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.
Students experience the weather every day: they feel cold spring mornings and warm summer afternoons. This hands-on lesson helps them quantify how hot or cold it is by using a thermometer they will make themselves! Based on their gathered data and observations, students can infer patterns about how temperature varies by location and time.
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NGSS Performance Expectations:
3-ESS2-1.
Represent data in tables and graphical displays to describe typical weather conditions expected during a particular season.
3-ESS2-2.
Obtain and combine information to describe climates in different regions of the world.
Help the budding meteorologists in your classroom learn how to measure wind speed by building their own anemometers (wind speed meters) with paper cups and straws. Then do a simple experiment in which students change the "wind" speed using a fan and measure how fast their anemometer spins.
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NGSS Performance Expectations:
3-ESS2-1. Represent data in tables and graphical displays to describe typical weather conditions expected during a particular season.
In this fun, hands-on lesson, students explore their heartbeats and learn about blood circulation. They will make their own stethoscopes, use them to measure their heart rates and investigate how heart rate is affected by exercise.
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NGSS Performance Expectations:
4-LS1-1.
Construct an argument that plants and animals have internal and external structures that function to support survival, growth, behavior, and reproduction.
Can genetic or environmental factors affect our chances of getting a certain disease? In this activity, your students will model how an existing predisposition can impact the probability of developing an autoimmune disease using dice and M&M's® candy!
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NGSS Performance Expectations:
HS-LS3-3. Apply concepts of statistics and probability to explain the variation and distribution of expressed traits in a population.
Why is it important to eat healthy and exercise? In this hands-on lesson plan, students will build a simple model to explore the effects of plaque buildup in arteries. The model allows them to demonstrate what happens to blood flow when heart disease narrows a person's arteries.
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NGSS Performance Expectations:
4-LS1-1. Construct an argument that plants and animals have internal and external structures that function to support survival, growth, behavior, and reproduction.
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.
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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.
Why is the ocean vital to our planet? There are many reasons, but one important one is that the ocean is a major player in regulating our weather and climate through currents. In this lesson plan, your students will model ocean currents with cups, water, and food coloring, and explore how temperature and density differences set deep ocean waters in motion to create a global oceanic circulation system.
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NGSS Performance Expectations:
MS-ESS2-6. Develop and use a model to describe how unequal heating and rotation of the Earth cause patterns of atmospheric and oceanic circulation that determine regional climates.
Your students have probably walked or ridden over a bridge at some point in their lives. In this engineering activity they will design and make bridges out of folded pieces of paper, and test how much weight they can hold with pennies. How does the shape of a bridge affect its strength? Let your students explore and find out with this lesson!
This lesson can be expanded to a second lesson looking at how the material a bridge is made out of can change its strength; see second lesson for details.
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NGSS Performance Expectations:
K-2-ETS1-2. Develop a simple sketch, drawing, or physical model to illustrate how the shape of an object helps it function as needed to solve a given problem.
K-2-ETS1-3. Analyze data from tests of two objects designed to solve the same problem to compare the strengths and weaknesses of how each performs.
Steel, concrete, wood—real bridges are built from many different materials. How do engineers decide which materials to use? In this activity, your students will expand on the previous paper bridges lesson plan by building and testing bridges made from different materials.
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NGSS Performance Expectations:
2-PS1-2. Analyze data obtained from testing different materials to determine which materials have the properties that are best suited for an intended purpose.
What goes up, must come down in this thrill-seeking lesson plan! How much energy does a roller coaster car need to make it through a loop? In this lesson your students will learn about kinetic and potential energy as they build their own roller coasters from simple classroom materials.
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NGSS Performance Expectations:
MS-PS3-2.
Develop a model to describe that when the arrangement of objects interacting at a distance changes, different amounts of potential energy are stored in the system.
MS-PS3-5.
Construct, use, and present arguments to support the claim that when the kinetic energy of an object changes, energy is transferred to or from the object.
