In this lesson, students are introduced to the need for encryption and simple techniques for breaking (or cracking) secret messages. Students try their own hand at cracking a message encoded with the classic Caesar cipher and also a Random Substitution Cipher. Students should become well-acquainted with idea that in an age of powerful computational tools, techniques of encryption will need to be more sophisticated. The most important aspect of this lesson is to understand how and why encryption plays a role in all of our lives every day on the Internet, and that making good encryption is not trivial. Students will get their feet wet with understanding the considerations that must go into making strong encryption in the face of powerful computational tools that can be used to crack it. The need for secrecy when sending bits over the Internet is important for anyone using the Internet.

Students will learn that events are a useful way to control when an action happens, and can even be used to make make multiple things act in sync. In programming, you can use events to respond to a user controlling it (like pressing buttons or clicking the mouse). Events can make your program more interesting and interactive.

This amazing resource houses curated activities for Elementary students to explore coding during the week of Hour of Code.
Each slide is "grade-specific" & interactive, with the idea students explore one a day. Feel free to copy, edit, and share.
(Thanks, Tim!)

This art history video discussion looks at a "House Altar" depicting Akhenaten, Nefertiti and Three of their Daughters, limestone, New Kingdom, Amarna period, 18th dynasty, c.1350 BCE (Agyptisches Museum/Neues Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin).

Students brainstorm and discuss the different types of materials used to build houses in various climates. They build small models of houses and test them in different climates.

Students review the electrical appliances used at home and estimate the energy used for each. The results can help to show the energy hogs that could benefit from conservation or improved efficiency.

Students complete three different activities to evaluate the energy consumption in a household and explore potential ways to reduce that consumption. The focus is on conservation and energy efficient electrical devices and appliances. The lesson reinforces the relationship between power and energy and associated measurements and calculations required to evaluate energy consumption. The lesson provides the students with more concrete information for completing their culminating unit assignment.

This informational text explores how and why igloos are built and how ice can act as an insulator. It asks if igloo building will end with climate change. It is written at a reading level appropriate for Kindergarten through first grade. It is a full-color pdf file that can be printed, cut, and folded to form a 2 1/8" by 2 3/4" book. It contains color photographs and illustrations.

Students apply their mathematics and team building skills to explore the concept of rocketry. They learn about design issues faced by aerospace engineers when trying to launch rocketships or satellites in order to land them safely in the ocean, for example. Students learn the value of designing within constraints while brainstorming a rocketry system using provided materials and a specified project budget. Throughout the design process, teamwork is emphasized since the most successful launches occur when groups work effectively to generate creative ideas and solutions to the rocket challenge.

Students gain first-hand experience on how friction affects motion. They build a hovercraft using air from a balloon to levitate a craft made from a compact disc (CD), learning that a bed of air under an object significantly reduces the friction as it slides over a surface.

Students learn about friction and its effects on motion by building model hovercrafts.

Kevin Slavin argues that we're living in a world designed for -- and increasingly controlled by -- algorithms. In this riveting talk from TEDGlobal, he shows how these complex computer programs determine: espionage tactics, stock prices, movie scripts, and architecture. And he warns that we are writing code we can't understand, with implications we can't control. A quiz, thought provoking question, and links for further study are provided to create a lesson around the 15-minute video. Educators may use the platform to easily "Flip" or create their own lesson for use with their students of any age or level.

ŕHow Animals TalkĚŇ is an informational, nonfiction selection describing how various animals communicate or send messages. Animals communicate with each other to warn of danger, to share feelings, to attract a mate, and even prove dominance.

Students are introduced to a challenge question. Towards answering the question, they generate ideas for what they need to know about medicines and how they move through our bodies, watch a few short videos to gain multiple perspectives, and then learn lecture material to obtain a basic understanding of how antibiotics kill bacteria in the human body. They learn why different forms of medicine (pill, liquid or shot) get into the blood stream at different speeds.

The purpose of us feeling anxiety in our bodies is so that we will ‘DO SOMETHING’ to try to eliminate the event, situation or thing that we are worried about. This is a primitive and basic survival instinct that we still have deeply embedded in our brains. The problem is…we don’t need to run away from saber tooth tigers anymore!

However, instead of having the idea of “I need to get rid of this feeling” we need to change it to “whatever is happening right at this moment, I CAN HANDLE that.”

What we need to do is learn about anxiety and how it works in our bodies and then break anxiety down into small pieces, and take it step by step. It may start with learning about how anxiety works and feels in our bodies; the sensations we get from anxiety. Starting with what happens in our brain and body when we are anxious. Then we need to learn what we can do with those sensations to lessen them and our anxiety. Then we work on our anxious thoughts and work to change the dialogue we have in our heads about anxiety. Essentially we break anxiety down into small chewable bites. This is in order to give you some success.

Parents and school staff will find the following resources useful for determining how well their school setting accomodates children with asthma. (National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute)

Students teams determine the size of the caverns necessary to house the population of the state of Alabraska from the impending asteroid impact. They measure their classroom to determine area and volume, determine how many people the space could sleep, and scale this number up to accommodate all Alabraskans. They work through problems on a worksheet and perform math conversions between feet/meters and miles/kilometers.

Using the fundamentals of set theory, explore the mind-bending concept of the "infinity of infinities" -- and how it led mathematicians to conclude that math itself contains unanswerable questions.

This resource shows how generations of explorers have taken us, step by step, further into the expanse of the universe. Using photographs and text, this resource takes readers out of our solar system, into the realm of the stars, the galaxies, and finally the vast panorama of the observable universe.

This guide will help you to use search engines, such as Google, to access useful, quality information in a timely manner.