This lesson focuses on the observation of properties and the classification of objects to build ideas about variables. Learners compare buttons to identify similarities and differences. In addition, learners are introduced to Venn Diagrams by reading "The Elves and the Shoemaker" and sorting their shoes in a giant diagram.

Students are introduced to the classification of animals and animal interactions. Students also learn why engineers need to know about animals and how they use that knowledge to design technologies that help other animals and/or humans. 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.

Size and time scales. Historical astronomy. Astronomical instrumentation. Stars: spectra and classification. Stellar structure equations and survey of stellar evolution. Stellar oscillations. Degenerate and collapsed stars; radio pulsars. Interacting binary systems; accretion disks, x-ray sources. Gravitational lenses; dark matter. Interstellar medium: HII regions, supernova remnants, molecular clouds, dust; radiative transfer; Jeans' mass; star formation. High-energy astrophysics: Compton scattering, bremsstrahlung, synchrotron radiation, cosmic rays. Galactic stellar distributions and populations; Oort constants; Oort limit; and globular clusters.

This curriculum builds upon many years of educating students in the garden and scales up content across grades and lessons for instructional scaffolding. It is designed as an interactive teaching tool to be co-taught with classroom teachers and garden instructors as leads. Each lesson connects directly to standards: Next Generation Science, Common Core State, Physical Education, and Environmental and Health Education. The concise and easy to-follow lessons are a packed 45 minutes for preschool through fifth grade. Flexibility is important, so some lessons include several activities that teachers can choose from to accommodate their lesson plans. Consistency is also important, so lessons follow themes and structures found in the Curriculum Map. 360 pages.

This activity is an introduction to the study of birds. Students will gain observation and classification skills.

This activity is a classroom lab where students observe and classify chemical and physical changes using the five characteristics of a chemical change, interpret their findings, and use evidence to support their findings.

Students learn that ordinary citizens, including students like themselves, can make meaningful contributions to science through the concept of "citizen science." First, students learn some examples of ongoing citizen science projects that are common around the world, such as medical research, medication testing and donating idle computer time to perform scientific calculations. Then they explore Zooniverse, an interactive website that shows how research in areas from marine biology to astronomy leverage the power of the Internet to use the assistance of non-scientists to classify large amounts of data that is unclassifiable by machines for various reasons. To conclude, student groups act as engineering teams to brainstorm projects ideas for their own town that could benefit from community help, then design conceptual interactive websites that could organize and support the projects.

This quiz assesses what students have learned about classification and taxonomy. It includes a dichotomous key to complete and extra credit options.

In this activity students will observe and investigate rocks in order to classify them in terms of color, shape, texture and size.

This activity is a field investigation where students gather leaves from various trees on school property, interpret findings, name tree and leaves, journal activity and develop a new "aha" for nature!

In this Earth Science activity, students will investigate rocks in an outdoor field trip. Students will be divided into groups and given a Ziploc bag to collect rocks. We will then return to the classroom, and the students will put their rocks into different groups. The different groups could be the size, shape, color, and texture of the rocks. We will then talk about the Rock Cycle and the three main types of rocks. Students will record their observations in their science journals.

This activity gives a visual representation of how we are able to see the different layers of metamorphic rocks.

This short lesson was designed in collaboration with a 7th grade Life Science teacher (Paul Jeffery). The idea behind the lesson is to help students better understand ecological and geographical classifications by teaching them at the same time in their Life Science class and their Geography class. Teaching the two classifications together will help reinforce the idea of classification. While this lesson would best be taught outdoors it can also be adapted to the indoors.

This activity is a field investigation or bio-blitz where students are collecting as many different types of insects as they can. Back in the lab, they will record their findings, sort and classify the insects found. This will lead into a class discussion on biodiversity and the importance of insects and their benefits all living things.

This activity is a lab where students learn to classify objects that are similar into groups and technically describe their classifications. Introduction to dichotomous keys.

This activity is an inquiry and field study based. Students will be trying to observe, document, compare, contrast, and communicate what information they were able to gather. The will use this information to make in inference about the organisms they have found and classify them as either an insect or not an insect.

Students will investigate the organization of all living things through and learn how to classify through process of classifying their own shoes. Students will complete the classification of a Jaguar and write their own pneumonic device to remember the order of biological classification. (kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species)

This activity is an interactive game that helps students learn that vertebrates are classified into five groups and that each group has common characteristics that distinguish the animal group from other respective groups.

This activity is a field collection investigation where students gather earth materials and make observations about their collection that leads them to discuss the nature of Earth surface and how it is changing.

This activity is a field investigation where students use a dichotomous key to properly identify trees in our schools nature center.