Kindergarten Ideas - "Construct questions, give reasons, and share findings about all living things." This is a great combo with literacy. Generating questions is a big drive for science education, so use this indicator to have the kids come up with really great questions about why certain animals look the way they do. They'll need some help in researching the answers, but it could be fun to have them present one fact they learned to the class. Sample questions might include: "Why do elephants have trunks?" "Why are flamingos pink?" or "Why does my dog snore so loud?"
First Grade Ideas - "Communicate observations about plants and animals, including humans, and how they resemble their parents. " Here's a cool activity from the Supplemental Material: "Using two different kinds (e.g., White pumpkin, Cinderella pumpkin) of pumpkins (or other faster growing vegetable), students can investigate the relationship of seeds to pumpkins by dissecting seeds, planting seeds, and producing pumpkins. Students can compare the original pumpkins (parent) to the new pumpkins (offspring) to determine which offspring belongs to which parent. Record similarities and differences between generations as well as between the two different kinds."
Now it might be a bit hard to find pumpkins in February, but you could do this with squash, or something along those lines. I always liked to get a little greenery into my classroom in the dead of winter, so here's a great excuse for that. Seem me if you need grow lights, but they're not strictly necessary if you're not planning to grow the plants to maturity.
Second Grade Ideas - This is a great lesson on how rocks are formed. Check it out:
Lots to prep, but worth it. Let me know if you need help gathering stuff.
Third Grade Ideas - Heat and Light. I'll start off with a few easy ones. "Compare temperatures in sunny and shady places." Go outside, and see what parts of the playground still have snow. Couldn't have an easier science exploration than that. Have them construct an explanation in their science journals to explain it.
"Identify and discuss as a class some misconceptions about heat sources (e.g., clothes do not produce heat, ice cubes do not give off cold)." Put one thermometer on a table, and another wrapped in a jacket right next to it. Predict which one will get warmer. Spoiler Alert: neither! Have them make a data table during the exploration. Explain that coats hold in our body heat, which is why they make us feel warmer. The ice one is going to be a little trickier. It's important for them to know that heat is energy. It's literally the movement of the molecules inside a thing, like the squirming of kids on a bus. So there's no such thing as "unenergy" and scientifically speaking, there's no such thing as an energy of "cold." There's just less heat.
Fourth Grade Ideas - Here's a bite sized one: "Describe how the water cycle relates to the water supply in your community." Watch the snow pack percentages change through out the season. https://www.ksl.com/?nid=978 Discuss how our community is pretty unique in that we depend so heavily on our snow pack. Look at a map of our watershed: http://www.mappery.com/map-of/Wasatch-Front-Watershed-Map compared with a topographical map, and see if they notice what creates the watershed boundaries. Hint: Not all kids realize that water only flows downhill! This is a great time to look at the general topography of our state, and see how we're different from California. This map is a little hard to read, but it starts to get the idea across: http://weather.unisys.com/usgs/
Fifth Grade Ideas - Heredity. For this week, I will give you one link. It is amazing. http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/
K I lied, here's a second link. This one is for the position statement from the USOE about the E word: Evolution. Here's the summary, which might surprise you: teach evolution. It's scientific fact.
Link, towards the top of the page: http://www.schools.utah.gov/CURR/science/Resources/Evolution.aspx
When I taught 5th grade, the common knowledge was "You're not allowed to teach evolution." I'm not sure where this notion originated, and maybe once it was true, but it isn't anymore. Thank goodness. Evolution is completely central to the ideas of heredity, and it belongs in our classrooms as a way to explain so much about the natural world.
And if anyone tells you "it's just a theory," fill them in on the fact that scientists use the word "theory" to mean a body of knowledge. It's like music theory - experts are not still undecided if the C scale has any flats.
Sixth Grade Ideas - We're getting into Heat, Light, and Sound. Let's start with heat, and what heat actually is. Heat is the measurement of molecular motion in a thing. Molecules are constantly in motion - in a gas, they zip around, in a liquid, they swim around, and in a solid, they jiggle. This is all simplified, but it'll work for explaining to kids. The measure of all this molecular motion is called heat. So if we have a liquid that's hotter than another liquid, those molecules are actually moving around faster. Show this with the good old "one drop of food coloring in a hot vs. cold liquid" thing. The red one in the picture below is the hotter liquid - and look how much more the drop has spread out. Because the molecules are moving around faster. Again, as usual, it's actually a little more complicated than that, but that'll work for 6th graders.
So we know that "heat" means movement of molecules. It's easier to see then how this energy is transferred. If the person next to you keeps bumping into you, you'll receive some of their energy. This "bumping into" is conduction. Same mechanism with convection, except it's fluid molecules (gas or liquid) that are doing the bumping. So as they get more excited, they can take up a little more space. Imagine someone who's rocking out a little harder than everyone else at a concert - you'd give them a little more room. More room means less density, hence why these things tend to rise. As they heat up, they become less dense. (Not so with solids, btw.) So there's your convection: it's still molecules playing bumper cars, but now with a flow.
Radiation is a whole different mechanism. If the definition of heat is the movement of molecules, then with no molecules, there can be no heat. Like in the vacuum of space. But how then does the sun's heat reach us? Well, it doesn't. The sun's electromagnetic radiation reaches us. Those waves can travel without a medium, like light. Well, it is light. Light is a form of electromagnetic radiation. And when it hits our planets, it excites the molecules here, just like your microwave excites the molecules of your food. But the microwave itself isn't producing heat - it's producing waves. And those waves convert to heat, but only when they hit something. Now it's a little confusing, because our sun also just happens to be really hot. But the way that heat gets here is totally different from convection or conduction.
