SciGen Teacher Dashboard
Science Thinking
6 UNITS • 21 ACTIVITIES
UNIT T1
In this unit, students learn about making both qualitative and quantitative observations and about distinguishing an observation from an inference. Students have a hands-on opportunity to practice making observations and inferences during a lab activity.
Activities
Lesson: Going from Observations to Inferences
UNIT T2
In this unit, students explore why scientists use models when trying to solve problems or create solutions. Students make their own model of a watershed using a landform map and consider how it can help with making community decisions.
Activities
Scene: Is bug spray a big deal?
Lesson: About Systems and Models
Lab: Tracing the Path of Water through a Watershed
UNIT T3
This unit teaches students about making claims in science. Students learn how to examine claims by performing an experiment about skateboarding. Students conduct multiple trials and graph their results before drawing conclusions.
Activities
Scene: Safety at the Skateboard Park
Lesson: Examining and Supporting Claims
Reading: Skaters in the Suburbs and the City
Writing: Letter to the Park Committee
UNIT T4
This unit introduces students to what “fair” means in science and how to make a test fair. Students learn what variables are and how to control them, why multiple trials are used, and the importance of objective measurement.
Activities
Lesson: Elements of a Fair Test
Reading: Fair Trials in Teen Court
UNIT T5
In this unit, students learn how to develop a scientific hypothesis, design and perform an experiment to test their hypothesis, and write about the data gathered.
Activities
Scene: Reaction Times in Sports
UNIT T6
This unit investigates the necessary components of a scientific experiment. Students think of their own testable question, conduct their experiment step by step, collect data, and present their findings to their peers.
Activities
Units of Measure
3 UNITS • 14 ACTIVITIES
UNIT U1
This unit introduces students to some of the scientific terminology used for measurement and clarifies some of the misunderstandings that students have around important measurement vocabulary. Additionally, students create an original measurement system and present their system to the class.
Activities
Scene: The Importance of Units
Lesson: Concepts, Confusion, and Comparisons
UNIT U2
This unit re-introduces students to the metric system, specifically emphasizing prefixes, abbreviations, and conversions. There is also a lab activity on hand volume, followed by a writing prompt.
Activities
UNIT U3
This unit builds on students’ understanding of measurement and introduces the concepts of rate and ratio. Students learn how to calculate ratios and rates during a series of lab activities and conclude the unit with a writing prompt.
Activities
Scene: Side Effects of Texting
Lesson: Ratio, Rate, and Percentage
Lab: Find Your Natural Walking Pace
Energy
5 UNITS • 30 ACTIVITIES
UNIT E1
This unit introduces students to potential and kinetic energy. Students learn about the relationship between the two different factors that affect the energy in a system. Different activities build knowledge of momentum, velocity, acceleration, inertia, friction, and gravity and how all these concepts relate to one another.
Activities
Scene: Keeping Track of Energy
UNIT E2
This unit introduces the topics of force, work, and machines. Students solidify an understanding of the relationship between these three terms. During a lab activity, students put together their own pulley systems. The unit ends with a writing challenge that prompts students to think through what "work" means in both the scientific and the conventional senses.
Activities
UNIT E3
Delivering Power to the People
This unit introduces students to energy transformation, conservation, and generation. Students learn about the effects of different types of energy-generation and how generators work. A group activity highlights the different perspectives on how the U.S. should generate electricity.
Activities
Lesson: More About Power—Biking Uphill
Lesson: Energy Transformations
UNIT E4
This unit introduces basic waves properties and helps students learn to distinguish between the many types of waves they encounter daily. Students explore how the energy of a wave can travel through a medium.
Activities
Scene: Surf's Up (and Down, and Up Again)
Interactive: A Wave with Words
UNIT E5
This unit further explores wave properties and helps students learn to distinguish between electromagnetic waves, which don't need a medium to travel, and the mechanical waves of E4 that require a medium of matter.
Activities
Lesson: Waves without a Medium
Project: The Electromagnetic Clothesline
Life Science
7 UNITS • 41 ACTIVITIES
UNIT L1
This unit introduces students to fundamental ideas in ecology. Students learn about ecosystems and what happens during disturbances and recoveries, both natural and human induced. While simulating a town hall meeting, students discuss the many different opinions about a new community rule.
Activities
Lesson: Ecological Disturbances
Lesson: A Chesapeake Bay Food Web
UNIT L2
The Great Rift Valley in east Africa is home to many saltwater lakes and also the famously pink Lesser Flamingo. But there is now only one lake, Lake Natron in Tanzania, that is a suitable breeding ground for this species. In this unit, students explore the difficult choices communities face as they decide whether to build a factory at Lake Natron.
Activities
Interactive: Comparing Two Lakes
UNIT L3
This unit investigates the basic laws of heredity and introduces students to classical genetics. Students learn about Gregor Mendel’s experiments with patterns of inheritance and practice using the principles of dominant and recessive traits.
Activities
Lab: Punnett Square and Probability
UNIT L4
In this unit, students learn about natural selection and adaptation. A series of activities leads students to investigate evolution and its relationship to a species’ fitness, selection, and adaptation.
Activities
Interactive Reading: The Amazing Story of the Peppered Moth
UNIT L5
This unit examines the curious case of an ubiquitous single-celled organism: yeast. It introduces students to life at its most basic level: the cell. Students repeatedly encounter different approaches to understanding cells' four essential functions.
Activities
Reading: Dr. Otto and the Four Fatal Flaws
Interactive: Zooming in on Yeast
Reading: Rise of the Yeast Cells
UNIT L6
This unit explores multicellularity and how a system is greater than the sum of the parts. It begins with a sports team metaphor to kick off this look at cell specialization and at the hierarchical organization of cells into tissues, organs, organ systems, and organisms. Students see the human body as an amazing cooperative community of trillions of cells.
Activities
Interactive: Organ Systems at Work
UNIT L7
A group of friends look at cells close-up. Students explore the form and function of different kinds of cells through interactive activities and a quick lesson in drawing, which they use to record what they see under a microscope. Finally, they make a written model in a cell analogy project.
Activities
Scene: The Tiniest Food Factories
Matter
3 UNITS • 13 ACTIVITIES
UNIT M1
This unit introduces students to the properties of matter. Students investigate atoms, elements, and basic chemical reactions between elements and compounds. The unit ends with a look at photosynthesis at a particulate level in order to understand the Law of Conservation of Matter.
Activities
Interactive: Peeking at the Particles
Reading: Making Trees from Thin Air (Photosynthesis and Conservation of Matter)
UNIT M2
This unit teaches students to describe matter in terms of density and other quantifiable properties. Archimedes' "Eureka" moment in the bathtub is featured to illustrate the value of displacement as a method of determining volume and how that links to density.
Activities
Reading: Archimedes & the Case of the Missing Gold
Conversation: The Basics of Density
UNIT M3
From arguing the best recipe for pink lemonade to a dramatic retelling of “The Three Little Pigs,” this unit explore what happens when various substances come together, come apart, or shift around. The comparison of physical and chemical change at the particulate level is emphasized.
Activities
Scene: Concentrating on Pink Lemonade
Lesson: Categories of Chemicals and Mixtures
Interactive: Condensation and Evaporation
Conversation: Describing Physical and Chemical Change
Interactive Reading: The Three Little Chemists and the Big Bad Wolf
BETA Version - Please send comments and corrections to info@serpinstitute.org
This project was supported by Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative dedicated to engaging everyone with the process of science.
Strategic Education Research Partnership
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info@serpinstitute.org