As an addition to the schoolyard geology activities that were shared in Matt Nyman’s session during the Winter 2014 SMILE Teacher’s Workshop, here is a 4-lesson unit on Earth Science that can be done in the classroom.
Lesson 1 – Earth Layers
This lesson explores Earth, and it’s layers. Students will be able to construct their own mini Earths according to different layers.
Lesson 2 – Plate Tectonics
Students will be able to explore the plates and their boundaries of the Earth. This lesson serves to explain how earthquakes and volcanoes come to be.
Lesson 3 – Earthquakes
This lesson explores earthquakes, how they happen, and how to stay safe.
Lesson 4 – Volcanoes
Students will explore the different Pacific Northwest volcanoes and get the opportunity to construct their own volcanoes.
At the SMILE Teacher’s Workshop Spring 2013, Brad Agenbroad and Ian Niktab presented similar activities to those below. Other activities can be found on their blog.
Bottle Biology
This activity helps students explore the connection between land and water by allowing them to build a TerraAqua Column and change different variables of the system and observing their effects. These TerraAqua Columns are made from an empty two-liter bottle and other easily recycled items that can be acquired at little to no cost.
2-Liter Bottle Worm Bin: Garbage Eating Worms
In this activity students will learn about the importance that earthworms and microorganisms play in creating soil. Students will make their own worm farm and will be able to watch the worms turn organic garbage into soil. This hands on activity can also be made easily with found materials.
The links below have really clear instructions that should be easy to follow. The last link is for a larger container that the worms can live in for a longer period of time. Brad suggests the small red wigglers, rather than night crawlers (they tend to get out at night.) If you use the liter bottles, they can live in there for a couple weeks, but you will need to watch the moisture and feed.
Here are the exact lessons that Brad and Ian presented in the Workshop:
https://suite101.com/a/popbottle-wormery-science-craft-a124055
http://www.spelloutloud.com/observing-worms-with-preschoolers.html
GreenWood Resources, home to the largest drip irrigation farm in the world, was nice enough to provide our workshop attendees with several varieties of poplar saplings. With these saplings we ask that you and your students plant them and conduct your own growth experiment. Here we have provided for you a lesson plan as well as planting instructions for your trees. We would like to see data about your sapling’s progress and we will provide a way to share that data in the near future. Enjoy!
Our cable car curriculum keeps expanding and we are happy to share with you more lessons in this PowerPoint from the SMILE Teacher’s Workshop. Included in the slides are customer requirements and design elements that will help with the Middle School Challenge. This would be a great lesson plan to show middle school students to get them motivated and inspired!
At the SMILE Teacher’s Workshop we showcased a plethora of great lessons plans, one of which was presented by Danica Hendrickson from Facing The Future. She was gracious enough to share with us a PowerPoint for high school students that focuses on how we use energy everyday and where that energy comes from. Danica also recommended checking out these websites in conjunction with her lesson plan to see how much waste and energy recycling saves us. These are great bioenergy ideas to share with your students.
At this year’s teacher workshop we introduced two new teams of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering students. These seniors at Oregon State University have created several new amazing lesson plans for middle school teachers. We hope these lesson plans make their way into your classroom and help with the Middle School Challenge!
- During the Teacher’s Workshop, teachers were taught the mechanics behind a push and pull manufacturing system. Both systems can be seen in our everyday lives. It is a great short activity that only requires paper and pencils. We encourage you to check out this activity!
- Instructions are also an important factor in the manufacturing process. In this lesson plan students will decode different instructions and explore their clarity.
Our Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering team was thrilled to showcase these lessons at the Teacher Workshop and are excited to share more lessons on this blog. Check back soon to see additional engineering lesson plans.
Jon Roschke, a KidWind Pacific NW WindSenator from Oregon Renewables, shared a great presentation and his expertise on Wind Energy. Using prebuilt turbine towers, teachers explored the science of wind turbine blade design. Take a look at the presentation that Jon included in his workshop!
A great resource that Jon recommends is the KidWind Project website: http://learn.kidwind.org/teach
Renee Greer, a Ph.D., Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Biomedical Sciences, worked closely with the SMILE program to develop lessons that would share her expertise in cellular biology at an elementary school level. There are 7 lessons in total and they can be taught as a unit or individually.
