Subject

This is a two-class lesson plan. During the first class students are entered into a "mini-medical school" where they will learn about the functions and components of blood and make a candy model to reflect their relative proportions.  At the end of the class, they graduate medical school as hematologists. The next day they will be presented with a mock patient with a blood disorder. In groups, they will attempt to diagnose the patient using blood smears, results of lab tests, and patient histories.

The lesson is designed around two sets of experiments. The first set demonstrates that amylase is a digestive enzyme that degrades starch into sugar, can do so repeatedly and, like many enzymes, is sensitive to acid. The second set of experiments demonstrates the variability of amylase activity in different students' saliva. 

Students will explore how plants grow while using the scientific method to conduct an experiment.

Students will explore how plants grow while using the scientific method to conduct an experiment.

Students will engage in an exploration demonstrating the Octet rule and chemical bonding using paper models of elements forming covalent and ionic compounds.

Student will run a variety of test to different sweeteners to understand their unique properties and what  they share in common. Single substances have unique properties that gives tem their identity.

Students will investigate how the effects of magnets change when their position in space is changed. Children are introduced to basic concepts of orientation in space.

In this activity, students will model how the parasitic malaria protist Plasmodium falciparum evades the host immune response through a phenomenon called antigen switching.  Specifically, slips of paper representing malaria-infected red blood cells will be used to demonstrate how random changes in the expression of Plasmodium proteins that display on the surface of human red blood cells helps the parasite avoid destruction by the host immune system.  Students start with a single infected red blood cell with a specific surface marker protein, and from there will simulate the spread of infection through multiple generations of infection (each generation consisting of a parasite infecting a red blood cell, dividing and multiplying inside the red blood cell, then bursting to release new parasites that go on to infect new red blood cells).  Student will find that the parasite occasionally changes the type of surface marker protein expressed over several generations.  When the immune system begins destroying infected cells displaying the original surface protein, cells that have switched to expressing a different protein survive and continue to divide.

The teacher conducts an investigation to compare the sound produced by two different sized pipes (higher pitch, lower pitch, louder, softer).  The teacher conducts the experiment multiple times, each time changing different variables.  The students are "directors" and are asked to "cut" the scene when they observe something wrong with the experiment.

Students learn what a model is by comparing a model of the tongue to their own tongue. They practice asking themselves, "How is this model like the thing it represents, and how is it different?"  This format of questioning can be used when using any model in science and can be used to check students' understanding and misconceptions.

Many children around the world die due to drinking contaminated water.  This engaging science lesson will allow students learn how to build and use a simple homemade filter system to clean contaminated water. This 5th grade, standards-based lesson is great for California Science Content Standards Earth Sciences.  Students make observations, collect data and form hypothesis.  The end result is a gratifying surprise that they will enjoy while learning basic investigation and experimentation concepts.

Students observe and dissect a sheep heart. In doing so, they learn about how the heart works and what it really looks like.

While this lesson is adaptable for many grade levels, it is a great fit with California's FOSS 5th grade Living Systems kit and that kit's goal of learning the structures and functions of the circulatory system.

In this activity students use microscopes and slide viewers to visualize cells and record what they see. Emphasis is on *recording observations*. Students are introduced to new technologies and to the diversity of cells that make up our body and that exist in plants.

Compare different brands of paper towel for their strength and absorbancy through a series of short investigations.  This lesson can be used in conjuction with the FOSS Wood and Paper kit, or on its own.

In this lesson students will play a guessing game, observe land snails, and create a realistic drawing of a land snail.  At the end of the lesson they will brainstorm things they wonder about Land Snails.

This lesson is alternate or introductory lesson to the FOSS lesson on observing land snails.  Students begin and end the lesson as a whole group and observe either independently or in pairs.