This is a third-grade math lesson on the topic of tornadoes and natural disasters. Students will enter data from an internet search on the number of tornadoes occurring in each state into a spreadsheet. Students will analyze and determine which states are the most active in tornado occurrences and create bar graphs and a scaled picture graph from the data collected. This unit was created as part of the ALEX Interdisciplinary Resource Development Summit.

This module was authored by the Auburn University NanoBio MSP Fellows Will Haynes, Hannah Taylor, and Catherine Wolfe under the review and guidance of Drs. Virginia Davis and Chris Schnittka. This lesson is about compounds, mixtures, and solutions and relating those to synthetics, with the focus being plastics. This lesson focuses on how plastics are made and the negative impacts of some plastics. It goes on to explain how the addition of nanoscale particles can be the solution for these problems. This lesson includes a lecture and a hands-on activity where the students are creating plastic from the milk protein casein.

Young students may think the sun is the biggest and brightest star in the universe since it appears to be the brightest star in the sky when viewed from Earth. In this lesson, students will use flashlights to construct a model of the difference in stars' appearances due to their distance from Earth. Then they will use the Internet to research the sun and stars to create a poster, picture book, or digital presentation to explain that the sun is not the biggest or brightest star--it only appears that way due to its proximity to Earth. This lesson results from a collaboration between the Alabama State Department of Education and ASTA.

Students will begin this lesson by ordering the events of their morning using relative and absolute dating techniques. Students will also write a personal definition of the terms absolute age and relative age. Next, students will work with collaborative groups to order events in Earth's geologic history by relative age, then order those same events by absolute age in a scaled model timeline. Lastly, students will use the time-scale model created with their group members to analyze events in Earth's geologic history. This lesson results from a collaboration between the Alabama State Department of Education and ASTA.

The student engineers will design and build a new water filtration system for an overpopulated, poverty-stricken community that is drinking contaminated water from wells, rivers or springs not treated by municipal water systems. Students will be involved in planning, designing, building, collaborating, calculating, budgeting, analyzing, and reflecting on a real-world design challenge. This lesson was created as part of the 2016 NASA STEM Standards of Practice Project, a collaboration between the Alabama State Department of Education and NASA Marshall Space Flight Center.

Students will construct 3-dimensional representations of each known element of the periodic table using cereal-sized boxes as their mediums. By creating these models, students will gain an in-depth understanding of their chosen element's discovery, history, unique properties, and place on the Modern Periodic Table. Students will also be able to identify and describe basic periodic trends. This lesson was created as part of the 2016 NASA STEM Standards of Practice Project, a collaboration between the Alabama State Department of Education and NASA Marshall Space Flight Center.

In this interdisciplinary lesson about atmospheric heating, students investigate the three transfers of heat: radiation, conduction and convection. This lesson results from a collaboration between the Alabama State Department of Education and ASTA.

In this lesson, which was adapted from Gravity and Falling Objects, students predict what will happen when different objects are dropped at the same time from the same height, and then test their predictions. Next, they will observe objects of different masses being dropped and leaking cups being dropped into a bucket. The activities in this lesson will demonstrate that all objects fall at the same rate, regardless of their mass. Finally, students will predict what will happen when two balls of the same mass but different volumes--and then two balls of different masses but the same volume--are dropped at the same time from the same height. This lesson results from a collaboration between the Alabama State Department of Education and ASTA.

When we hear the words Civil Rights Movement, we have visions of Dr. Martin Luther King and a few others. Through pictures, students will identify ordinary leaders in the crowd. Students will have the opportunity to analyze those pictures by doing a picture walk. Students will learn more about some of the people in the crowd, and how they made a difference in our beloved community. This lesson was created in partnership with the Alabama Department of Archives and History.

Students will analyze a primary document and read a secondary source about the Marquis de Lafayette's Grand Tour of the United States in 1825. The Marquis and his entourage toured lower Alabama for a few days in April. Students will create an annotated timeline detailing his days and the events that occurred in Alabama as the country prepared to celebrate America's 50th birthday. The timeline will include dates and descriptions of the people, places, and events in informative summaries as well as appropriate illustrations. This lesson was created in partnership with the Alabama Department of Archives and History.

