a variety of leaves from home and working in small groups in the classroom to sort them into groups. Students will present their criteria for grouping the leaves to the class.
Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College
Serc: Investigating With Magnets: Attraction and Repelling
In this fun lab activity, students will learn about the attraction and repulsion of magnets. Students will discover that like poles repel while unlike poles attract.
Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College
Serc: Investigating Processes of Sedimentation in Gravel Pits
In this field investigation, students will investigate processes of deposition that have contributed to the current Minnesota sediments and landscape. After learning about weathering and erosion and having a short introduction to...
Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College
Serc: Investigating the Rate of Weathering on Various Rock Types.
In this Earth Science field investigation, students will make observations of the rock above and below the Minneopa State Park waterfalls. Students will then make observations of gravestones at Minneopa Cemetery. Through these...
Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College
Serc: Investigating Sedimentary Rock Deposition and Weathering
Middle schoolers will hike to the Mawikwe Bay Sea Caves along the frozen shoreline of Lake Superior in order to investigate the sedimentary rock deposition and weathering of the sandstone cliffs. Students will measure take measurements,...
Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College
Serc: Parachutes and Air Resistance
By using different materials students construct a parachute to show how air resistance slows down its fall in this lesson.
Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College
Serc: Investigating Plant Life in Our Nature Center
In this Nature Center activity, students will apply knowledge from our classifying living things unit. They will compare what they already know about leaves to actual leaf samples. After collecting 5 leaves and keeping them in a journal,...