Introduces the concepts and applications of navigation techniques using celestial bodies and satellite positioning systems such as the Global Positioning System (GPS). Topics include astronomical observations, radio navigation systems, the relationship between conventional navigation results and those obtained from GPS, and the effects of the security systems, Selective Availability, and anti-spoofing on GPS results. Laboratory sessions cover the use of sextants, astronomical telescopes, and field use of GPS. Application areas covered include ship, automobile, and aircraft navigation and positioning, including very precise positioning applications.

A young girl has a wonderful idea to make the most MAGNIFICENT thing! But making her magnificent thing is anything but easy, and the girl repeatedly tries and fails. Eventually, she quits, but a walk with her dog and time to think, she comes back to her project with renewed enthusiasm and manages to get it just right. The resource includes a lesson plan/book card, a design challenge, and copy of a design thinking journal that provide guidance on using the book to inspire students' curiosity for design thinking. Maker Challenge: Create small groups. Pass out one of the challenges listed in the lesson plan/book card to each group for them to come up with an invention that will solve the problem at hand.

A document is included in the resources folder that lists the complete standards-alignment for this book activity.

Build your own system of heavenly bodies and watch the gravitational ballet. With this orbit simulator, you can set initial positions, velocities, and masses of 2, 3, or 4 bodies, and then see them orbit each other.

Natural disasters such as volcanoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, and wildfires happen all over the world. Understanding how natural disasters happen and why helps children feel less anxious and more prepared. Therefore, this unit focuses on teaching students the science behind each natural disaster while also explaining what to do if they live in an area prone to a particular natural disaster. Over the course of the unit, students hear about many famous natural disasters, but the unit places more of an emphasis on how the disasters happen rather than exploring the devastation or destruction caused by previous natural disasters. The unit provides many opportunities for students to learn more about recent natural disasters, including a culminating research project.

The texts in this unit were chosen because of their wide variety of text features, content, and accessibility. Over the course of the unit, students will read texts that are very technical and rely heavily on text features, diagrams, and illustrations, as well as texts that are written as informational narratives. Students will be challenged to think about the structures the authors use to help the reader interact with and learn the content. Additionally, students will learn the importance of referring to specific details from the text and using those details to explain and teach back the newly learned material. This unit serves as the foundation for building strong reading habits and routines and setting high expectations for text consumption. Clear models should be included in the unit to help students build a deeper understanding of how to actively read and annotate informational texts for key ideas, text features, and vocabulary. This unit also serves as a launching point for strong discussions. Students will frequently be challenged to debate questions from the text; therefore, strong habits of discussion need to be introduced over the course of the unit.

This class examines the relationship between the study of natural history, both domestic and exotic, by Europeans and Americans, and exploration and exploitation of the natural world, focusing on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Produce light by bombarding atoms with electrons. See how the characteristic spectra of different elements are produced, and configure your own element's energy states to produce light of different colors.

This course explores the social relevance of neuroscience, considering how emerging areas of brain research at once reflect and reshape social attitudes and agendas. Topics include brain imaging and popular media; neuroscience of empathy, trust, and moral reasoning; new fields of neuroeconomics and neuromarketing; ethical implications of neurotechnologies such as cognitive enhancement pharmaceuticals; neuroscience in the courtroom; and neuroscientific recasting of social problems such as addiction and violence. Guest lectures by neuroscientists, class discussion, and weekly readings in neuroscience, popular media, and science studies.

This capstone course is a group design project involving integration of nuclear physics, particle transport, control, heat transfer, safety, instrumentation, materials, environmental impact, and economic optimization. It provides opportunities to synthesize knowledge acquired in nuclear and non-nuclear subjects and apply this knowledge to practical problems of current interest in nuclear applications design. Each year, the class takes on a different design project; this year, the project is a power plant design that ties together the creation of emission-free electricity with carbon sequestration and fossil fuel displacement. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.This course is an elective subject in MIT's undergraduate Energy Studies Minor. This Institute-wide program complements the deep expertise obtained in any major with a broad understanding of the interlinked realms of science, technology, and social sciences as they relate to energy and associated environmental challenges.

