SC.6.N.1.5

Students will use information related to weather patterns and the climate of Greece to explore weathering and erosion as potential contributing factors to the change in appearance of Pnyx Hill over time. They will then consider how similar factors could impact stone structures at the U.S. Capitol in this integrated lesson plan.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will be introduced to Pnyx Hill in Athens, Greece, a historic political meeting site. They will explore how weathering and erosion have likely changed its appearance over time using scientific and creative thinking with models based on archaeological and historical information. After learning that Pnyx was the site of early democratic meetings, students will conduct a visual and structural comparison to our current Congressional halls in this integrated lesson plan.

Type: Lesson Plan

This is lesson 3 of 3 in the Goldilocks’ Café Just Right unit. This lesson focuses on systematic investigation on getting a cup of coffee to be the “just right” temperature and turbidity level. Students will use both the temperature probe and turbidity sensor and code using ScratchX during their investigation.

Type: Lesson Plan

This is lesson 2 of 3 in the Just Right Goldilocks’ Café unit. This lesson focuses on systematic investigation on getting a cup of coffee to be the “just right” level of turbidity. Students will use turbidity sensors and code using ScratchX during their investigation.

Type: Lesson Plan

This is lesson 1 of 3 in the Just Right Goldilocks’ Café unit. This lesson focuses on systematic investigation on getting a cup of coffee to be the “just right” temperature. Students will use temperature probes and code using ScratchX during their investigation.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will conduct a controlled experiment to determine the effect Florida's limestone has on the pH levels of Florida's water and soil. Students will compare limestone's effect to that of other rocks and minerals found naturally in Florida. At the end of this investigation, students should be able to articulate the effect limestone has on the pH of water in Florida, the importance of this phenomenon, and a basic understanding of the process by which limestone affects pH levels in water.

Type: Lesson Plan

The student will create explanations that fit evidence in science relating to how the human body maintains homeostasis. Students will discover body system interactions and how the organ systems work together to maintain homeostasis.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this Model Eliciting Activity (MEA), students will understand how global patterns affect the temperature of an area by studying the features of an application's virtual creatures called the "Pokemontures." These creatures have the ability to match the temperature of their environment. As students study the Pokemontures' features and calculate their approximate temperature, they will apply concepts linked to the patterns that affect temperature. Students will also review heat transfers and sea/land breezes with the use of this MEA.

Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. MEAs resemble engineering problems and encourage students to create solutions in the form of mathematical and scientific models. Students work in teams to apply their knowledge of science and mathematics to solve an open-ended problem, while considering constraints and tradeoffs. Students integrate their ELA skills into MEAs as they are asked to clearly document their thought process. MEAs follow a problem-based, student centered approach to learning, where students are encouraged to grapple with the problem while the teacher acts as a facilitator. To learn more about MEA’s visit: https://www.cpalms.org/cpalms/mea.aspx

Type: Lesson Plan

The cell theory has had a major impact on modern science, from the development of the theory to the present day. This lesson will examine strategies students can use to deepen their knowledge and understanding of the development of the cell theory.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson is designed to provide a hands on inquiry on Sphere Interactions by investigating the relationship between Surface Albedo and Atmospheric Temperature. In this activity, students will develop an Argument Driven Inquiry (ADI) with the Guiding question: "What is the relationship between the land surface Albedo and Atmospheric Temperature?"

Type: Lesson Plan

A short lesson on ways that scientists develop their understanding of things that they cannot see by developing models based on testing and hypothesis.
Students will collaborate, discuss and develop a way to draw the landscape inside a shoebox that has been sealed using minimal tools. Students will NOT be attempting to say what is in the box but what the layout (landscape) is inside the box.
Students will discover the difficulty that scientists have encountered as they begin the process of answering questions about things that they can not see. Students will learn that not all questions are easily solved and that sometimes only a partial answer is learned until another scientist adds more to the answer.

Type: Lesson Plan

Inquiry based challenge to develop a plan to investigate a large tadpole population growth in the town of Belle Pole. Students analyze preexisting data and make conclusions about the data. Student groups compare their approaches and conclusions with other student groups. A whole group discussion leads students to conclude that results often varied based on methods used to conduct the same investigation. The lesson ends with students writing a self reflection from their student group and whole group discussions.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson introduces the idea of finding volume. Volume in sixth grade math is very "rectangular" (cubes, rectangular prisms) and this lesson brings to light that volume is simply a measure of available space, but can take on many shapes or forms (cylinders for example - graduated cylinders and beakers) in science. Students will be left to design their own data collection and organizing the data that they collect. They will apply the skill of finding volume to using fractional parts of a number (decimals) and finding the product using the volume formula.

