Cavetoad Science

Watersheds are a critical part of communities. They provide drinking water, they provide habitat for animals, they provide recreational opportunities. When they become polluted the effects can be devastating. With this activity students are presented with 10 scenarios and they need to come up with solutions to clean up the problems. They will also create a map of their imagined community showing the solutions they came up with. Point source and non-point source pollution types are included. Many

Minerals are all around us. They are necessary for life, they are part of the walls in the school, they help heat our houses and provide us with clean drinking water. But what are they? Where do they come from? What do they really look like? How do we get them? What are they worth? This project leads students to investigate a mineral of their choice and create a presentation or poster about it. I have included a rubric for grading the work (20 points, 15, 10, and 5 points) to help students und

Rivers are an important part of the world that we live in. Students will choose a river to study. They will be research how human activity has impacted the river system and what can be done to reduce that impact. Each of the rivers highlighted in this project has a different challenge to investigate, levees on the Mississippi river, urban development in the L.A. river, water use for irrigation and drinking along the Colorado river, and water use for agriculture along the Sacramento river. Guided

There are five major senses that the human brain can perceive, taste, touch, smell, hearing, and sight. Each one contributes to the pictures that we make of the the world we live in. For this project students create 3-D models of the sense organs, and demonstrate the sense with an interactive activity as well as a presentation. This approach is great for students to use multiple modalities to show their knowledge. Students create demonstrations and models that help them and their classmates make

The world we live on is not a stable place it is in constant motion. Introduce your students to the way that the world moves with this research activity. Students will choose a region of the world and use contemporary and historical news accounts to understand how the moving earth works. Also included are a rubric and a student check-in sheet to help student to organize their tasks.

This is a unit of study for a High School level Earth Science course about the history of the planet from the dawn of the solar system to the arrival of humans. This document is divided into sections for each of the Eras in geologic time, the Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic. There are activities for each period which will help students to gain an understanding of what geologists call “Deep Time”, the changes in the atmosphere that lead to the development of early life, and the rise of animals

A Dichotomous Key activity for classification of preserved specimens. Can be used with samples of organisms or used with printed images if necessary. Allow students to sort and organize their environment, and in turn see how the natural world can be organized.

This inquiry based lab activity is designed to help students to understand where the energy that we use in our every day lives comes from and how much energy different power plants generate to help us meet those needs. Students will design their own Solar Energy Collector and measure its power output and efficiency. Students will also investigate and design a wind turbine and calculate it's output and efficiency.

Understanding how populations change with time is an important cornerstone to Ecology and Environmental Science. Give your students some practice with these problems. Also included is a basic introduction to the fundamental formula linking births, deaths, emigration,and immigration in population growth. Problems include simple problems as well as open response style questions to develop better understanding of the concept.

This lab is an engaging hands-on activity designed to get students to collect and analyze data and to apply that data to a variety of situations. In this lab students will investigate different aspects of their circulatory system. This will include calculating how much blood the body pumps each day and how that rate changes during exercise. Students will also calculate how blood loss from injury affects blood circulation. This lab is an engaging hands-on activity designed to get students to col

Being able to correctly set up Punnett squares and determine what outcomes are made as a result from crossing traits is a foundational skill in biology and the study of genetics. Use these simple crosses, dihybrid crosses and even a few trihybrid crosses! This activity offers plenty of practice for all skill levels.

Use this simple activity to help students to understand the layers of the atmosphere and some of its properties. Students will also locate other phenomena in the atmosphere such as the aurora lights, the International Space Station and see just how far up into the atmosphere the top of Mount Everest goes. Analysis questions are included to help with understanding. All you need to do is supply graph paper!

The sun, our star is an important part of the solar system. Without it there would be no solar system! The sun is a complicated and exciting place. For this assignment students will create a booklet that helps to educate people about some of the features of the sun and how some of those features can affect life here on Earth. Each panel of the thee-fold booklet will highlight a different part of the sun, the interior, the surface, and the impact on Earth's systems such as the auroras. Students u

Help your classroom understand the basics of what a chemical formula is and the basics of how to balance a chemical equation! With this simple set of notes as a guide and corresponding practice problems the students will be able to read and balance chemical formulas in no time! This simple two page activity lets them keep the notes and practice problems together for easy future reference.

This is an engaging, multi-day, hands-on, lab activity with an outdoor component. Designed to get students to measure a forest plot and derive from that measurement a food web from the data. The students are guided through calculations and steps to create a written lab report at the end of the study. The lab makes reference to the AREF, which we used to stand for Area of Research in the Experimental Forest. This can be any wild area of land available to the students near the school or elsewhere.

Put your students Natural Selection skills to the test with this two day activity designed to show how Evolution by Natural Selection works in the real world. Students design organisms and then hide them in the classroom. Those that are not found survive! The second day builds on the experiences of the first to see if the rate of success changes over time for the organisms. Includes procedure, data table, and open response analysis questions for assessment.

An introduction to the vocabulary and terms in Ecology including nitrogen, phosphorus, and water cycles, biomes, niches, and succession. Used as an activity early in an Ecology unit it can help to develop student understanding of the concepts in the study of Ecology.

Don't be left out in the cold! These resources will help your students understand the basics of how glaciers work, how they shape our landscape, and how they influence sea level change! Included is a vocabulary table for the students to complete, the outlines for a glacier research project for the students to research about a glacier, and the glacier poster project where students use the information they collected in the unit to create an informational poster about glaciers! I found the mix of r

Direct students through the wonders of the cell cycle with this guided activity. Materials required include cell slide samples of onion root tips and classroom microscopes and away you go! The activity is designed to provide students with the chance to work independently with teacher check-ins during the lab for accuracy and content.

Five simple rules to follow to teach students how to create a scientific graph which is clear and easy to read. Includes a sample dataset of daily temperatures in Las Vegas to create a graph from.