This document provides a simplified version of an investigation that uses quadrats to compare habitats in your schoolyard. Depending on your focus, the activity can be adapted to compare the diversity or amount of ground insects, invertebrates or plants in two areas. Students use the Next Generation Science Standards’ Planning and Carrying Out Investigations practice and the Cause and Effect and/or Stability and Change crosscutting concepts to build understanding of the needs of animals, differences in ecosystems and/or change in ecosystems.

This is a mapping activity that uses the student’s schoolyard to investigate how rain/stormwater interacts with different surfaces and where stormwater problems may occur. Students use Next Generation Science Standards’ Science and Engineering Practices in a near-by, relevant place.

This resource was created by Sharla Hanzlik, in collaboration with Dawn DeTurk, Hannah Blomstedt, and Julie Albrecht, as part of ESU2's Integrating the Arts project. This project is a four year initiative focused on integrating arts into the core curriculum through teacher education, practice, and coaching.

This resource was created by James Parks, in collaboration with Dawn DeTurk, Hannah Blomstedt, and Julie Albrecht, as part of ESU2's Integrating the Arts project. This project is a four year initiative focused on integrating arts into the core curriculum through teacher education, practice, and coaching.

Lesson plan to explore how snow crystals form, atmospheric conditions that influence crystal morphology. Makes connections crystals, snow density and water content

This lesson from Common Thread Farms is geared for elementary ages, grades 1-4. It introduces students to erosion and then challenges them to implement a design that will mitigate erosion on a model dirt mountain.

An introduction to our solar system the planets, our Sun and Moon. To begin, students learn about the history and engineering of space travel. They make simple rockets to acquire a basic understanding Newton's third law of motion. They explore energy transfer concepts and use renewable solar energy for cooking. They see how engineers design tools, equipment and spacecraft to go where it is too far and too dangerous for humans. They explore the Earth's water cycle, and gravity as applied to orbiting bodies. They learn the steps of the design process as they create their own models of planetary rovers made of edible parts. Students conduct experiments to examine soil for signs of life, and explore orbit transfers. While studying about the International Space Station, they investigate the realities of living in space. Activities explore low gravity on human muscles, eating in microgravity, and satellite tracking. Finally, students learn about the context of our solar system the universe as they learn about the Hubble Space Telescope, celestial navigation and spectroscopy.

This video segment, adapted from ZOOM, explores how sound waves travel differently through solids than through air, in this case, a metal clothes hanger.

Spat, What's That? is a lesson on intertidal organism life cycles which explores how different life cycle stages are vulnerable to stressors like predation, ocean acidification, and habitat loss.

In this middle school life sciences unit, students investigate how sensory systems play a role in behavior of plants and animals. Students first solve the mystery of why kudos are dying unexpectedly in the Limpopo Savana. They then expand their investigations to look into how plants communicate or adapt to meet there survival needs. The model they continue to develop helps students understand the function of many structures in plants and how those structures helps the plants survive and reproduce. The end of the unit naturally motivates a new question to pursue in future units, “How do sensory systems play a role in the behavior of animals?"

In this middle school life sciences unit, students investigate how sensory systems play a role in behavior of plants and animals. Students first solve the mystery of why kudos are dying unexpectedly in the Limpopo Savana. They then expand their investigations to look into how plants communicate or adapt to meet there survival needs. The model they continue to develop helps students understand the function of many structures in plants and how those structures helps the plants survive and reproduce. The end of the unit naturally motivates a new question to pursue in future units, “How do sensory systems play a role in the behavior of animals?"

This is a template for Remixing Storylines at all grade levels. Each Storyline will replace this with an abstract of the Unit.

Watch shadows during the course of the day to explore the influence of the Sun’s position in the sky on them, as well as how they change over the seasons. During the next season, repeat the experiment and note the changes from the previous season. Repeat over a period of one year for each season.

This resource was created by Jenny Bauer, in collaboration with Dawn DeTurk, Hannah Blomstedt, and Julie Albrecht, as part of ESU2's Integrating the Arts project. This project is a four year initiative focused on integrating arts into the core curriculum through teacher education, practice, and coaching.

The lesson will begin by students accessing their prior knowledge of the anatomical similarities and differences among modern and fossil organisms by creating a Venn diagram with a partner, which will compare and contrast two organisms. Next, students will complete the online modules found at "What did T. rex Taste Like?" from the University of California Museum of Paleontology, which will explain how a cladogram diagram can be used to show lines of lineage and evolutionary relationships. Students will use a cladogram to infer how a T. rex is related to modern organisms. Lastly, students will construct a written explanation to describe the anatomical similarities and differences between the T. rex and modern organisms based on evidence from the cladograms in a claim-evidence-reasoning format. This lesson results from a collaboration between the Alabama State Department of Education and ASTA.

The first video in series 5 Telecommunications. This introduction to telecommunications covers the foundations we need to know.

We look at the basics of electricity, as well as analog and digital signals.

Links from video:
-http://youtu.be/zYS9kdS56l8
-http://www.freemosquitoringtones.org/

This resource was created by Tessa Avery and Chris Swalley, in collaboration with Dawn DeTurk, Hannah Blomstedt, and Julie Albrecht, as part of ESU2's Integrating the Arts project. This project is a four year initiative focused on integrating arts into the core curriculum through teacher education, practice, and coaching.

Description
Overview: Area: Energy
There is a single quantity called energy is due to the remarkable fact that a system's total energy is conserved. Regardless of the quantities of energy transferred between subsystems and stored in various ways within the system, the total energy of a system changes only by the amount of energy transferred into and out of the system.

Description
Overview: Area: Plants and Animals
A central feature of life is that organisms grow, reproduce, and die. They have characteristic structures (anatomy and morphology), functions (molecular-scale processes to organism-level physiology), and behaviors (neurobiology and, for some animal species, psychology). Organisms and their parts are made of cells, which are the structural units of life and which themselves have molecular substructures that support their functioning. Organisms range in composition from a single cell (unicellular microorganisms) to multicellular organisms, in which different groups of large numbers of cells work together to form systems.

For this unit plan, see the old unit calendar (link on left sidebar, click ALT5 tab at the bottom).  Once we update this unit to the new Doc template, we will post it here. This is now unit 5, but it used to be unit 6 (we will update file and folder numbering as we continue to revise the units). Thanks for your patience as we work hard this year to update all of the materials to the new unit template and unit/standards arrangements.