STEM Lesson Plans

This lesson is about the Petrified Forest National Park here in Arizona. It teaches students about the National Park. It also has a lab showing students how things like wood become petrified!

Over the course of three class sessions, spanning 90 minutes each, students will engage in an immersive project focusing on the outdoor air quality prevalent in four states situated in the

What would you do if you were dropped into the wilderness, with nothing but what you could fit into a backpack, and had to survive harsh weather, a hostile location, and possibly aggressive wildlife

This lesson is in collaboration with the National Park Service and contains additional activities from the Jr. Ranger program. Using the NPS brochure guide/map and Plantnet app, students will identify

This hands-on lesson introduces students to gardening and the sustainability of food. Students will grow small gardens and manage them.

In this hands-on lesson, students study and record water quality readings by gaining an understanding of the significance of the readings along with the use of the correct vocabulary.

In this engaging lesson, students move the learning from within the classroom to outside its walls in order to study and record air quality readings (with no tech and tech applications). Students gain

Students will create an engineering notebook that documents their progress through the engineering design process as it applies to their choice of project, either creating a toy from “trash” or a

In this lesson, students physically manipulate a couple of springs and then collect data from a spring force Phet simulator. Next, they graph the data, calculate the area under the curve of their

Get the athletic shoes ready! Students calculate their own physical power output by walking, and then hustling/running, up a flight of stairs in this engaging lesson. The change in potential energy

This is a virtual 360° Tour of Coronado National Memorial Cave. Students can take the tour and follow along with the resources embedded in both the tour and the lesson. Students will locate the key

In this engaging lesson, students will develop an understanding of how solar panels convert sunlight into electrical energy. They will investigate factors affecting the amount of electricity generated

This hands-on lesson digs deeper into the study of weathering and erosion. It should be taught after students have an understanding of the sun’s energy and some of the ways it impacts the Earth. The

Students will build and use an anemometer to calculate wind speed and then use the wind speed to determine the affect wind has on temperature and the temperature that you feel (wind chill). Students

How do light rays reflect and refract? Does light travel at different speeds in different mediums? This lesson reviews how light waves can be reflected and refracted, and how light waves can change

This lesson will allow students to measure the health of the water from sources in their community or everyday life. Students will measure the pH from different sources using test strips and a color

In this hands-on lesson, students create solid fuel rockets to explore the idea of parabolic motion and outside factors which can affect the path of a rocket. This lesson has enrichment involving the

In this engaging lesson, students will connect the path of a straw rocket to the arc of a parabola. By changing the angle of the launcher, they will discover the relationship between distance and

In this engaging lesson, students use real-world data to explore criteria for air pollutants. If students continue to the next lesson in this series, they create data-based art to deepen and

Does light have energy? In this lesson, students will engage in a practical experiment to witness how light can induce changes such as heating, altering colors, and setting objects in motion. As

Students will explore the concepts of sound and rhythm through a STEM-focused lesson plan that integrates science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) with music. Students will engage in hands-on

This lesson was designed because students love to compete, and it primes them to use the Engineering Design process to build a boat and revise their design as needed. Students must use at least one

This STEAM lesson is ideal for Tucson/Pima County Middle School Students who can participate in the annual KIDStruction building contest but you can also duplicate many of the learning opportunities

This hands-on lesson helps students understand exponential functions by using an LED circuit. LED luminosity decreases at an exponential rate as more are added in series. As students add more lights