Type: Lesson Plan

This Engineering Design Challenge is intended to help students apply the concepts of protecting human life from hazardous weather from SC.6.E.7.8 as they build levees to prevent flooding. It is not intended as an initial introduction to this benchmark.

Type: Lesson Plan

This classification MEA provides students with a science problem in which they must create a dichotomous key and classify given organisms. The main focus of this MEA is the diversity of living organisms, as well as how they are classified.

Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

The NASA BEST Activities Guides is designed to teach students the Engineering Design
Process. These lessons are created to accommodate grades 6-8.

All follow the same set of activities and teach students about humans' endeavor to return to the
Moon. Specifically, how we investigate the Moon remotely, the modes of transportation to and on
the Moon, and how humans will live and work on the Moon.

Type: Lesson Plan

This Engineering Design Challenge is intended to help students apply the concepts of the transfer of potential and kinetic energy from SC.6.P.11.1. It is not intended as an initial introduction to this benchmark.

Type: Lesson Plan

Uncle Henry's Dilemma is a problem solving lesson to determine the global location for the reading of Uncle Henry's will. The students will interpret data sets which include temperature, rainfall, air pollution, travel cost, flight times and health issues to rank five global locations for Uncle Henry's relatives to travel to for the reading of his will. This is an engaging, fun-filled MEA lesson with twists and turns throughout. Students will learn how this procedure of selecting locations can be applied to everyday decisions by the government, a business, a family, or individuals.

Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students manipulate sealed "mystery" boxes and attempt to determine the inner structure of the boxes which contain a moving ball and a fixed barrier or two. The nature and sources of uncertainty inherent in the process of problem-solving are experienced. The uncertainty of the conclusions is reduced by student collaboration. The students are asked to relate this activity to how to learn about "mystery boxes" in nature (interior of the earth, the atom, etc).

Type: Lesson Plan

Students are taken on an imaginary fossil hunt. Following a script read by the teacher, students "find" (remove from envelope) paper "fossils" of some unknown creature, only a few at a time. Each time, they attempt to reconstruct the creature, and each time their interpretation tends to change as new pieces are "found".

Type: Lesson Plan

This Engineering Design Challenge is intended to help students apply the concepts of contact and non-contact forces as they build structures able to withstand the forces of wind and gravity. It is not intended as an initial introduction to this benchmark.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this activity, marbles or other spheres such as steel shot, ball bearings, golf, or wooden balls are used as impactors dropped from a series of heights onto a prepared "lunar surface." Using impactors of different mass dropped from the same height will allow students to study the relationship of mass of the impactor to crater size. Dropping impactors from different heights will allow students to study the relationship of velocity of the impactor to crater size.

Type: Lesson Plan

This fun design/build exercise teaches some simple but profound lessons in collaboration, innovation, hidden assumptions, and creativity that are central to the engineering process.

Type: Lesson Plan

NOAA Scientist, Doug Devries talks about fish survey techniques and technologies.

Download the CPALMS Perspectives video student note taking guide.

Type: Perspectives Video: Expert

The STEMGym - a great way to engage kids.

Download the CPALMS Perspectives video student note taking guide.

Type: Perspectives Video: Teaching Idea

This interactive tutorial explores the evolution of time measurement through the ages, beginning with Stonehenge and ancient calendar systems. It progresses through sun and water clocks, mechanical and quartz-movement clocks, and atomic clocks.

Type: Presentation/Slideshow

In this hands-on and web interactive project, students design and build a bird wing powerful enough to spin them in an office chair when it is flapped. By modifying the shape, size, and/or materials used in their design based on observations of natural and man-made transportation methods, students will learn about thrust, forces, durability, and energy use.

Type: Teaching Idea

These classroom activities will help students understand 4 types of weather processes: wind, running water, plant growth, and freezing water. Students will learn how the processes of weathering and erosion change and move materials that become soil.

Type: Teaching Idea

Use of a discrepant event piques curiosity and provides an excellent metaphor for a problem in science that can be addressed in a scientific way. Water is poured into a "magic" box, and out comes a much larger volume of water (or other liquid).

Type: Teaching Idea

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. Predict the future and get paid for it? This article explores the variety of disciplines that involve dreaming up new ideas for products and technology. From storing data in bacteria to tapping into the geothermal energy between tectonic plates, the article provides an overview of how futurists get "paid to dream."

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. Fossil hunters discovered a new, bird-like dinosaur and they think it looked ridiculous! Paleontologists have found pieces of this dinosaur before, but couldn't put the pieces together until they found these specific bones in North Dakota. They pieced together information from other fossils and finally discovered this silly looking creature.

Type: Text Resource

Students use software to create evolutionary trees by comparing and contrasting physical traits.

This activity demonstrates the complexity of creating evolutionary trees when multiple traits are being analyzed. The use of the software simplifies the analysis without compromising the learning objectives.

Type: Virtual Manipulative