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Sixth Grade Lesson Plans (134 results)

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Sustainability: Reduce Your Environmental Impact!
Lesson Plan Grade: 6th-8th
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4 reviews
Global warming, pollution, and deforestation are just a few examples of how human actions affect our planet. How can we reduce our impact on the environment? In this lesson, students will find out by using an online tool called Your Plan, Your Planet. Based on their findings, students will come up with their own action plans aimed at reducing their personal ecological footprint and assess its effectiveness after implementation. Read more
NGSS Performance Expectations:
  • MS-ESS3-3. Apply scientific principles to design a method for monitoring and minimizing a human impact on the environment.
2022 Paper Ball Run Challenge for Grades 6-8
Lesson Plan Grade: 6th-8th
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2 reviews
Add a twist to a classic activity with this fun lesson plan. Your students will design and build a ball run for a ping pong ball using nothing but paper and tape. Their goal is to make the slowest ball run possible. How long can they make it take for the ball to go through their ball run? The 2022 competition is over, but you can see what students built and learn about the winners on the 2022 Engineering Challenge summary page. Teachers, note that elementary and high school … 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.
Ball Launcher Challenge
Lesson Plan Grade: 6th-8th
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2 reviews
Add a twist to a traditional "build a catapult" engineering project with this fun lesson plan based on the 2018 Engineering Challenge. Your students must build a device to launch a ball as far as possible—but they also have to build another device to catch it! With detailed rules and guidelines for a class-wide competition, this lesson is a great way to teach your students about the engineering design process. 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.
  • MS-ETS1-4. Develop a model to generate data for iterative testing and modification of a proposed object, tool, or process such that an optimal design can be achieved.
Block That Noise!
Lesson Plan Grade: 6th-8th
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4 reviews
Do your students ever wish they could block out an annoying noise or music they don't like? In this fun lesson plan, they will design sound-insulating containers and measure how well they work using a mobile phone and a sensor app. Read more
NGSS Performance Expectations:
  • MS-PS4-2. Develop and use a model to describe that waves are reflected, absorbed, or transmitted through various materials.
  • MS-ETS1-2. Evaluate competing design solutions using a systematic process to determine how well they meet the criteria and constraints of the problem.
Get Energized with Cellular Respiration!
Lesson Plan Grade: 6th-8th
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8 reviews
In this fun lesson plan, students will measure how the amount of carbon dioxide in their exhaled breath changes with exercise levels. Carbon dioxide is a product of cellular respiration, so the lesson highlights how breathing is connected to cellular respiration and energy production in our body. Students will make the measurements using a simple colorimetric reaction that can easily be assessed visually. Read more
NGSS Performance Expectations:
  • MS-LS1-7. Develop a model to describe how food is rearranged through chemical reactions forming new molecules that support growth and/or release energy as this matter moves through an organism.
Introduction to Arduino
Lesson Plan Grade: 6th-12th
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10 reviews
This lesson plan will introduce your students to physical computing: the process of building circuits and programming a microcontroller (an Arduino UNO®) to interact with them. The lesson is broken into seven activities that will walk your students through the basics of setting up the Arduino and interacting with circuit parts like LEDs, buttons, and resistors. This introductory material will help prepare your students for more advanced Arduino projects. Read more
Modeling Gravity
Lesson Plan Grade: 6th-8th
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6 reviews
Why can we feel gravity pull us down towards the Earth, but not sideways towards other big objects like buildings? Why do the planets in our solar system orbit the sun instead of flying off into space? In this lesson plan your students will develop a model for gravity and use it to explore answers to these questions. Read more
NGSS Performance Expectations:
  • MS-PS2-4. Construct and present arguments using evidence to support the claim that gravitational interactions are attractive and depend on the masses of interacting objects.
  • MS-ESS1-2. Develop and use a model to describe the role of gravity in the motions within galaxies and the solar system.
Ping Pong Pickup Challenge for Grades 6-8
Lesson Plan Grade: 6th-8th
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19 reviews
In this fun engineering lesson plan, your students will build devices from paper, tape, string, and paper clips to pick up and retrieve a ping pong ball. The challenge is to pick up the ball from as far away as possible! Elementary school and high school versions of this lesson plan are also available. The 2023 competition is over, but you can see what students built and learn about the winners on the 2023 Engineering Challenge summary page. 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.
Rapid Trash Assessment
Lesson Plan Grade: 4th-12th
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By conducting their own survey of an outdoor environment, students will examine a method for assessing litter, identify how humans impact the environment, and design solutions for preventing marine debris. Read more
NGSS Performance Expectations:
  • 4-ESS2-2. Analyze and interpret data from maps to describe patterns of Earth's features.
  • 5-ESS3-1. Obtain and combine information about ways individual communities use science ideas to protect the Earth's resources and environment.
  • MS-ESS3-3. Apply scientific principles to design a method for monitoring and minimizing a human impact on the environment.
  • HS-LS2-7. Design, evaluate, and refine a solution for reducing the impacts of human activities on the environment and biodiversity.
Turn Milk into Plastic!
Lesson Plan Grade: 6th-8th
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33 reviews
Teach your students how to make plastic out of milk in this hands-on lesson plan! You will conduct a simple milk-transforming experiment to explore how plastics can be derived from a natural resource such as milk. Students will perform their own experiments and can even create a product from their resulting organic casein polymer. Read more
NGSS Performance Expectations:
  • MS-PS1-2. Analyze and interpret data on the properties of substances before and after the substances interact to determine if a chemical reaction has occurred.
  • MS-PS1-3. Gather and make sense of information to describe that synthetic materials come from natural resources and impact society.
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