Updating search results...

NGSS

OER Commons has worked with some of the most trusted and innovative OER science educators out there to bring you resources aligned and evaluated against the Next Generation Science Standards.

2240 affiliated resources

Search Resources

View
Selected filters:
7.5 Ecosystem Dynamics
Unrestricted Use
CC BY
Rating
0.0 stars

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.

Subject:
Applied Science
Atmospheric Science
Career and Technical Education
Engineering
Environmental Studies
Life Science
Physical Science
Material Type:
Lesson
Lesson Plan
Unit of Study
Author:
OpenSciEd
Date Added:
02/11/2022
8.1 Contact Forces
Unrestricted Use
CC BY
Rating
0.0 stars

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.

Subject:
Applied Science
Physical Science
Material Type:
Activity/Lab
Lesson
Lesson Plan
Module
Unit of Study
Provider:
OpenSciEd
Date Added:
10/21/2020
8.2 Sound Waves
Unrestricted Use
CC BY
Rating
0.0 stars

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.

Subject:
Physical Science
Material Type:
Lesson
Lesson Plan
Unit of Study
Provider:
OpenSciEd
Author:
OpenSciEd
Date Added:
08/02/2021
8.3 Forces at a Distance
Unrestricted Use
CC BY
Rating
0.0 stars

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.

Subject:
Physical Science
Material Type:
Lesson
Lesson Plan
Unit of Study
Provider:
OpenSciEd
Author:
OpenSciEd
Date Added:
08/02/2021
8.3 Forces at a Distance - Unit Overview
Unrestricted Use
CC BY
Rating
0.0 stars

This unit launches with a slow-motion video of a speaker as it plays music. In the previous unit, students developed a model of sound. This unit allows students to investigate the cause of a speaker’s vibration in addition to the effect.

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. Along the way, students manipulate the components (e.g. changing the strength of the magnet, number of coils, direction of current) to see how this technology can be modified and applied to a variety of contexts, like MagLev trains, junkyard magnets, and electric motors.

Subject:
Physical Science
Physics
Material Type:
Unit of Study
Provider:
OpenSciEd
Date Added:
02/26/2020
8.4 Earth in Space
Unrestricted Use
CC BY
Rating
0.0 stars

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.

Subject:
Applied Science
Physical Science
Material Type:
Lesson
Lesson Plan
Unit of Study
Author:
OpenSciEd
Date Added:
02/11/2022
8.5 Genetics
Unrestricted Use
CC BY
Rating
0.0 stars

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.

Subject:
Life Science
Material Type:
Lesson
Lesson Plan
Unit of Study
Author:
OpenSciEd
Date Added:
02/11/2022
AM I on the Radio?
Read the Fine Print
Educational Use
Rating
0.0 stars

Student groups create working radios by soldering circuit components supplied from AM radio kits. By carrying out this activity in conjunction with its associated lesson concerning circuits and how AM radios work, students are able to identify each circuit component they are soldering, as well as how their placement causes the radio to work. Besides reinforcing lesson concepts, students also learn how to solder, which is an activity that many engineers perform regularly giving students a chance to be able to engage in a real-life engineering activity.

Subject:
Applied Science
Career and Technical Education
Electronic Technology
Engineering
Material Type:
Activity/Lab
Provider:
TeachEngineering
Provider Set:
TeachEngineering
Author:
Brandon Jones
Emily Spataro
Lara Oliver
Lisa Burton
Date Added:
09/18/2014
Above-Ground Storage Tank Design Project
Read the Fine Print
Educational Use
Rating
0.0 stars

At this point in the unit, students have learned about Pascal's law, Archimedes' principle, Bernoulli's principle, and why above-ground storage tanks are of major concern in the Houston Ship Channel and other coastal areas. In this culminating activity, student groups act as engineering design teams to derive equations to determine the stability of specific above-ground storage tank scenarios with given tank specifications and liquid contents. With their floatation analyses completed and the stability determined, students analyze the tank stability in specific storm conditions. Then, teams are challenged to come up with improved storage tank designs to make them less vulnerable to uplift, displacement and buckling in storm conditions. Teams present their analyses and design ideas in short class presentations.

