Students participate in a global campaign to observe and record the faintest visible stars as a means of measuring light pollution in a given location. By locating and observing the constellation Orion in the night sky and comparing it to stellar charts, students from around the world will learn how the artificial lighting in their community contribute to light pollution. Student contributions to the online database will document the visible night time sky.

CK-12 Life Science Honors For Middle School covers seven units: Understanding Living Things; Cells: The Building Blocks of Life; Genetics and Evolution; Prokaryotes, Protists, Fungi, and Plants; The Animal Kingdom; The Human Body; and Ecology.

This lesson will discuss the details for a possible future manned mission to Mars. The human risks are discussed and evaluated to minimize danger to astronauts. A specialized launch schedule is provided and the different professions of the crew are discussed. Once on the surface, the crew's activities and living area will be covered, as well as how they will make enough fuel to make it off the Red Planet and return home.

Students are introduced to the concept of light pollution by investigating the nature, sources and levels of light in their classroom environment. They learn about the adverse effects of artificial light and the resulting consequences on humans, animals and plants: sky glow, direct glare, light trespass, animal disorientation and energy waste. Student teams build light meters using light sensors mounted to LEGO® MINDSTORMS® NXT intelligent bricks and then record and graph the light intensity emitted in various classroom lighting situations. They are introduced to the engineering concepts of sensors, lux or light meter, and lumen and lux (lx) illuminance units. Through this activity, students also learn how to better use light and save energy as well as some of the technologies designed by engineers to reduce light pollution and energy waste.

In this project, students will learn how to find the area that drains to a storm drain and the route that pollutants will take if they are dumped or washed into the drain. They will find the upstream drainage area, called a watershed, for a storm drain near Blackman Elementary School in Tennessee. Then they find the downstream flow path to where it empties into the Gulf of Mexico. Knowing how to find these, students can experiment to find the watersheds and flow paths from other storm drain locations.

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

Students are introduced to the fabulous planet on which they live. Even though we spend our entire lives on Earth, we still do not always understand how it fits into the rest of the solar system. Students learn about the Earth's position in the solar system and what makes it unique. They learn how engineers study human interactions with the Earth and design technologies and systems to monitor, use and care for our planet's resources wisely to preserve life on Earth.

This lesson focuses on how we use water in our daily lives.Students calculate their weekly water use and predict howtheir use would change if water were less available or morecostly.

Students discover the direct link between land use andthe water quality of streams, rivers, and lakes whenthey observe how pollutants from various land uses canbe carried by runoff through the watershed, eventuallyreaching one of the Great Lakes.

Students identify common pollutants in storm water,compare the quantity of runoff from different land covers,and then apply this knowledge to their comparison oftwo aerial photos taken in 1975 and 2010, respectively, tohypothesize how land use and cover changes may affectthe quantity and quality of storm water runoff.