All of the curriculum below was created for an eighth grade general science class during my student teaching internship. Each lesson was carefully crafted through backwards design and tailored to the state standards.
How does temperature affect the rate of solubility?
Students are challenged to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that temperature affects the rate of solubility. Using an M&M as a control, students observe the outside candy coating dissolving in water at different temperatures. This lesson serves not only as an assessment of student knowledge of the relationship between molecular motion and temperature, but also as an inquiry assessment.
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Lesson Plans
Kitchen Classification Challenge
As an introduction to a unit on classification of living things, students are challenged to use food items as a model for biological classification. Working in small groups, students create their own classification systems. Students use a top-down web to organize each food item into a category. At the end of the lesson, students share with each other their method for classification.
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Lesson Plans
Diffusion or Not: You Make the Call
When diffusion is introduced to students they are challenged prove that molecules move from a high concentration to a low concentration. This lesson provides students multiple opportunities to perform demonstrations of diffusion. Students are asked to visit 6 stations and decide when they are observing diffusion based on the evidence they collect.
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Lesson Plans
How can you affect the period of a pendulum?
In this lesson students are challenged to create a pendulum with an exact number of periods. Students create a hypothesis to test choosing one variable, either mass, length of string or angle. Students act as engineers and manipulate materials to create a pendulum that will accomplish the challenge every time it swings.
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Lesson Plans
Freshwater Stream Ecology Unit
In this hands on, inquiry based unit students learn complex ecological principles by studying their school stream.
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Stream Ecology Unit | |
File Size: | 4368 kb |
File Type: | doc |