Subject:
Applied Science
Engineering
Physical Science
Physics
Material Type:
Activity/Lab
Provider:
TeachEngineering
Provider Set:
TeachEngineering
Author:
Emily Sappington
Mila Taylor
Date Added:
09/18/2014
Above-Ground Storage Tanks in the Houston Ship Channel
Read the Fine Print
Educational Use
Rating
0.0 stars

Students are provided with an introduction to above-ground storage tanks, specifically how and why they are used in the Houston Ship Channel. The introduction includes many photographic examples of petrochemical tank failures during major storms and describes the consequences in environmental pollution and costs to disrupted businesses and lives, as well as the lack of safety codes and provisions to better secure the tanks in coastal regions regularly visited by hurricanes. Students learn how the concepts of Archimedes' principle and Pascal's law act out in the form of the uplifting and buckling seen in the damaged and destroyed tanks, which sets the stage for the real-world engineering challenge presented in the associated activity to design new and/or improved storage tanks that can survive storm conditions.

Subject:
Applied Science
Architecture and Design
Engineering
Material Type:
Lesson Plan
Provider:
TeachEngineering
Provider Set:
TeachEngineering
Author:
Emily Sappington
Mila Taylor
Date Added:
09/18/2014
Abrupt Events of the Past 70 Million Years â Evidence from Scientific Ocean Drilling
Read the Fine Print
Rating
0.0 stars

In this 6-part activity, students learn about climate change during the Cenozoic and the abrupt changes at the Cretaceous/Paleogene boundary (65.5 million years ago), the Eocene/Oligocene boundary (33.9 million years ago), and the Paleocene/Eocene boundary (55.8 million years ago).

Subject:
Applied Science
Archaeology
Career and Technical Education
Environmental Science
Environmental Studies
Physical Geography
Physical Science
Social Science
Material Type:
Activity/Lab
Full Course
Provider:
CLEAN: Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network
Provider Set:
CLEAN: Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network
Author:
Consortium for Ocean Leadership
Debbie Thomas
Mark Leckie
Date Added:
09/24/2018
Accelerometer: Centripetal Acceleration
Read the Fine Print
Educational Use
Rating
0.0 stars

Students work as physicists to understand centripetal acceleration concepts. They also learn about a good robot design and the accelerometer sensor. They also learn about the relationship between centripetal acceleration and centripetal force governed by the radius between the motor and accelerometer and the amount of mass at the end of the robot's arm. Students graph and analyze data collected from an accelerometer, and learn to design robots with proper weight distribution across the robot for their robotic arms. Upon using a data logging program, they view their own data collected during the activity. By activity end , students understand how a change in radius or mass can affect the data obtained from the accelerometer through the plots generated from the data logging program. More specifically, students learn about the accuracy and precision of the accelerometer measurements from numerous trials.

Subject:
Applied Science
Engineering
Physical Science
Physics
Material Type:
Activity/Lab
Provider:
TeachEngineering
Provider Set:
TeachEngineering
Author:
Carlo Yuvienco
Jennifer S. Haghpanah
Date Added:
09/18/2014
Acid Attack
Read the Fine Print
Educational Use
Rating
0.0 stars

In this activity, students explore the effect of chemical erosion on statues and monuments. They use chalk to see what happens when limestone is placed in liquids with different pH values. They also learn several things that engineers are doing to reduce the effects of acid rain.

Subject:
Applied Science
Chemistry
Engineering
Physical Science
Material Type:
Activity/Lab
Provider:
TeachEngineering
Provider Set:
TeachEngineering
Author:
Janet Yowell
Jessica Todd
Malinda Schaefer Zarske
Melissa Straten
Date Added:
10/14/2015
Acid (and Base) Rainbows
Read the Fine Print
Educational Use
Rating
0.0 stars

Students are introduced to the differences between acids and bases and how to use indicators, such as pH paper and red cabbage juice, to distinguish between them.

