All resources in IMLS Curation Group

Pattern Generator

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Recognize patterns in a series of shapes, numbers, or letters. After determining the pattern, the student fills in the missing pieces. Three levels of difficulty are available.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Diagram/Illustration, Interactive, Lesson Plan, Simulation, Student Guide

Calculating Volumes of Compound Objects

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This lesson unit is intended to help teahcers assess how well students solve problems involving measurement, and in particular, to identify and help students who have the following difficulties; computing measurements using formulas; decomposing compound shapes into simpler ones; using right triangles and their properties to solve real-world problems.

Material Type: Assessment, Lesson Plan

Solving Geometry Problems: Floodlights

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This lesson unit is intended to help teachers assess how well students are able to identify and use geometrical knowledge to solve a problem. In particular, this unit aims to identify and help students who have difficulty in: making a mathematical model of a geometrical situation; drawing diagrams to help with solving a problem; identifying similar triangles and using their properties to solve problems; and tracking and reviewing strategic decisions when problem-solving.

Material Type: Assessment, Lesson Plan

Modeling: Having Kittens

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This lesson unit is intended to help teachers assess how well students are able to: interpret a situation and represent the constraints and variables mathematically; select appropriate mathematical methods to use; make sensible estimates and assumptions; investigate an exponentially increasing sequence; and communicate their reasoning clearly.

Material Type: Assessment, Lesson Plan

CTE Architecture: Fences

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This task was developed by high school and postsecondary mathematics and design/pre-construction educators, and validated by content experts in the Common Core State Standards in mathematics and the National Career Clusters Knowledge & Skills Statements. It was developed with the purpose of demonstrating how the Common Core and CTE Knowledge & Skills Statements can be integrated into classroom learning - and to provide classroom teachers with a truly authentic task for either mathematics or CTE courses.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Homework/Assignment, Lesson Plan

Evaluating Statements About Length and Area

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This lesson unit is intended to help teachers assess how well students can: Understand the concepts of length and area; use the concept of area in proving why two areas are or are not equal; and construct their own examples and counterexamples to help justify or refute conjectures.

Material Type: Assessment, Lesson Plan

Optimization Problems: Boomerangs

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This lesson unit is intended to help teachers assess how well students are able to: interpret a situation and represent the constraints and variables mathematically; select appropriate mathematical methods to use; explore the effects of systematically varying the constraints; interpret and evaluate the data generated and identify the optimum case, checking it for confirmation; and communicate their reasoning clearly.

Material Type: Assessment, Lesson Plan

Racing Game with One Die

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Simulate a game where two players each roll a die, and the lucky player moves one step to the finish. Parameters: what rolls win and how many steps to the finish line.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Game, Interactive, Lesson Plan, Simulation, Student Guide

CTE Architecture: Framing a House

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This task was developed by high school and postsecondary mathematics and design/pre-construction educators, and validated by content experts in the Common Core State Standards in mathematics and the National Career Clusters Knowledge & Skills Statements. It was developed with the purpose of demonstrating how the Common Core and CTE Knowledge & Skills Statements can be integrated into classroom learning - and to provide classroom teachers with a truly authentic task for either mathematics or CTE courses.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Assessment, Homework/Assignment, Lesson Plan

Measuring Human Rights: High School Mathematics Unit

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In this unit, students will read and interpret primary sources to address the question “How do we measure the attainment of human rights?” By exploring the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN’s Guide to Indicators of Human Rights, and data about development indicators from multiple databases, students will unpack the complexities of using indicators to measure human rights.

Material Type: Assessment, Lesson Plan

Author: Tamar Posner

Does Weight Matter?

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Using the same method for measuring friction that was used in the previous lesson (Discovering Friction), students design and conduct an experiment to determine if weight added incrementally to an object affects the amount of friction encountered when it slides across a flat surface. After graphing the data from their experiments, students can calculate the coefficients of friction between the object and the surface it moved upon, for both static and kinetic friction.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan

Author: Mary R. Hebrank

Breaking the Mold

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In this math activity, students conduct a strength test using modeling clay, creating their own stress vs. strain graphs, which they compare to typical steel and concrete graphs. They learn the difference between brittle and ductile materials and how understanding the strength of materials, especially steel and concrete, is important for engineers who design bridges and structures.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan

Authors: Chris Valenti, Denali Lander, Denise W. Carlson, Joe Friedrichsen, Jonathan S. Goode, Malinda Schaefer Zarske, Natalie Mach

Applying Hooke's Law to Cancer Detection

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Students explore Hooke's law while working in small groups at their lab benches. They collect displacement data for springs with unknown spring constants, k, by adding various masses of known weight. After exploring Hooke's law and answering a series of application questions, students apply their new understanding to explore a tissue of known surface area. Students then use the necessary relationships to depict a cancerous tumor amidst normal tissue by creating a graph in Microsoft Excel.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Author: Luke Diamond

Don't Crack Humpty

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Student groups are provided with a generic car base on which to design a device/enclosure to protect an egg on or in the car as it rolls down a ramp at increasing slopes. During this in-depth physics/science/technology activity, student teams design, build and test their creations to meet the design challenge, and are expected to perform basic mathematical calculations using collected data, including a summative cost to benefit ratio.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Authors: Justin Riley, Ryan St. Gelais, Scott Beaurivage

What if the Ice Shelves Melted?

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This activity is a hands-on guided inquiry activity designed to highlight the role of an ice shelf on slowing the movement of continental ice sheets in Antarctica. Students build a model of Antarctica and both continental glaciers and ice shelves using paper models of the land and slime for glaciers and ice. Students use their model to explore the impact of recent and potential ice shelf melting and break-up.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Authors: ANDRILL, LuAnn Dahlman

Modeling Early Earth Climate with GEEBITT

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Students gain experience using a spreadsheet and working with others to decide how to conduct their model 'experiments' with the NASA GEEBITT (Global Equilibrium Energy Balance Interactive Tinker Toy). This activity helps students become more familiar with the physical processes that made Earth's early climate so different from that of today. Students also acquire first-hand experience with a limitation in modeling, specifically, parameterization of critical processes.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Authors: Cindy Shellito, On the Cutting Edge Collection - Science Education Resource Center (SERC) at Carleton College

Concord Consortium: Excited States and Photons

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This concept-building activity contains a set of sequenced simulations for investigating how atoms can be excited to give off radiation (photons). Students explore 3-dimensional models to learn about the nature of photons as "wave packets" of light, how photons are emitted, and the connection between an atom's electron configuration and how it absorbs light. Registered users are able to use free data capture tools to take snapshots, drag thumbnails, and submit responses. This item is part of the Concord Consortium, a nonprofit research and development organization dedicated to transforming education through technology.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Data Set, Interactive, Lecture Notes

Authors: National Science Foundation, The Concord Consortium

NGSS: EQuIP Rubric for Lessons & Units: Science

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The Educators Evaluating the Quality of Instructional Products (EQuIP) Rubric for science provides criteria by which to measure the alignment and overall quality of lessons and units with respect to the Next Generation Science Standards. The purpose of the rubric and review process is to: (1) provide constructive criterion-based feedback to developers; (2) review existing instructional materials to determine what revisions are needed; and (3) identify exemplars/models for teachers’ use within and across states.

Material Type: Lecture