STEM Lesson Plans

Students will act as scientists who are tasked with designing and modeling a new plant that has special adaptations to help it survive in an extreme environment!

Biologists have noticed that the saguaro mortality rates have increased in Central and Southern Arizona. They don’t know why - but they have some ideas. In this unit, students will learn more about

This is a lesson that shows how mutations can cause evolution and speciation. Students will also create graphs by using their data.

This lesson provides the opportunity for kindergarten students to develop a mock oil spill and develop methods to help ocean life after an oil spill. Student will hypothesize methods that can

In this lesson students will get the chance to mine for ore but then work on the processing phase and manufacturing phase of mining. Students will mine their ore (peanuts), process their ore (shell

In this lesson plan students will continue to explore and understand the mining process. Students will have a budget and have to purchase land and equipment to be able to mine it. Students will get a

This lesson is intended to expose students to information about environmental changes and how solar energy affects living things. Students are challenged to design and build a shelter for a dog to

This lesson is in collaboration with the National Park Service and contains additional activities from the Jr. Ranger program. Using the NPS brochure guide/map and Plantnet app, students will identify

In this fun and engaging lesson, students will use the ASU Monster Maker Game for a fun project that assesses students on dominant and recessive alleles, genotype, phenotype, Punnett Squares, and

In this lesson, students physically manipulate a couple of springs and then collect data from a spring force Phet simulator. Next, they graph the data, calculate the area under the curve of their

Get the athletic shoes ready! Students calculate their own physical power output by walking, and then hustling/running, up a flight of stairs in this engaging lesson. The change in potential energy

This lesson is about exploring Arizona's state bird, the cactus wren, that lives in the desert, has special body parts and behaviors that help it survive in its harsh environment. Students will learn

This hands-on lesson helps students understand exponential functions by using an LED circuit. LED luminosity decreases at an exponential rate as more are added in series. As students add more lights

In the novel Shiloh, Marty must leave Shiloh in the woods overnight. He quickly finds materials in his shed to build Shiloh a fence and structure to protect him from elements in the woods behind his

Using my backyard chickens as inspiration, this 5th grade lesson asks children to graph egg production and build a model of a chicken coop and run.

In this unit, students will explore the interdependencies in a system and uncovers circular causal connections. Students will use a stock-flow game, specifically the “Mammoth Game” to simulate how

In this unit students will observe how elements within a system changes over time, generating patterns and trends that affect the ecosystem of bees. Students will use Stock-Flow Maps to show the

Students will learn about hibernation and adapting to the winter cold. They will build shelters with different insulating materials so that their animals do not get cold. They will then do a gallery

Students will be able to utilize multimedia resources, such as online simulations and interactive videos, to explain the process of natural selection and provide examples of how it leads to species

This lesson is the second lesson of a two-part series where students investigate concepts of biomimicry and apply them to the real world with issues like resource scarcity. In this lesson, students

In this lesson, students will learn about desert plant and animal adaptations and the concept of biomimicry. Students will discuss examples of biomimicry in nature and in the real world and will

Students use test strips and research to solve the issue of a fish death in our classroom tank. This would also work well for the initial setup of a tank. Students see a tangible, observable, real

Water Troughs on the Rez is a lesson plan to help students understand the mathematical perspective of everyday items around our homes on the reservation. Students are to share different types of water

Students will continue to learn about the mining process and will get the chance to do some mining in this lesson. They will get to determine the best area to mine using core samples. Students will