Free science lesson plans designed to engage students through hands-on experiments and activities. Chemistry, life sciences, physics, engineering and more, for elementary, middle and high school teachers.
Combine Newton's third law of motion with engineering design in one fun lesson! Your students will learn about equal and opposite reaction forces as they design and build a bumper to protect a toy car during a crash.
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NGSS Performance Expectations:
MS-PS2-1.
Apply Newton's Third Law to design a solution to a problem involving the motion of two colliding objects.
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.
Does human activity impact the environment? If so, how can we measure our impact on the environment? How can we use these measurements to change our behavior? In this project, your students will explore these questions by designing and building an electronic circuit that can measure environmental parameters like water quality or light pollution.
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NGSS Performance Expectations:
MS-ESS3-3. Apply scientific principles to design a method for monitoring and minimizing a human impact on the environment.
What happens when you get food poisoning or the flu? How does our body fight an infection when we get sick? In this lesson, students will build a model of our immune system to find out how our body responds to invading bacteria or viruses that cause diseases and to investigate the role of memory cells.
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NGSS Performance Expectations:
MS-LS1-3. Use argument supported by evidence for how the body is a system of interacting subsystems composed of groups of cells.
Do your students think making things float in mid-air is a magic trick? Show them how you can do it with science! In this lesson plan they will learn about interactions between magnets and figure out how to make them float.
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NGSS Performance Expectations:
3-PS2-3.
Ask questions to determine cause and effect relationships of electric or magnetic interactions between two objects not in contact with each other.
How is it possible that our eyes can see things that are not really there? In this fun lesson plan, your students will explore how our vision works with the help of two short experiments that involve some fascinating optical illusions. Let your students discuss why they see a hole in their hand, or why they see colors that were never there, and let them construct their own explanations.
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NGSS Performance Expectations:
MS-LS1-8.
Gather and synthesize information that sensory receptors respond to stimuli by sending messages to the brain for immediate behavior or storage as memories.
Students explore how force, mass, and acceleration are related in this hands-on lesson plan. By experimenting with pushing a box across the table while varying force and mass and measuring the box's acceleration with Google's Science Journal app, students discover Newton's second law of motion for themselves.
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NGSS Performance Expectations:
HS-PS2-1.
Analyze data to support the claim that Newton's second law of motion describes the mathematical relationship among the net force on a macroscopic object, its mass, and its acceleration.
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. They will make the measurements using a simple colorimetric test and a phone with Google's Science Journal app.
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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.
Explore genetic variation through the world of taste in this problem-solving lesson plan. Working both individually and collaboratively, students figure out what kind of tasters they are, what this means about their own genetics, and how genetic mutations can lead to functional differences. This activity provides a hands-on, personalized opportunity to learn about how genotypes and phenotypes align.
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NGSS Performance Expectations:
MS-LS3-1. Develop and use a model to describe why structural changes to genes (mutations) located on chromosomes may affect proteins and may result in harmful, beneficial, or neutral effects to the structure and function of the organism.
MS-LS3-2. Develop and use a model to describe why asexual reproduction results in offspring with identical genetic information and sexual reproduction results in offspring with genetic variation.
Kindergarten students associate the sun with light and warmth. This lesson helps them expand this knowledge by getting their hands dirty! They will fill cups with soil, water and rocks and place them in the sun and shade for a while. By finding out how they can tell where a cup has been stored, they will learn how the sun affects Earth's surface.
In a follow-up lesson, Create Shade to Protect from the Sun, students figure out how to protect a territory from getting too hot in the sun.
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NGSS Performance Expectations:
K-PS3-1. Make observations to determine the effect of sunlight on Earth's surface.
Do you need a fun, easy way to teach your students about the scientific method? Try this lesson that uses rockets made from nothing but paper, tape, and straws.
An elementary school version of this lesson plan is also available.
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