Students will identify nouns, verbs, and adjectives visible in two paintings depicting a stormy and calm landscape, respectively. They will write a narrative inspired by the paintings, paying attention to transitional phrases and sensory details. Students will use color and line to create their own calm or stormy landscape.

This art history video discussion examines Andrea Mantegna's "Camera degli Sposi" (Frescos in the ducal palace, Mantua), 1465-74.

This art history video discussion examines Andrea Pisano, Reliefs for the Campanile in Florence, c. 1336.

Students prepare for the associated activity in which they investigate acceleration by collecting acceleration vs. time data using the accelerometer of a sliding Android device. Based on the experimental set-up for the activity, students form hypotheses about the acceleration of the device. Students will investigate how the force on the device changes according to Newton's Second Law. Different types of acceleration, including average, instantaneous and constant acceleration, are introduced. Acceleration and force is described mathematically and in terms of processes and applications.

In the first of two sequential lessons, students create mobile apps that collect data from an Android device's accelerometer and then store that data to a database. This lesson provides practice with MIT's App Inventor software and culminates with students writing their own apps for measuring acceleration. In the second lesson, students are given an app for an Android device, which measures acceleration. They investigate acceleration by collecting acceleration vs. time data using the accelerometer of a sliding Android device. Then they use the data to create velocity vs. time graphs and approximate the maximum velocity of the device.

Students develop an app for an Android device that utilizes its built-in internal sensors, specifically the accelerometer. The goal of this activity is to teach programming design and skills using MIT's App Inventor software (free to download from the Internet) as the vehicle for learning. The activity should be exciting for students who are interested in applying what they learn to writing other applications for Android devices. Students learn the steps of the engineering design process as they identify the problem, develop solutions, select and implement a possible solution, test the solution and redesign, as needed, to accomplish the design requirements.

Students investigate the motion of a simple pendulum through direct observation and data collection using Android® devices. First, student groups create pendulums that hang from the classroom ceiling, using Android smartphones or tablets as the bobs, taking advantage of their built-in accelerometers. With the Android devices loaded with the (provided) AccelDataCapture app, groups explore the periodic motion of the pendulums, changing variables (amplitude, mass, length) to see what happens, by visual observation and via the app-generated graphs. Then teams conduct formal experiments to alter one variable while keeping all other parameters constant, performing numerous trials, identifying independent/dependent variables, collecting data and using the simple pendulum equation. Through these experiments, students investigate how pendulums move and the changing forces they experience, better understanding the relationship between a pendulum's motion and its amplitude, length and mass. They analyze the data, either on paper or by importing into a spreadsheet application. As an extension, students may also develop their own algorithms in a provided App Inventor framework in order to automatically note the time of each period.

In this lesson, students learn to ask the right questions about the validity of surveys.

Theres no question that students will be able to compose good survey questions by the end of this lesson.

An interactive applet and associated web page that introduce the concept of an angle. An angle made from two line segments is shown that the user can adjust by dragging the end points of the segments. In real time, as the angles is changed by the user, the angle measure in degrees is shown and a message telling what type of angle it currently is: acute, right, obtuse, reflex or straight. Applet can be enlarged to full screen size for use with a classroom projector. This resource is a component of the Math Open Reference Interactive Geometry textbook project at http://www.mathopenref.com.

This task provides a construction of the angle bisector of an angle by reducing it to the bisection of an angle to finding the midpoint of a line segment. It is worth observing the symmetry -- for both finding midpoints and bisecting angles, the goal is to cut an object into two equal parts. The conclusion of this task is that they are, in a sense, of exactly equivalent difficulty -- bisecting a segment allows us to bisect and angle (part a) and, conversely, bisecting an angle allows us to bisect a segment (part b). In addition to seeing how these two constructions are related, the task also provides an opportunity for students to use two different triangle congruence criteria: SSS and SAS.

An interactive applet and associated web page that demonstrate the bisector of an angle. An angle is shown using two line segments that can be dragged to change the angle measure. The angle is bisected by a line which moves while dragging to always divide the angle into two equal angles. The angle measures can be turned off for class discussions. Applet can be enlarged to full screen size for use with a classroom projector. This resource is a component of the Math Open Reference Interactive Geometry textbook project at http://www.mathopenref.com.

An interactive applet that acts as a 'digital manipulative' for explaining angles measured in degrees. The applet has an angle formed from two segment that can be dragged around in a circle. The angle measure is shown against a 'clock face' calibrated in degrees. The measures can be turned off for class angle estimation discussions. Applet can be enlarged to full screen size for use with a classroom projector. This resource is a component of the Math Open Reference Interactive Geometry textbook project at http://www.mathopenref.com.

Students will learn about the Transit of Venus through reading a NASA press release and viewing a NASA eClips video that describes several ways to observe transits. Then students will study angular measurement by learning about parallax and how astronomers use this geometric effect to determine the distance to Venus during a Transit of Venus. This activity is part of the Space Math multimedia modules that integrate NASA press releases, NASA archival video, and mathematics problems targeted at specific math standards commonly encountered in middle school textbooks. The modules cover specific math topics at multiple levels of difficulty with real-world data and use the 5E instructional sequence.

Students analyze the relationship between wheel radius, linear velocity and angular velocity by using LEGO(TM) MINDSTORMS(TM) NXT robots. Given various robots with different wheel sizes and fixed motor speeds, they predict which has the fastest linear velocity. Then student teams collect and graph data to analyze the relationships between wheel size and linear velocity and find the angular velocity of the robot given its motor speed. Students explore other ways to increase linear velocity by changing motor speeds, and discuss and evaluate the optimal wheel size and desired linear velocities on vehicles.

Summary: This year my students created a concept map to summarize their learning in the science unit of
animal adaptations and classification. I created a list of terms and concepts that students must have on
their map, and offered opportunities for students to add their own knowledge. Prior to the assignment
the students and I created an assessment rubric to evaluate their learning.

Hank and his cat Cameo help teach us about animal behavior and how we can discover why animals do the things they do.

Hank discusses the process by which organisms grow and develop, maintaining that, in the end, we're all just tubes.

Animal Diversity Web (ADW) is an online database of animal natural history, distribution, classification, and conservation biology at the University of Michigan

Animal Diversity Web has:

Thousands of species accounts about individual animal species. These may include text, pictures of living animals, photographs and movies of specimens, and/or recordings of sounds. Students write the text of these accounts and we cannot guarantee their accuracy.
Descriptions of taxa above the species level, especially phyla, classes, orders and families. Hundreds of hyperlinked pages and images illustrate the traits and general biology of these groups. Professional biologists prepare these pieces, for the most part.

Animal Diversity Web Is An Online Encyclopedia.

Supporting inquiry-based research projects, the Animal Inquiry interactive invites elementary students to explore animal facts and habitats using writing prompts to guide and record their findings.