A brainstorming activity and class discussion will begin the lesson and provide the background knowledge students have regarding zoos and how the animals in zoos impact our environment. Students will select an animal for further research using an online survey created by the teacher to determine their research group. Afterward, students will view an informational video pertaining to the origin and purpose of zoos, and complete an exit slip stating new learning that has been added to their background knowledge. This lesson was created as part of the ALEX Interdisciplinary Resource Development Summit.

The lesson will begin by reviewing the groups and animals assigned to each group. Students will begin working in their Zoo Booklets by discussing vocabulary that is associated with their animal. Students will use various types of text and other resources to find the information needed to learn more about their animal. Students will work cooperatively in groups to complete their animal research and complete their final project. This lesson was created as part of the ALEX Interdisciplinary Resource Development Summit.

This lesson may be taught as part of the Unit Plan - Solutions to Lessen Human Impact on the Environment . In this lesson, the solutions to lessen the human impact on the environment will be explored. Students will communicate their plan during journal writing by producing an informational writing piece that uses the conventions of Standard English such as capitalization and punctuation. At the end of the lesson, the students will peer edit their writing using the provided writing anchor chart. This unit was created as part of the ALEX Interdisciplinary Resource Development Summit.

This lesson may be taught as part of the Unit Plan - Solutions to Lessen Human Impact on the Environment . This lesson will culminate the lessons on recycling that have been previously taught. Students will work collaboratively in groups to discuss texts and factual information they have learned from previous lessons taught on recycling. The students will make a poster or brochure to share with the class. The shared portion of the lesson will be videoed so that the students can share with parents, other family members, and the local city council members. This unit was created as part of the ALEX Interdisciplinary Resource Development.

In this lesson, students will explore the invention of the steamboat and the role it played in the economy, transportation, and culture of the lifestyles of plantation owners, yeoman farmers, slaves, and townspeople of early nineteenth-century Alabama. Students will compare and contrast steamboats, wagons, and stagecoaches as different modes of transportation for goods as well as people. Students will create a steamboat advertisement to illustrate the importance of the invention of the steamboat in Alabama. This lesson was created in partnership with the Alabama Department of Archives and History.

Students will work in small groups to conduct a hands-on investigation to see what materials allow light to pass through. They will label materials as opaque, translucent, and transparent. They will operate solar panels and place different materials between the sun and the panel. The panel is attached to a fan which will stop, continue spinning or slow down depending on the material. Learners will record their findings in chart form. This lesson was created as part of the 2016 NASA STEM Standards of Practice Project, a collaboration between the Alabama State Department of Education and NASA Marshall Space Flight Center.

The students will make a drawing that lights up, while investigating circuits using copper tape, batteries and LEDs. They will use templates for the first circuit and then explore by adding more LEDs and copper tape traces. This lesson results from a collaboration between the Alabama State Department of Education and ASTA.

In this lesson, students will investigate objects' appearance in varying levels of light to help them construct an explanation that objects can only be seen when light is available to illuminate them. Students will discuss why objects look different in a dark room and graph their preferences for sleeping with a light on or off. Then, they will investigate how an object's appearance changes in different lighting conditions in small group centers. Finally, they will model the moon's path around the sun to see how light from the sun causes the moon's appearance to change as it orbits Earth. At the conclusion of the lesson, students will use their experiences as evidence to explain that light is essential for sight. This lesson results from the ALEX Resource Gap Project.

Students will collect data on an investigation where two or more substances are mixed together. Students will analyze the investigation to decide the type of change, chemical or physical, that occurred during the investigation. Students will use their observations from the investigation to create a short movie where they will describe the data they used to determine the type of change that occurred during their investigation. This lesson will work best for classrooms equipped with classroom tablets or schools that allow students to bring their own device. This lesson results from a collaboration between the Alabama State Department of Education and ASTA.

In this lesson, students are asked to provide a written description of both an exponential function and its inverse. They are then introduced to the logarithmic function and will practice writing exponential functions as logarithms and logarithms as exponential functions. Students will evaluate logarithmic expressions and will solve logarithmic equations. This lesson results from the ALEX Gap Resource Project.