STEM Lesson Plans

In this lesson, students focus on the engineering design process to help them design, build, and test a functional bow and arrow system like the character Brian Robeson in the book "Hatchet". Students

After completing a unit on weather, students will be challenged to research, design, construct and attach a snow plow to their Edison robot. Then they will create a scratch code that will navigate

This is a great opportunity to show students that coding can be a lot of fun, and it doesn’t have to be scary. Many high school students with little to no prior coding experience often automatically

This 45-minute lesson uses the book, "How to Catch an Elf", to lead into a cooperative engineering design lesson where students work in teams to build a humane trap to capture an elf.

This is the second part of this unit on the duff layer in a forest. After learning after duff and its potential impact on forest fires in the last lesson, students will be following the engineering

In this lesson students are introduced to the idea that DNA is the code to create proteins and that proteins can be structural or functional. Students are given a problem to create a model of a

This lesson is PART 4 of a four-lesson unit, which focuses on futures thinking, the phenomenon of electricity, closed-system agriculture, and water as a renewable energy resource. “The City of Ember”

This lesson is PART 3 of a four-lesson unit, which focuses on futures thinking, the phenomenon of electricity, closed-system agriculture, and water as a renewable energy resource. “The City of Ember”

This lesson is PART 2 of a four-lesson unit, which focuses on futures thinking, the phenomenon of electricity, closed-system agriculture, and water as a renewable energy resource. “The City of Ember”

This lesson is PART 1 of a four-lesson unit, which focuses on futures thinking, the phenomenon of electricity, closed-system agriculture, and water as a renewable energy resource. “The City of Ember”

This lesson is a 3-4 day lesson on Public Service Announcements for reusing commonly discarded item versus trashing them. The lessons include the power of a Public Service Announcement, components to

This lesson uses a PhET Simulation to allow students to collect data on the orbits of planets around our Sun, then summarize and share their results. It is designed for students in Grades 9-12.

This is a multi-day engineering design project. I use this for 2 weeks, a total of ten 50-minute periods. Students will research and design a dog house, creating a 3D model in a web-based computer

In this lesson students will use their climate zone and plant information to create a model of a garden. They will use a variety of charts and graphs to determine what plants will grow best given the

This is the first of 4 lessons where students will propose and configure a school garden using criteria given by the principal. Students will work in groups of 3 to determine configurations. They will

Students will use an understanding of the sun as an energy and heat source to design a device to direct the sun's heat to aid with growing plants. The students will go through the 5 E's and the

Students will be using simple equipment to demonstrate the 3 laws of motion. They will be incorporating technology, math, and the scientific method to demonstrate what they know.

In this lesson, students work with an assigned customer to create a 3D-printed nameplate. Working through the steps of the engineering design process, students use a 3D modeling software, Tinkercad

This is a hands-on activity where students can visualize, using Skittles as atoms, the concept of balancing chemical reactions. Many students get thrown off by the fact that products often look, smell

In this lesson plan, students will be able to build a simple electric motor and study how simple changes affect the motor's rotation. They will learn how energy comes in many forms, and how electric

Students will be able to collaboratively build, and program a simple robot using Lego Spike Prime kits. Students will demonstrate basic skills in robotics and coding by successfully constructing their

By the end of this lesson, students will understand the unique adaptations of desert tortoises and the importance of conserving their habitat. Students also engineer a habitat for the desert tortoise.

Student teams design insulated beverage cups with the challenge to test them to determine which material works best as an insulator to keep a hot beverage warm for as long as possible. Students test

Students design and create a sculpture out of recycled materials and then calculate the surface area and volume of the sculpture that they created. They will then utilize the surface area to try and