Students use both analytical and creative skills to adapt passages from a novel with significant internal dialogue and conflict, such as Toni Morrison's "Beloved", into a ten-minute play.

Students see how different levels of surface tension affect water's ability to move. Teams "race" water droplets down tracks made of different materials, making measurements, collecting data, making calculations, graphing results and comparing to their predictions and the properties of each surface, determining which surface exhibits the highest (or lowest) level of surface tension with water. They apply their results to make engineering recommendations for real-world applications.

What can students do to make learning really stick?

Cognitive science tells us it's NOT to re-read our notes or textbook.

Instead, practice "retrieval" -- recalling what we've learned out of our brains, not our books.

This post outlines 10 simple tips and strategies you can use in class to make learning long-term, including:
1. Brain dumps
2. Two things
3. Retrieve taking (instead of note taking)
4. Student-produced quizzes
5. Guided conversation
6. Now, then, and way back
7. Self testing
8. Recall information visually
9. Retrieval mapping
10. White board exit ticket

1. What do you think the term cyber-bullying means?
2. What are some ways that kids can be cyber-bullied?
3. Has anyone ever sent you a mean email, text or instant message (IM)?
4. Have you ever sent someone else a text, email or IM that was mean?
5. What can you do if you are a victim of cyber-bullying?

Students will learn about simple machines and will be able to recognize them through examples of farm machinery.

Terry Fox is a Canadian hero. One of Terry’s main goals was to create awareness around how cancer affects everyone, so that they become inspired to help find a cure for cancer. He gathered support around this cause by applying his strong spirit of determination and his story has inspired so many people around the world. In this lesson, students will have the opportunity to share their personal stories through the medium of art. Computer art is amazing because anyone can create something cool regardless of ability.

This short video and interactive assessment activity is designed to teach third graders an overview of tessellations.

Test statistics allow us to quantify how close things are to our expectations or theories. Instead of going on our gut feelings, they allow us to add a little mathematical rigor when asking the question: “Is this random… or real?” Today, we’ll introduce some examples using both t-tests and z-tests and explain how critical values and p-values are different ways of telling us the same information. We’ll get to some other test statistics like F tests and chi-square in a future episode.

Students measure different types of small-sized beams and calculate their respective moments of inertia. They compare the calculations to how much the beams bend when loads are placed on them, gaining insight into the ideal geometry and material for load-bearing beams.

Students learn that a healthy ecosystem is one in which multiple species are each able to meet their needs in a relatively stable web of life. Students learn that multiple species can have their needs met in the same ecosystem and that humans play a role in managing species within an ecosystem.

Students conduct several simple lab activities to learn about the five fundamental load types that can act on structures: tension, compression, shear, bending, and torsion. To learn the telltale marks of failure caused by these load types, they break foam insulation blocks by applying these five load types, carefully examine each type of fracture pattern (break in the material) and make drawings of the fracture patterns.

As relief organizations drop supplies in remote areas of need, students will design a device to protect an egg when dropped from a specific height.

This awesome science video explores how engineers make a plan to test all of the variables for the problem they are seeking a solution to.

Students build model caverns and bury them in a tray of sand. They test the models by dropping balls onto them to simulate an asteroid hitting the Earth. By molding papier-mache or clay around balloons (to form domes), or around small cardboard boxes (to form rectangular structures), students create unique models of their cavern designs.

Students gain experience using the software/systems (engineering) design process, specifically focusing on the testing phase. This problem-based learning activity uses the design process to solve open-ended challenges. In addition to learning about test cases for testing software, students utilize the design process as a vehicle to work through a problem and arrive at a solution.

This activity was designed for blind learners, but all types of learners can use it to discover how much load can be carried by index cards folded into various shapes, resembling columns.

JUnit is a testing method that is included with NetBeans (Java) installs or can be downloaded from the web and included in the Java build. In this activity, students design tests for a provided Java class before the class methods are constructed using a process called test-driven development. To create a design, the software/system design process, which is a specific case of the engineering design process, is followed. After students create a design, it is implemented and tested and if necessary, the design undergoes editing to make sure it functions by testing the Java class correctly. To conclude the activity, students write the methods in the Java class using their tests to debug the program.