Subject:
Applied Science
Engineering
Material Type:
Activity/Lab
Lesson Plan
Provider:
TeachEngineering
Provider Set:
TeachEngineering
Author:
Amy Kolenbrander
Denise Carlson
Gwendolyn Frank
Janet Yowell
Malinda Schaefer Zarske
Natalie Mach
Sharon Perez
Date Added:
09/26/2008
Acids and Bases LCPS
Conditional Remix & Share Permitted
CC BY-NC-SA
Rating
0.0 stars

This activity must be conducted under the direct supervision of an adult familar with laboratory safety practices. Personal protection equipment, inlcuding goggles and apron must be utilized.In this exploration students will:recognize some acids and bases as common and familiar household chemicals.realize that acids and bases are not necessarily strong or dangerous.determine the pH of different chemical compounds and categorize them as acids or bases.investigate how the difference between acids and bases correlates to the difference in hydrogen ion concentration of solutions of the two classes of compounds.Link to lesson

Subject:
Physical Science
Material Type:
Lesson Plan
Author:
Jennifer Chang
Date Added:
06/01/2017
Acids and Bases: Testing Rocket Cars
Read the Fine Print
Educational Use
Rating
0.0 stars

A car propelled by the reaction between lemon juice and baking soda has more in common with rockets and jet aircraft than one might think. In this video segment adapted from ZOOM, two cast members demonstrate the power of rocket-propelled vehicles and how to exploit the force produced by the carbon dioxide gas. Grades 3-8.

Subject:
Chemistry
Physical Science
Physics
Material Type:
Activity/Lab
Provider:
PBS LearningMedia
Provider Set:
PBS Learning Media: Multimedia Resources for the Classroom and Professional Development
Author:
National Science Foundation
WGBH Educational Foundation
Date Added:
02/20/2004
Action-Reaction! Rocket
Read the Fine Print
Educational Use
Rating
0.0 stars

Students construct rockets from balloons propelled along a guide string. They use this model to learn about Newton's three laws of motion, examining the effect of different forces on the motion of the rocket.

Subject:
Applied Science
Engineering
Physical Science
Physics
Material Type:
Activity/Lab
Provider:
TeachEngineering
Provider Set:
TeachEngineering
Author:
Ben Heavner
Denise W. Carlson
Malinda Schaefer Zarske
Sabre Duren
Date Added:
10/14/2015
Active and Passive Transport: Red Rover Send Particles Over
Read the Fine Print
Educational Use
Rating
0.0 stars

Students compare and contrast passive and active transport by playing a game to model this phenomenon. Movement through cell membranes is also modeled, as well as the structure and movement typical of the fluid mosaic model of the cell membrane. Concentration gradient, sizes, shapes and polarity of molecules determine the method of movement through cell membranes. This activity is associated with the Test your Mettle phase of the legacy cycle.

Subject:
Anatomy/Physiology
Applied Science
Engineering
Life Science
Material Type:
Activity/Lab
Provider:
TeachEngineering
Provider Set:
TeachEngineering
Author:
Melinda M. Higgins
Date Added:
09/18/2014
Adaptations Activity 1: Adapting to the Environment (Grades 2-5)
Unrestricted Use
CC BY
Rating
0.0 stars

After learning about and exploring plant and animal adaptations, students research local organisms with interesting adaptations and share findings with their classmates. Students identify adaptations globally by analyzing a documentary.

Educators Guide for this unit:
http://education.eol.org/lesson_plans/2-5_Adaptations_LessonOverview.pdf

Lessons in this unit:
Adaptations Activity 1: Adapting to the Environment
Adaptations Activity 2: Physical Adaptations
Adaptations Activity 3: Behavioral Adaptations
Adaptations Activity 4: Go Adapt!
Adaptations Activity 5: Create a Creature

Subject:
Life Science
Material Type:
Activity/Lab
Author:
Encyclopedia of Life
Date Added:
11/20/2017