This resource will teach students about the cause and effect of factors that lead to the Agricultural Revolution. Students will learn about BCE/CE timelines with a timeline worksheet. Includes assessment about early humans and the Agricultural Revolution. 

In this activity students will practice ordering food, discussing their meal, and paying for their meal.

Vicki Lombardi's 6th grade students at Santa Rita Elementary in Los Altos School district learn how to build a Spider robot. Read more at: http://lasdilearn.blogspot.com/2013/02/third-graders-building-robots-mission.html. Created by Karl Wendt.

In this course, you will learn the principles of genetics with application to the study of biological function at the level of molecules, cells, and multicellular organisms, including humans. We will cover structure and function of genes, chromosomes, and genomes; biological variation resulting from recombination, mutation, and selection; population genetics; and the use of genetic methods to modify genes and genomes and analyze protein function, gene regulation, and inherited disease.
This course, based on the MIT course 7.03 Genetics taken by enrolled MIT students, was organized as a three-part series on edX by MIT’s Department of Biology (Note: The third part of the course is not available yet). It is self-paced and free as long as you enroll in the Audit Track option, which you can select after creating a free account on edX.

In this course, you will engage in the biology of cells of higher organisms. You will study the structure, function, and biosynthesis of cellular membranes and organelles; cell growth and oncogenic transformation; transport, receptors, and cell signaling; the cytoskeleton, the extracellular matrix, and cell movements; cell division and cell cycle; functions of specialized cell types. This course emphasizes the current molecular knowledge of cell biological processes as well as the genetic, biochemical, and other experimental approaches that resulted in these discoveries.
This course, based on the MIT course 7.06 Cell Biology taken by enrolled MIT students, was organized as a three-part series on edX by MIT’s Department of Biology. It is self-paced and free as long as you enroll in the Audit Track option, which you can select after creating a free account on edX.

Students will play a written version of the game telephone, and will determine what sorts of communication is effective with limited information, if any.  This lesson is part of a media unit curated at our Digital Citizenship website, "Who Am I Online?". 

To pique students’ curiosity and anchor the learning for the unit in the visible and concrete, students start with an experience of observing and analyzing a bath bomb as it fizzes and eventually disappears in the water. Their observations and questions about what is going on drive learning that digs into a series of related phenomena as students iterate and improve their models depicting what happens during chemical reactions. By the end of the unit, students have a firm grasp on how to model simple molecules, know what to look for to determine if chemical reactions have occurred, and apply their knowledge to chemical reactions to show how mass is conserved when atoms are rearranged.

This course is an in-depth adventure through the molecular mechanisms that control the maintenance, expression, and evolution of prokaryotic and eukaryotic genomes. Through lectures and readings of relevant literature, students will explore gene regulation, DNA replication, genetic recombination, transcription, and mRNA translation. The quizzes are designed to build students’ experimental design and data analysis skills.
This course, based on the MIT course 7.28/7.58 Molecular Biology taken by enrolled MIT students, was organized as a three-part series on edX by MIT’s Department of Biology. It is self-paced and free as long as you enroll in the Audit Track option, which you can select after creating a free account on edX.

In this 21-day unit, students are introduced to the anchoring phenomenon—a flameless heater in a Meal, Ready-to-Eat (MRE) that provides hot food to people by just adding water. Students explore the inside of an MRE flameless heater, then do investigations to collect evidence to support the idea that this heater and another type of flameless heater are undergoing chemical reactions as they get warm. Students have an opportunity to reflect on the engineering design process, defining stakeholders, and refining the criteria and constraints for the design solution.

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

Unit Summary
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. Her symptoms included an inability to concentrate, headaches, stomach issues when she eats, and a lack of energy for everyday activities and sports that she used to play regularly. She also reported noticeable weight loss over the past few months, in spite of consuming what appeared to be a healthy diet. Her case sparks questions and ideas for investigations around trying to figure out which pathways and processes in M’Kenna’s body might be functioning differently than a healthy system and why. 
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. Through this work of figuring out what is causing M’Kenna’s symptoms, the class discovers what happens to the food we eat after it enters our bodies and how M’Kenna’s different symptoms are connected.
This unit builds towards the following NGSS Performance Expectations (PEs) as described in the OpenSciEd Scope & Sequence: MS-LS1-3, MS-LS1-5, MS-LS1-7, MS-PS1-1, MS-PS1-2. 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.
Additional Unit InformationNext Generation Science Standards Addressed in this UnitPerformance ExpectationsThis unit builds toward the following NGSS Performance Expectations (PEs):

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.

This unit on matter cycling and photosynthesis begins with students reflecting on what they ate for breakfast. Students are prompted to consider where their food comes from and consider which breakfast items might be from plants. Then students taste a common breakfast food, maple syrup, and see that according to the label, it is 100% from a tree.

Based on the preceding unit, students argue that they know what happens to the sugar in syrup when they consume it. It is absorbed into the circulatory system and transported to cells in their body to be used for fuel. Students explore what else is in food and discover that food from plants, like bananas, peanut butter, beans, avocado, and almonds, not only have sugars but proteins and fats as well. This discovery leads them to wonder how plants are getting these food molecules and where a plant’s food comes from.

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.

For the 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge, artist Stephanie Syjuco created an expansive shop of souvenirs produced in a monochrome palette: the memorable orange hue of the Golden Gate Bridge. Working with the same paint used to keep the bridge looking fresh, Syjuco's installation features all things reddish-orange: teacups, jewelry, postcards and tchotchkes that are surprisingly not for sale, but presented together as a conceptual art installation. This video offers a behind-the-scenes look at Syjuco’s collaborative process.

This task addresses many standards regarding the description and analysis of bivariate quantitative data, including regression and correlation. Students should recognize that the pattern shown is one of a strong, positive, linear association, and thus a correlation coefficient value near +1 is plausible. Students should also be able to interpret the slope of the least-squares line as an estimated increase in y per unit change in x (and thus for a 3 unit increase in x, students should expect an estimated increase in y that equals 3 times the model's slope value).