Celebrating 100+ Free Lesson Plans for K-12 STEM Education!

By Amy Cowen on August 10, 2020 6:00 AM

Join us in celebrating the availability of 100+ free lesson plans for K-12 teachers! All lessons are free-to-use by educators, including those teaching in the classroom, hybrid, remote, or in learning pods.

Images from four lesson plans to celebrate availability of 100+ free STEM lessons

Science Buddies first started developing NGSS-aligned educator lesson plans in 2017. With a deep library of more than 1,200 project ideas for students doing independent or science fair projects and a growing repository of family-friendly, simplified STEM activities, Science Buddies' Lesson Plans were created specifically to provide educators with comprehensive end-to-end lessons.

Lesson Plans at Science Buddies contain the scaffolding teachers need to teach a STEM subject, even in an area they may not have not taught before. Lesson Plans contain NGSS-alignment information for teachers filling curriculum needs, guided discussion and reflection questions, a step-by-step hands-on activity, and supplemental materials like worksheets, assessment materials, videos, and more.

Note: all Lesson Plans are free-to-use for educators. To learn more about the structure of a Science Buddies Lesson Plan, see How to Use a Science Buddies Lesson Plan.

A Milestone in Supporting STEM Educators

Reaching 100+ Lesson Plans is a huge milestone for Science Buddies in developing high-quality free resources for teachers. Educators can also use our 200+ STEM Activities with students, but Lesson Plans offer additional support and features that many educators need to teach science concepts with confidence.

New Lesson Plans

The following Lesson Plans are new at Science Buddies:

Grades K-4

Birthday Season Weather Report: in this weather and atmosphere lesson, students explore how weather conditions change between seasons.
Mapping Landforms: in this geology lesson, students make three-dimensional dough models of landforms and bodies of water and explore how they can be represented on a map.
Modeling Water Bodies: in this geology lesson, students model lakes, oceans, and rivers inside aluminum pans and learn about the characteristics of different types of bodies of water.
Sports Equipment Engineering Challenge: in this engineering design lesson, students design, make, and test their own sports equipment from assorted recycled materials while exploring forces of motion concepts of push and pull.
What Season Is This?: in this weather and atmosphere lesson, students learn to identify visual patterns related to weather conditions and the seasons.

Grades 5-8

Build a Recycling-Sorting Machine: in this physics lesson, students design a sorting machine that uses magnets to efficiently sort materials.
Cold Pack Chemistry: Exploring Endothermic and Exothermic Reactions: in this chemistry lesson, students explore endothermic and exothermic reactions and design their own chemical cold pack.
Design a Delayed-Release Tablet: in this materials science lesson, students design and build a controlled-release tablet.
Design a Paper Airplane Launcher: in this physics lesson, students use the engineering design process and concepts of kinetic and potential energy to design and build paper airplane launchers.
Investigate Alien Genetics: in this genetics and genomics lesson, students learn about genotypes and phenotypes as they model how traits are passed from parents to offspring.
What Do Enzymes in Pineapple Juice Do to Milk?: in this chemistry lesson, students explore chemical reactions and the role of enzymes by mixing pineapple juice and milk and observing what happens.

Grades 9-12

Control the Reaction Rate of a Foaming Reaction: in this chemistry lesson, students explore how chemical reactions are affected by enzymes and different substrate concentrations.
CUT! How Does CRISPR Work?: in this genetics and genomics lesson, students learn about CRISPR technology and create a model and a stop-motion animation video about CRISPR-Cas9.

Library of Free STEM Lesson Plans

Teachers can browse all Lesson Plans or use the search filters to find lessons in specific areas of science or for specific grade levels.

Thank You to Our Sponsors

Support for the ongoing development of our free STEM Lesson Plans has been generously provided by corporate sponsors, including General Motors, Motorola Solutions Foundation, Cisco Foundation, and Amgen Foundation. Support from our sponsors allows us to continue to create high-quality STEM education materials that are freely available on our site to help meet the needs of teachers and students everywhere.