This lesson will focus on bony fish form and adaptations. Students will begin by looking at different types of marine life, particularly fish, in the Aurelia application. After discussing the 3 different classes of fish and basic fish anatomy, students will take a deeper dive into the bony fish class and learn about the adaptations that they have to survive in different ecosystems. At the end of the lesson, students will be able to identify the external anatomy of a bony fish and be able to tell the difference between a bony, cartilaginous or jawless fish.

Estimated time required: 1-2 class periods.

Technology required for this lesson: Tablet or Smartphone.

This lesson will focus on cartilaginous fish form and adaptations. Students will begin by looking at different types of marine life, particularly fish, in the Aurelia application. After discussing the biological classification system and the 3 classes of fish, students will learn the external anatomy of the main groups of cartilaginous fish. Students will then take a deeper dive into the adaptations of cartilaginous fish that make them different from bony fish. We will finish up by covering modern issues that are facing cartilaginous fish and how we can help their populations.

Estimated time required: 1-2 class periods.

Technology required for this lesson: Tablet or Smartphone.

Students learn about energy, kinetic energy, potential energy, and energy transfer through a series of three lessons and three activities. They learn that energy can be neither created nor destroyed and that relationships exist between a moving object's mass and velocity. The associated activities give students hands-on experience with examples of potential-to-kinetic energy transfers. The activities also provide ways for students to apply the core concepts of energy through engineering practices such as building and testing prototypes to meet design criteria, planning and carrying out investigations, collecting and interpreting data, optimizing a system design, and collaborating with other research groups. The fundamental concepts presented in this unit serve as a good foundation for future lessons on energy technologies and electricity production.

In this lesson designed to enhance literacy skills, students explore brain injuries called concussions: what they are, how they occur, the challenges in diagnosing them, and ways to protect yourself from them.

Students use wood, wax paper and oil to investigate the importance of lubrication between materials and to understand the concept of friction. Using wax paper and oil placed between pieces of wood, the function of lubricants between materials is illustrated. Students extend their understanding of friction to bones and joints in the skeletal system and become aware of what engineers can do to help reduce friction in the human body as well as in machines.

In this lesson designed to enhance literacy skills, students learn about the unique environment of southern Florida's Everglades and gain insights into the interrelatedness of living things, nonliving things, and climate.

Prior to this lesson learners engage in the Arcadia Earth app’s Keep the Great Lakes GREAT section to build their understanding of the Great Lakes and its importance to all animals that call this area home, including humans. Next learners explore food chains with a hands-on activity, Linking the Chain. Students then synthesize what they know about the Great Lakes, food chains and how human behaviors can affect both.

Estimated time required: 1 class period.

Technology required for this lesson: Tablet or Smartphone.

In this lesson designed to enhance literacy skills, students learn how the forces of gravity and air resistance affect the motion of falling objects.

In this lesson, students will learn that minerals are a necessary part of our diet. They will learn that different minerals have different functions in the body. More specifically, they will discover that iron is necessary to carry oxygen around the body. In the associated activity, students will design a process that removes the most iron from the cereal.

Learners start by using the “Freshwater” section of the Aurelia app. This helps them glean base knowledge of freshwater fish adaptations and their habitats. Students then extend their knowledge to consider how fish have to adapt seasonally, namely in the winter when surface water freezes over. They’ll discover how fish have to physically and spatially respond to those changes within their environment. Although this activity could translate to other freshwater habitats, for this lesson, fish from the North American Great Lakes will be utilized.

Estimated time required: 1 class period.

Technology required for this lesson: Tablet or Smartphone.

In this video segment adapted from FETCH!, contestants are challenged to use materials from a garbage dump to build a boat that floats, can be steered, and is propelled by something other than oars.

Students learn about energy and nutrient flow in various biosphere climates and environments. They learn about herbivores, carnivores, omnivores, food chains and food webs, seeing the interdependence between producers, consumers and decomposers. Students are introduced to the roles of the hydrologic (water), carbon, and nitrogen cycles in sustaining the worlds' ecosystems so living organisms survive. This lesson is part of a series of six lessons in which students use their growing understanding of various environments and the engineering design process, to design and create their own model biodome ecosystems.

In this eight-week module, students explore the questions: “Who is the wolf in fiction?” and “Who is the wolf in fact?” They begin by analyzing how the wolf is characterized in traditional stories, folktales, and fables. Then they research real wolves by reading informational text. Finally, for their performance task, students combine their knowledge of narratives with their research on wolves to write a realistic narrative about wolves.

In this lesson designed to enhance literacy skills, students learn how to read and interpret a distance–time graph.

In this lesson, students will model how a watershed works to understand how the Great Lakes basin is a large watershed region.

In this ZOOM video segment, join Hana as she learns traditional Japanese drumming with her Taiko group.

Introducing engineering concepts with Hour of Engineering website is an engaging way to get students thinking about a STEM future. Hour of Engineering is designed to inform and inspire students in upper elementary through high school about engineering. Helping your students build an innovation mindset with the adaptive tools to solve problems starts here!

By participating in the Hour of Engineering students will: Define STEM vocabulary; Display engineering literacy; Explore the engineering design process; Experiment with practical engineering skills; Solve real-world engineering challenges; Link concepts between science, technology, engineering, and math; Build engineering habits of mind like creativity, systems thinking, and collaboration.

There are three parts to the Hour of Engineering website: landing page with inspirational content, learning modules, and engineering design challenges. (1) The landing page features clickable items to inspire students about the connection between engineering, art, science, math and even music! Students can freely explore the videos and models to learn about each object before moving on to deeper learning. (2) Learning modules allow students to explore a specific engineering topic. Students can explore learning modules on their own or you can pair them with connected engineering challenges to guide a sequence of learning on a topic. (3) Engineering challenges are a gamified way for students to explore various topics, activities and objects within fields of engineering. Students participating in engineering challenges earn stars based on their interaction with learning elements. There are knowledge checks and interactive models for students to explore during a challenge.

Students explore materials engineering by modifying the material properties of water. Specifically, they use salt to lower the freezing point of water and test it by making ice cream. Using either a simple thermometer or a mechatronic temperature sensor, students learn about the lower temperature limit at which liquid water can exist such that even if placed in contact with a material much colder than 0 degrees Celsius, liquid water does not get colder than 0 °C. This provides students with an example of how materials can be modified (engineered) to change their equilibrium properties. They observe that when mixed with salt, liquid water's lower temperature limit can be dropped. Using salt-ice mixtures to cool the ice cream mixes to temperatures lower than 0 °C works better than ice alone.

This video segment adapted from FETCH! shows contestants experimenting with different materials to see which is the best insulator and thus best able to keep the lemonade at their stand cool for customers.

Building on the programming basics learned so far in the unit, students next learn how to program using sensors rather than by specifying exact durations. They start with an examination of algorithms and move to an understanding of conditional commands (until, then), which require the use of wait blocks. Working with the LEGO MINDSTORMS(TM) NXT robots and software, they learn about wait blocks and how to use them in conjunction with move blocks set with unlimited duration. To help with comprehension and prepare them for the associated activity programming challenges, volunteer students act out a maze demo and student groups conclude by programming LEGO robots to navigate a simple maze using wait block programming. A PowerPoint® presentation, a worksheet and pre/post quizzes are provided.