Isatou Ceesay observed a growing problem in her community where people increasingly disposed of unwanted plastic bags, which accumulated into ugly heaps of trash. She found a way to be the agent of change by recycling the bags and transforming her community. The resource includes a lesson plan/book card, a design challenge, and copy of a design thinking journal that provide guidance on using the book to inspire students' curiosity for design thinking. Maker Challenge: Use plastic bags to develop a new product (i.e. jump rope).

A document is included in the resources folder that lists the complete standards-alignment for this book activity.

OpenSciEd middle school is NGSS-aligned science curriculum. Designed for all students and teachers, OpenSciEd includes student-facing materials as well as teacher guides. As with most instructional materials, excellent professional learning for teachers should be provided. For more information in Michigan contact the Michigan Mathematics and Science Leadership Network, starrm@mimathandscience.org

Open Education Resources for Science Education PD

We are now posting open education resources for professional development! Our STEM Teaching Tools have been used to support extended professional development (PD) sessions. We are now posting open educational resource (OER) versions of those PD sessions. They include all of the resources that PD facilitators need to adapt and run the sessions—including slides, speaker notes, facilitator guide, and embedded resources. We are starting with PD focused on supporting 3D formative assessment. We will keep adding more over time.

With encouragement and ideas from his family, Papa, based on the real-life inventor Lodner Phillips, builds a working submarine that takes his family on a ride to the bottom of Lake Michigan. The resource includes a lesson plan/book card, a design challenge, and copy of a design thinking journal that provide guidance on using the book to inspire students' curiosity for design thinking. Maker Challenge: Students will use materials on hand to design a solution to a problem they see in their school or at home. The invention should meet the needs of fellow students, teachers, bus drivers, principals, siblings, friends, or even parents.

A document is included in the resources folder that lists the complete standards-alignment for this book activity.

PhD Science Grade Levels K–2 is available as downloadable PDFs. The OER consists of Teacher Editions and student Science Logbooks for every module.

With PhD Science®, students explore science concepts through authentic phenomena and events—not fabricated versions—so students build concrete knowledge and solve real-world problems. Students drive the learning by asking questions, gathering evidence, developing models, and constructing explanations to demonstrate the new knowledge they’ve acquired. The coherent design of the curriculum across lessons, modules, and grade levels helps students use the concepts they’ve learned to build a deep understanding of science and set a firm foundation they’ll build on for years to come.

Cross-curricular connections are a core component within PhD Science. As an example, every module incorporates authentic texts and fine art to build knowledge and create additional accessible entry points to the topic of study.

Three-dimensional teaching and learning are at the heart of the curriculum. As students uncover Disciplinary Core Ideas by engaging in Science and Engineering Practices and applying the lens of Cross-Cutting Concepts, they move from reading about science to doing science.

Throughout the module, students study the anchor phenomenon, life at a pond, and build an answer to the Essential Question: How do pond plants and pond animals survive in their environment? As students learn about each new concept, they revisit and refine a model that represents how plants and animals survive in a pond environment. At the end of the module, students use their knowledge of the ways plants and animals survive to explain the anchor phenomenon, and they apply these concepts to a new context in an End-of-Module Assessment. Through these experiences, students develop an enduring understanding that plants and animals have body parts that function in ways that help the plants and animals survive in their environment. Students also develop the understanding that plants and animals of the same kind are recognizable as similar but can vary in many ways and that many animal parents engage in behaviors that help young offspring survive.

With PhD Science®, students explore science concepts through authentic phenomena and events—not fabricated versions—so students build concrete knowledge and solve real-world problems. Students drive the learning by asking questions, gathering evidence, developing models, and constructing explanations to demonstrate the new knowledge they’ve acquired. The coherent design of the curriculum across lessons, modules, and grade levels helps students use the concepts they’ve learned to build a deep understanding of science and set a firm foundation they’ll build on for years to come.

Cross-curricular connections are a core component within PhD Science. As an example, every module incorporates authentic texts and fine art to build knowledge and create additional accessible entry points to the topic of study.

Three-dimensional teaching and learning are at the heart of the curriculum. As students uncover Disciplinary Core Ideas by engaging in Science and Engineering Practices and applying the lens of Cross-Cutting Concepts, they move from reading about science to doing science.

