What are the benefits and risks of saving in an interest-bearing account? Pupils explore concepts like risk-reward relationship and the rule of 72, as well as practice calculating compound interest, developing important personal...

Teach young engineers that all machines, no matter how complicated or complex, are made up of just six simple devices with this hands-on physical science lesson. Using the included templates, students first create paper models of...

Close out the school year with a look back at a specific event. You provide individuals with photos of themselves, and each pupil fills out the graphic organizer here to prepare for writing a paragraph about the memory depicted in the...

Designed as the final project concluding a study of Mississippi Trial, 1955, readers select a character from Crowe's novel and craft a portfolio of six entries that reveal not only aspects of the character, but similarities between...

Agriculture, deforestation, and urbanization. How have human's changed the planet and how might we mitigate the effects of human activity on the planet? To answer these questions class members research the changes in human land use from...

Reading about history is nothing like experiencing it firsthand. Encourage your eighth graders to do the next best thing with a historical narrative prompt, in which they describe the experience of a first-time traveler on the...

Geometric design makes a fashion statement! Challenge learners to design a hat to fit a Styrofoam model. Specifications are clear and pupils use concepts related to three-dimensional objects including volume of irregular shapes and...

Scholars gain an insight into the relative size of planets and distance between inner and outer planets with the help of informational text, a data table, and a series of four questions.  

Imagine computer science all summed up in one book. This resource provides 16 chapters that cover many aspects of computer science, ranging from algorithms to software engineering. The e-book contains links to applets to help explain...

Who's your Daddy ... and Mommy for that matter? Given a first-generation group of gummy bear offspring, young scientists must determine which bears are their parents. An activity learning exercise covers the differences in genotypes...

Young scientists present their experimental designs from the previous experiment. The ninth lesson in the series outlines what learners should present, what class discussions should happen, and the solution NASA came up with for the same...

Apply the concept of similar triangles to design a space in a room. Scholars use similar triangles to determine how a spotlight reflects from a mirror. After drawing the path of the spotlight, individuals find the smallest possible width...

Class members investigate relationships between two variables in the seventh installment of a 16-part module that teaches scholars how to find and describe patterns in scatter plots. Young mathematicians consider linear/nonlinear...

Discover how trend lines can be useful in understanding relationships between variables with a lesson that covers how to informally fit a trend line to model a relationship given in a scatter plot. Scholars use the trend line to make...

Knowing the standard algorithm opens up a whole new world of division. Scholars learn how to convert division involving decimals to division involving whole numbers to use the standard algorithm. Knowing how to multiply with powers of...

Individuals learn to apply the Euclidean algorithm to find the greatest common factor of two numbers. Additionally, the lesson plan connects greatest common factor to the largest square that can be drawn in a rectangle.

It's time to boldly go where your class has not gone before! The introductory lesson plan in a five-part series takes young oceanographers aboard the NOAA Ship Okeanos to begin a study of ocean exploration. The lesson plan includes a...

How does chemistry help deep-sea explorers? Part four of a five-part series of lessons from aboard the Okeanos Explorer introduces middle school scientists to technologies used in ocean exploration. Groups work together to analyze data...

How do robots assist ocean explorers in collecting data and images? The final installment in a five-part series has science scholars examine underwater images collected by robots and identify the organisms shown. Groups then calculate...

Adjust the overlap to compare probabilities. Using sliders, learners adjust the shape of two Gaussian curves. The interactive calculates the area of the left tail for one curve and the right tail for the other. Pupils set the interactive...

Control the spread of a contagious disease. An applet allows pupils to run a simulation on the spread of a disease. Rules govern how the disease is spread and the length of time it takes to recover. Learners view the spread visually and...

Find the box with two green balls. The applet uses six balls, three green and three red, and hides them in three boxes. Pupils choose a box and click on it to reveal the color of balls inside. Using the chosen box, the simulation keeps...

Make sure the measurement is right. The interactive provides right triangles with a missing side measurement. Pupils use the given sides and the Pythagorean Theorem to calculate the length of the missing side. After entering the length,...

Does the size of the bin matter? The resource allows pupils to explore the relationship between the normal curve and histograms. Learners view histograms compared to a normal curve with a set standard deviation. Using the interactive,...