Short Description: This activity is a classroom investigation of human joints. Students will identify joints and use their science notebooks to record their findings using drawings and words.

This activity is a lab investigation where students work in groups to develop their own electromagnets.

This activity is a structured inquiry for students to observe how Newton's 3rd law of motion which states that to every action there must be an equal reaction. By flicking a set # of coin into a row of coins they will observe the force of the impact being passed along until the last coin flies off when no other coin prevents it from moving.

This set of activities is designed to help students develop an understanding of scale/distance and ordering the planets from the sun, understanding Earth's position in the solar system, and developing new ways of determining "order."

In this activity students investigate soil pH differences and buffering capacity as it relates to acid rain, interpret and present their findings, and develop a new, experimental question.

This activity is a lab investigation where students develop an investigable inquiry question, construct a fleet of boats, collect data about how many passengers (pennies) each will hold before sinking, interpret their findings, and will share methods and results during a poster session.

This observational inquiry activity involving careful descriptions of rocks and fossil including age will be used to create a scalar accurate geologic time scale. Students will observe and learn that the geologic time scale was created based on changes in fossil, rock, and atmospheric changes.

Students use an inquiry approach to describe the major biomes of Minnesota before taking a look at adaptations that make organisms successful in their environments.

This activity is a field investigation where students collect and design an experiment to identify the water quality of a section of the North Branch of the Root River in Lanesboro, MN. The investigation is done in collaboration with Eagle Bluff Environmental Learning Center.

In this activity students collect snow in a cup, predict how much water will be in the cup when the snow melts. Students are exposed to evaporation as the water "disappears" over time and try to stop this from happening.

This Java interactive tool can be used to create dynamic drawings on an isometric dot grid, and to explore volume, surface area, and congruence concepts. Users can draw figures using edges, faces, or cubes and can shift, rotate, color, decompose, and view figures in 2‑D or 3‑D with this applet. Instructions on using and exploring with the tool are included on the page. A related multi-lesson unit from Illuminations for middle school students is linked to the side.

In this math activity, learners prepare jumping jack data to send to officials on the planet Jumpalot. Learners record how many jumping jacks they can do in ten seconds and use their knowledge of time conversions to figure out how many jumping jacks they could complete in a minute all the way to a year. Learners then organize group data and explore mean, median, and mode and the effects extreme values have on these measures. Finally, learners brainstorm the advantages and disadvantages each measure offers. This lesson guide includes questions for learners, assessment options, extensions, and reflection questions.

KenKen is a puzzle game that helps students develop whole number calculation skills, logical thinking and perseverance. Users complete the interactive grid with the digits 1-4 (or 1-6) so that each digit appears exactly once in each row or column, while also forming a target number using a specific operation. This page provides four new KenKen puzzles daily with a range of difficulty. Each puzzle includes instructions, rules, and a print option.

Student reference: An Introduction to Package Design 2003 Pitsco, Inc.  Written by Bill Holden, Illustrations by Todd McGeorge, Edited by Cassie Hombs. Problem Statement: Given a roll of toilet paper, design a package to dispense the tissue as a Kleenex. 

The activities in this four-lesson unit enable students to use their knowledge of number, measurement, and geometry to solve interesting problems. Planning and visualizing, estimating and measuring, and testing and revising are components of the ladybug activities. Students design "virtual paths" that enable a ladybug to either hide under a leaf or go through a maze. They develop navigational skills by testing their path and revising it. Two interactive Java applets (Ladybug Mazes and Hiding Ladybug, cataloged separately) support student solutions.

This activity is an on-line research activity in which students research different Minnesota lakes and determine their physical characteristics, chemical characteristics, and the overall health of the lake.

This seminar explores experiments in education and discusses how education and learning might be done, through reading and discussion. This seminar is not a survey of experiments in education, but rather, its goal is to determine how learning should happen and what kinds of contexts allow it to happen.

This activity is a guided inquiry where students will find their own lichen and classify it into one of three categories. They will collect, analyze, and present their finding to the class.

In this math meets engineering activity, learners make paper airplanes and explore attributes related to increasing flight distances. Each learner collects data from three flights of the airplane and finds the median distance. Learners then collect, organize, display, and interpret the median distances for the group in a stem-and-leaf plot. This lesson guide includes questions for learners, assessment options, extensions, and reflection questions.

In this 6-lesson unit students use pasta shapes to explore the take away model of subtraction in several different contexts (counting, sets, number line, balanced equations, and inverse of addition). They decompose numbers, explore the zero property, act out subtraction situations with objects and pictures, record differences with vertical and in horizontal notation, create fact families, find differences with a calculator, and compose and solve problems involving subtraction. The lessons include student activity sheets (pdf), questions for student discussion and teacher reflection, assessment options, and links to online applets.