STEM Lesson Plans

In this lesson plan, students will be able to investigate battery cells as they construct their own simple batteries: They will know that batteries are a common store of energy for many devices that

By the end of this lesson, students will understand the unique adaptations of desert tortoises and the importance of conserving their habitat. Students also engineer a habitat for the desert tortoise.

In this engaging and interactive lesson, students explore adaptation and creative problem-solving. Inspired by "The Great Turkey Race," students will engage in a hands-on engineering lesson to design

Using the book "Those Darn Squirrels" by Adam Rubin, students will design and create a bird feeder to let the birds IN and keep the squirrels OUT! Communication, collaboration, and creativity are key

Using the engineering design process, students will collaborate to plan and build a tower...but not just any old tower! This "Tower with a Twist" has to include a suspended cup that can also hold

In this high school science/engineering lesson on exploring cracked steel, students will delve into the concept of cracked steel and its impact on structural integrity. They will define composites and

This lesson is about the rock cycle. Students will start by cutting and folding paper crystals. Then students review what they already know about rocks and the rock cycle. They use their understanding

Students will be able to understand proportional relationships with rescaling a drawing. Students will be able to draw a reduced scale drawing and enlarged scale drawing in the end. Students will also

In this lesson, first-grade students will explore the concept of resource sharing in nature using dioramas. The lesson is designed to help students understand that living things, such as plants and

Lesson Description: In this first-grade lesson, we will learn about the amazing world of spiders! We'll start by exploring the life cycle of a spider, from when it hatches to how it grows and changes

Students will build an ice snowman and a house for him to live in. They will collaborate to design a structure to keep him from melting. This project uses basic materials to study insulation and

In this lesson, students will work in small groups of 3-4 to design and engineer a manipulative or activity designed to help practice simplifying expressions. Creative designs for the manipulative

As an intro to Thermal Energy, students are challenged to create a warmer that will keep my coffee warm. Students project will be tested in class, data will be collected, compared, and graphed.

Context: This lesson takes place in a classroom for two or more class periods Students may work in small groups of 2-4. An emphasis on the experiment of making an indestructible Edison robot Creative

An introduction to Newton's Laws of Motion. Students will utilize two or three options to move a balloon across a tethered line. Students will compare and contrast two different size balloons moving

Hot Air Ballooning in Arizona is a two day science and engineering lesson. Students explore how to create a model hot air balloon and talk about the science behind it. This lesson compliments the

Rad Roller Coasters Part 2 comes at the end of our paper roller coaster project. Students will collect data on their coaster and use that to calculate velocity, potential energy and kinetic energy

This lesson is for a multi-day project where student groups will plan, design, and build roller coasters out of paper and tape. It tests their knowledge of Physics and Engineering Design.

Students determine the period of rotation for the flying pig toy using formulas derived throughout the circular motion unit.

Students use their knowledge from the 2 previous lessons to design, draw blueprints, and build a load bearing bridge.

Students explore different types of bridges and then practice building them with K'Nex sets.

Students explore designing bridge prototypes with spaghetti to find weak points and redesign a new prototype.

Classes will build three different types of rockets, guess which style will have the highest altitude, launch and calculate results based on right triangle math!

Teams brainstorm ideas that meet the size and material design constraints and create prototype bridges of the most promising solutions. They test their bridges to see how much weight they can hold