© 2020–2022 Great Minds PBC. Except where otherwise noted, this content is published under Great Minds OER License 1 (greatminds.org/gm_oer_1). Use limited to noncommercial educational purposes. COMMERCIAL REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED.

Throughout this module, students study the anchor phenomenon, wayang shadow puppetry, and build an answer to the Essential Question: How do puppeteers use light to tell stories during wayang shows? As students learn about each new concept, they revisit and refine a model that shows how light interacts with the parts of a wayang show. At the end of the module, students use their knowledge of light interactions to explain the anchor phenomenon, and they apply these concepts to a new context in an End-of-Module Assessment. Through these experiences, students develop an enduring understanding that the way light interacts with objects affects what people see.

With PhD Science®, students explore science concepts through authentic phenomena and events—not fabricated versions—so students build concrete knowledge and solve real-world problems. Students drive the learning by asking questions, gathering evidence, developing models, and constructing explanations to demonstrate the new knowledge they’ve acquired. The coherent design of the curriculum across lessons, modules, and grade levels helps students use the concepts they’ve learned to build a deep understanding of science and set a firm foundation they’ll build on for years to come.

Cross-curricular connections are a core component within PhD Science. As an example, every module incorporates authentic texts and fine art to build knowledge and create additional accessible entry points to the topic of study.

Three-dimensional teaching and learning are at the heart of the curriculum. As students uncover Disciplinary Core Ideas by engaging in Science and Engineering Practices and applying the lens of Cross-Cutting Concepts, they move from reading about science to doing science.

© 2020–2022 Great Minds PBC. Except where otherwise noted, this content is published under Great Minds OER License 1 (greatminds.org/gm_oer_1). Use limited to noncommercial educational purposes. COMMERCIAL REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED.

Throughout the module, students study the anchor phenomenon, birds building nests, and develop an answer to the Essential Question: Why do different kinds of birds use certain materials to build their nests? As students learn about each new concept, they revisit and refine a model that represents how to describe different materials and how birds use those materials to build their nests. At the end of the module, students use their knowledge of how matter can be described, classified, and used to explain the anchor phenomenon, and they apply these concepts to a new context in an End-of-Module Assessment. Through these experiences, students learn that understanding the properties of matter and the ways matter can change helps people use materials for specific purposes.

With PhD Science®, students explore science concepts through authentic phenomena and events—not fabricated versions—so students build concrete knowledge and solve real-world problems. Students drive the learning by asking questions, gathering evidence, developing models, and constructing explanations to demonstrate the new knowledge they’ve acquired. The coherent design of the curriculum across lessons, modules, and grade levels helps students use the concepts they’ve learned to build a deep understanding of science and set a firm foundation they’ll build on for years to come.

Cross-curricular connections are a core component within PhD Science. As an example, every module incorporates authentic texts and fine art to build knowledge and create additional accessible entry points to the topic of study.

Three-dimensional teaching and learning are at the heart of the curriculum. As students uncover Disciplinary Core Ideas by engaging in Science and Engineering Practices and applying the lens of Cross-Cutting Concepts, they move from reading about science to doing science.

© 2020–2022 Great Minds PBC. Except where otherwise noted, this content is published under Great Minds OER License 1 (greatminds.org/gm_oer_1). Use limited to noncommercial educational purposes. COMMERCIAL REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED.

Throughout the module, students study the anchor phenomenon, the transformation of Surtsey, and build an answer to the Essential Question: How can the island of Surtsey change shape over time? As students learn about each new concept, they revisit and refine a model that represents the formation and transformation of Surtsey. At the end of the module, students use their knowledge of how land changes over time to explain the anchor phenomenon, and they apply these concepts to a new context in an End-of Module Assessment. Through these experiences, students develop an enduring understanding that natural events transform Earth’s land as time passes.

With PhD Science®, students explore science concepts through authentic phenomena and events—not fabricated versions—so students build concrete knowledge and solve real-world problems. Students drive the learning by asking questions, gathering evidence, developing models, and constructing explanations to demonstrate the new knowledge they’ve acquired. The coherent design of the curriculum across lessons, modules, and grade levels helps students use the concepts they’ve learned to build a deep understanding of science and set a firm foundation they’ll build on for years to come.

