In an earlier lesson, students learned about the steel making and forging process. In this lesson, students will create a die using a 3D printer and then forge a part using play-dough. The lesson culmination will be a trip to the local business “Walker Forge” located in Clintonville, WI.

Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe School has an annual sugarbush within a few miles of the school.  During the Spring sugarbush season, students are bussed to the site, by class, to do the variety of daily tasks required to successfully produce maple syrup.  The LCO middle school students follow the Ojibwe traditions.  They hear the traditional stories, learn words and phrases in the Ojibwemowin language, tap trees, collect and boil sap, chop wood and build fires. The students learn about tree identification, photosynthesis, and aging trees using cross sections.  They also learn about the importance and uses of Maple trees.  The students learn that the environmental conditions needed to make maple syrup are only found in a very small part of the world that includes Wisconsin.  The combination of hands-on exploration and culturally - relevant texts personalize the learning experience for this region.   

In high school, Gena and Ali set out to learn about the geophysical forces acting on Lake Superior. They wanted to investigate why they would sometimes see such dramatic fluctuations in Lake Superior water levels. They learned that large lakes exhibit a phenomenon called a seiche (pronounced saysh) and they decided to investigate how often the water switched directions and how much the water level changed because of the seiche.

This activity was evaluated using the HQIM rubric linked here https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hZqpmXhKFV1ltE8PbdtFJzRvwcvdA-bDQ_-Kw29cci8/edit?usp=sharing

The scenario is that the student is working in the engineering department of a manufacturing plant. The plant has access to a wide variety of machining tools, so it is customary for them to make or repair their own parts as things wear out. Many of the parts are unique to the equipment at the facility, so it is impossible to simply order one from some outside supplier. Even if a part was available, it is cost prohibitive to buy new.

Students will be provided with a small piece of machinery that they must reverse engineer the dimensions. For middle school level students, the geometry will be kept rather simple and the measurements straightforward. For high school students, the geometry can become more complex, requiring some drafting skill, caliper use, and higher level CAD design.

Once the students take all the necessary measurements, then using CAD (Tinkercad for the lower grades), they will build up a virtual mock-up of the part. From there, the option would be to teach additive or reductive design. The part could be recreated using either a CNC or 3D printer.

Few classroom topics generate as much excitement as rockets. The scientific, technological, engineering and mathematical foundations of rocketry provide exciting classroom opportunities for authentic hands-on, minds-on experimentation. The activities and lesson plans contained in this educator guide emphasize hands-on science, prediction, data collection and interpretation, teamwork, and problem solving. The guide also contains background information about the history of rockets and basic rocket science. The rocket activities in this guide support national curriculum standards for science, mathematics and technology.

In this lesson, students will learn about the different properties of paper towels and design a method for testing paper towel absorbency and strength.

Biofuels are made from plants that are growing today, and are being considered as an alternative to fossil fuels. To become biofuels, plants need to go through a series of chemical and physical processes that transform the sugars into ethanol. Scientists are interested in seeing how yeast’s ability to transform sugar into fuel is affected by environmental conditions in fields, such as droughts.

This resource has been evaluated using the HQUIM rubric linked here. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1y6pUBeJXq-dZLdIjWx_5rNjaj4JCttLpDm5fOt9mNsA/edit?usp=sharing