Sixth Grade Projects, Lessons, Activities (Page 78)

Lesson Plan Grade: 6th-12th

What is herd immunity, how is it achieved, and what impact does it have on outbreaks? Students will explore these questions and more in this lesson plan. They will then use SimPandemic, a free online tool, to model different levels of viral immunity in communities to understand how a population can reach the herd immunity threshold and the impacts that has on individuals and populations during a COVID-19 outbreak. Remote learning adaptation: This lesson plan can be conducted remotely. … Read more

NGSS Performance Expectations:

MS-LS2-4. Construct an argument supported by empirical evidence that changes to physical or biological components of an ecosystem affect populations.
HS-LS2-8. Evaluate evidence for the role of group behavior on individual and species' chances to survive and reproduce.

Program Your Own COVID-19 or Flu Simulator with Scratch

STEM Activity

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Are you curious about how public health officials think about and model how diseases like flu and COVID-19 move from one person to another? In this activity, you will use the kid-friendly programming language Scratch to write a simulation that uses bouncing dots to represent healthy and sick people. The simulation will show how we can take measures to slow the spread of a transmissible disease. Read more

Protect Coastal Communities from Storm Surge Waves

Lesson Plan Grade: 6th-8th

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Sea level rise and more-intense storms, both driven by climate change, threaten coastal communities around the globe. In this engineering project, your students will build a model coastline and design a seawall to protect houses from waves as the sea level rises. Remote learning adaptation: This lesson plan can be conducted remotely. Materials can be distributed for each student to work independently at home on the challenge and report back. Alternatively, students can design a barrier (draw… Read more

NGSS Performance Expectations:

MS-ESS3-2. Analyze and interpret data on natural hazards to forecast future catastrophic events and inform the development of technologies to mitigate their effects.
MS-ETS1-1. Define the criteria and constraints of a design problem with sufficient precision to ensure a successful solution, taking into account relevant scientific principles and potential impacts on people and the natural environment that may limit possible solutions.

Push Harder — Newton's Second Law

Lesson Plan Grade: 6th-8th

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Don't just teach your students about Newton's laws of motion using diagrams in a textbook—try something hands-on! In this project, students will build their own cars using craft materials and explore the relationship between force, mass, and acceleration. Students can graph data and make observations in real-time using a mobile phone and a sensor app or use a low-tech approach with a meter stick and stopwatch. Read more

NGSS Performance Expectations:

MS-PS2-2. Plan an investigation to provide evidence that the change in an object’s motion depends on the sum of the forces on the object and the mass of the object.

Recycling Greywater: Can Plants Tolerate It?

Science Fair Project Idea

Scientific Method

One way to conserve water is to find safe ways to use it more than once. Here is a project to test whether greywater (water that has been used for washing or bathing) can be used for watering ornamental plants. Read more

Renewable Energy Resources

Science Fair Project Idea

Scientific Method

Coal, gas, and oil are energy resources that are not renewable, meaning that once we use up the world's supply of these natural resources there will not be any left. There is a lot of debate about how long these resources will last. One way to ensure that we will not find ourselves in an energy crisis is to develop energy resources that are renewable. Renewable energy is a resource that cannot be used up. Investigate the many uses of renewable energy: solar energy, wind energy,… Read more

Respiration and Gills: What Factors Affect Respiration in an Aquatic Environment?

Science Fair Project Idea

Scientific Method

During metabolism, organisms experience physical and chemical changes. All animals need some way to exchange chemical waste generated during metabolism for fresh nutrients. One way that these metabolic chemicals are exchanged is during respiration, the process by which used carbon dioxide gas is exchanged with fresh oxygen and circulated throughout the body. How do organisms living underwater respirate? They use gills, which filter oxygen from the water and pass the oxygen into the… Read more

Ring of Fire 2: What Earthquakes Tell Us About Plate Tectonics

Science Fair Project Idea

Scientific Method

Today it is widely accepted that the Earth's crust consists of a series of huge plates that slowly move. The low parts of the plates are beneath the world's oceans, and the high parts of the plates are landmasses. New plate material is generated at deep sea ocean ridges in a process called sea-floor spreading. Material from plates is also recycled at trenches, where dense, oceanic crust dives back (subducts) underneath an adjacent plate towards the upper mantle. Figure 1 shows a map of the… Read more

Rocket Catcher Challenge for Grades 6-8

Lesson Plan Grade: 6th-8th

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In this fun engineering lesson plan, your students will build a rocket-catching device to help a falling rocket land vertically without crashing, using simple and readily-available materials. Elementary and high school versions of this lesson plan are also available. This lesson was part of the 2025 Science Buddies Engineering Challenge. Read more

NGSS Performance Expectations:

MS-ETS1-2. Evaluate competing design solutions using a systematic process to determine how well they meet the criteria and constraints of the problem.

Rooftop Gardens: Are They a Cool Idea?

Science Fair Project Idea

Scientific Method

Would you like some sky vegetables for dinner? How about some fresh-cut roof flowers to put in vases in your house? Around the world, rooftops are being transformed into living green expanses. Besides beauty, rooftop gardens have a number of advantages, including growing food and taking carbon dioxide out of the air while releasing breathable oxygen. But can rooftop gardens also keep your house cooler and lower your energy bill? Try this science fair project to find out. Read more

Sixth Grade Projects, Lessons, Activities (1,096 results)

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