Cross-curricular connections are a core component within PhD Science. As an example, every module incorporates authentic texts and fine art to build knowledge and create additional accessible entry points to the topic of study.

Three-dimensional teaching and learning are at the heart of the curriculum. As students uncover Disciplinary Core Ideas by engaging in Science and Engineering Practices and applying the lens of Cross-Cutting Concepts, they move from reading about science to doing science.

© 2020–2022 Great Minds PBC. Except where otherwise noted, this content is published under Great Minds OER License 1 (greatminds.org/gm_oer_1). Use limited to noncommercial educational purposes. COMMERCIAL REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED.

Throughout the module, students study the anchor phenomenon, the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde, and build an answer to the Essential Question: How did the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde protect people from the weather? As students learn about each new concept, they develop and refine a model that represents a cliff dwelling and use that model to explore how cliff dwellings protected people from the weather. At the end of the module, students use their knowledge of weather to explain the anchor phenomenon, and they apply their learning to a new context in an End-of-Module Assessment. Through these experiences, students begin to establish an enduring understanding of weather and its effects. Specifically, students develop an understanding of the parts of weather, the effects weather has on people and their surroundings, and the ways people prepare for severe weather.

With PhD Science®, students explore science concepts through authentic phenomena and events—not fabricated versions—so students build concrete knowledge and solve real-world problems. Students drive the learning by asking questions, gathering evidence, developing models, and constructing explanations to demonstrate the new knowledge they’ve acquired. The coherent design of the curriculum across lessons, modules, and grade levels helps students use the concepts they’ve learned to build a deep understanding of science and set a firm foundation they’ll build on for years to come.

Cross-curricular connections are a core component within PhD Science. As an example, every module incorporates authentic texts and fine art to build knowledge and create additional accessible entry points to the topic of study.

Three-dimensional teaching and learning are at the heart of the curriculum. As students uncover Disciplinary Core Ideas by engaging in Science and Engineering Practices and applying the lens of Cross-Cutting Concepts, they move from reading about science to doing science.

© 2020–2022 Great Minds PBC. Except where otherwise noted, this content is published under Great Minds OER License 1 (greatminds.org/gm_oer_1). Use limited to noncommercial educational purposes. COMMERCIAL REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED.

Throughout this module, students study the anchor phenomenon—tugboats moving cargo ships—and build an answer to the Essential Question: How do tugboats move cargo ships through a harbor? As students focus on two concepts, they build a model that represents the movement of tugboats and cargo ships through New York Harbor. Students develop an understanding of what makes objects start to move, how pushes and pulls can change the way objects move, and what happens when two objects bump into each other. By the end of the module, students use their knowledge of pushes and pulls to explain the anchor phenomenon, and they apply learned concepts to a new context in an End-of-Module Assessment. As a result of these experiences, students begin to develop an enduring understanding that pushes and pulls can start, stop, and redirect an object’s movement.

With PhD Science®, students explore science concepts through authentic phenomena and events—not fabricated versions—so students build concrete knowledge and solve real-world problems. Students drive the learning by asking questions, gathering evidence, developing models, and constructing explanations to demonstrate the new knowledge they’ve acquired. The coherent design of the curriculum across lessons, modules, and grade levels helps students use the concepts they’ve learned to build a deep understanding of science and set a firm foundation they’ll build on for years to come.

Cross-curricular connections are a core component within PhD Science. As an example, every module incorporates authentic texts and fine art to build knowledge and create additional accessible entry points to the topic of study.

Three-dimensional teaching and learning are at the heart of the curriculum. As students uncover Disciplinary Core Ideas by engaging in Science and Engineering Practices and applying the lens of Cross-Cutting Concepts, they move from reading about science to doing science.

© 2020–2022 Great Minds PBC. Except where otherwise noted, this content is published under Great Minds OER License 1 (greatminds.org/gm_oer_1). Use limited to noncommercial educational purposes. COMMERCIAL REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED.

PhET provides fun, free, interactive, research-based simulations for math and science. The simulations are written in HTML5, and can be used online or downloaded to your computer. This is free for all students and teachers. There are hundreds of lesson plans and materials using the simulations.