This unit on metabolic reactions in the human body starts out with students exploring a real case study of a middle-school girl named M’Kenna, who reported some alarming symptoms to her doctor.

Students investigate data specific to M’Kenna’s case in the form of doctor’s notes, endoscopy images and reports, growth charts, and micrographs. They also draw from their results from laboratory experiments on the chemical changes involving the processing of food and from digital interactives to explore how food is transported, transformed, stored, and used across different body systems in all people.

Students figure out that they can trace all food back to plants, including processed and synthetic food. They obtain and communicate information to explain how matter gets from living things that have died back into the system through processes done by decomposers. Students finally explain that the pieces of their food are constantly recycled between living and nonliving parts of a system.

How does changing an ecosystem affect what lives there? This unit on ecosystem dynamics and biodiversity begins with students reading headlines that claim that the future of orangutans is in peril and that the purchasing of chocolate may be the cause. Students then examine the ingredients in popular chocolate candies and learn that one of these ingredients--palm oil--is grown on farms near the rainforest where orangutans live. This prompts students to develop initial models to explain how buying candy could impact orangutans.

This unit is part of the OpenSciEd core instructional materials for middle school.

This lesson unit is intended to help students judge the accuracy of two different approximations to a particular linear relationship. Students will compare two linear functions as approximations to the relationship between Celsius and Fahrenheit temperature and consider under what circumstances each of the approximations may be reasonable.

http://map.mathshell.org/download.php?fileid=1629

Coders use a variety of blocks and sprites to create their own interactive diorama on outer space. The purpose of this project is to continue applying understanding from previous projects.

This is a lesson plan for 7th and 8th Grade Religion class using the 7 Step Directions Tool

This is a 7th grade ELA  lesson plan which could be used at the end of a novel study of RJ Palacio's  Wonder.  

Oh, no! I’ve dropped my phone! Most of us have experienced the panic of watching our phones slip out of our hands and fall to the floor. We’ve experienced the relief of picking up an undamaged phone and the frustration of the shattered screen. This common experience anchors learning in the Contact Forces unit as students explore a variety of phenomena to figure out, “Why do things sometimes get damaged when they hit each other?”

Student questions about the factors that result in a shattered cell phone screen lead them to investigate what is really happening to any object during a collision. They make their thinking visible with free-body diagrams, mathematical models, and system models to explain the effects of relative forces, mass, speed, and energy in collisions. Students then use what they have learned about collisions to engineer something that will protect a fragile object from damage in a collision. They investigate which materials to use, gather design input from stakeholders to refine the criteria and constraints, develop micro and macro models of how their solution is working, and optimize their solution based on data from investigations. Finally, students apply what they have learned from the investigation and design to a related design problem.

In this unit, students develop ideas related to how sounds are produced, how they travel through media, and how they affect objects at a distance. Their investigations are motivated by trying to account for a perplexing anchoring phenomenon — a truck is playing loud music in a parking lot and the windows of a building across the parking lot visibly shake in response to the music.

Unit Summary
In this unit, students develop ideas related to how sounds are produced, how they travel through media, and how they affect objects at a distance. Their investigations are motivated by trying to account for a perplexing anchoring phenomenon — a truck is playing loud music in a parking lot and the windows of a building across the parking lot visibly shake in response to the music.
They make observations of sound sources to revisit the K–5 idea that objects vibrate when they make sounds. They figure out that patterns of differences in those vibrations are tied to differences in characteristics of the sounds being made. They gather data on how objects vibrate when making different sounds to characterize how a vibrating object’s motion is tied to the loudness and pitch of the sounds they make. Students also conduct experiments to support the idea that sound needs matter to travel through, and they will use models and simulations to explain how sound travels through matter at the particle level.
This unit builds toward the following NGSS Performance Expectations (PEs) as described in the OpenSciEd Scope & Sequence: MS-PS4-1, MS-PS4-2. The OpenSciEd units are designed for hands-on learning and therefore materials are necessary to teach the unit. These materials can be purchased as science kits or assembled using the kit material list.

This unit launches with a slow-motion video of a speaker as it plays music. Students dissect speakers to explore the inner workings, and engineer homemade cup speakers to manipulate the parts of the speaker. They identify that most speakers have the same parts–a magnet, a coil of wire, and a membrane. Students investigate each of these parts to figure out how they work together in the speaker system.

How are we connected to the patterns we see in the sky and space? Students develop models for the Earth-Sun and Earth-Sun-Moon systems that explain some of the patterns in the sky that they have identified, including seasons, eclipses, and lunar phases. They investigate a series of related phenomena motivated by their questions and ideas for investigations.

This unit is part of the OpenSciEd core instructional materials for middle school.

Why are living things different from one another? This unit on genetics starts out with students noticing and wondering about photos of two cattle, one of whom has significantly more muscle than the other. Students figure out how muscles typically develop as a result of environmental factors such as exercise and diet. Then, they work with cattle pedigrees, including data about chromosomes and proteins, to figure out genetic factors that influence the heavily muscled phenotype and explore selective breeding in cattle.

This unit is part of the OpenSciEd core instructional materials for middle school.

Coders use a variety of blocks and sprites to create their own interactive diorama about animals on a farm. The purpose of this project is to introduce coders to the sound blocks.

This template is meant to be a guide for Nebraska Physical Education Teachers when creating digital online lessons. Headings and/or topics not included in the lesson plan should be marked N/A.

This sample instructional plan incorporates WIDA Key Language Uses to support English Language development in tandem with content instruction.  *Note: Some images may not appear in the "View Resource" format.  To see all images in this instructional plan, click "download" at the bottom of the overview.

Coders will trigger sound blocks to play a musical instrument made out of different sprites. The purpose of this project is to review creating sprites and triggering sound blocks when a sprite is tapped. Another purpose of this project is to also introduce remixing.

This course aims to increase understanding and knowledge of our food and fiber system, giving a starting point for students to explore pathways and occupations related to the agriculture industry, and gain hands-on experience learning basic agricultural practices. This curriculum, designed for eighth-graders, is intended to be student-led and inquiry-based.  Written by Emma Sunderman; Ice Cream in a Bag Lesson Plan by Caleb tenBensel; other activities developed and curated by Nebraska AFNR educators

Students will use a perceived weak material to construct something that is surprisingly strong.
Students can experiment with different shapes and configurations to see what holds the most weight.
The cube size is defined, what each student places within each 4x4 square, is up to them.