5th grade students that are studying matter will be focusing in this lesson on the smallest unit of matter - the atom.
Students will use small marshmallows to construct a model of an atom.

In this activity, students will explore how the Law of Conservation of Energy (the First Law of Thermodynamics) applies to atoms, as well as the implications of heating or cooling a system. This activity focuses on potential energy and kinetic energy as well as energy conservation. The goal is to apply what is learned to both our human scale world and the world of atoms and molecules.

Overview:  I created this lab activity to provide my students with a fun way to learn about the components of the atom.  Students will investigate and understand that all matter is composed of atoms.  Key ideas include atoms consisting of particles including electrons, protons and neutrons.  This activity will be done after the introduction of the Periodic Table of Elements. This activity uses Playdough which is and always will be a favorite among kids. This activity provides support for SOL 6.5a in which students are expected to create and interpret a simplified, modern model of the structure of an atom.

Attractive forces between particles play a role in the properties of the three states of matter. The strength of the attractive force between particles is one factor that determines if a particular substance will be a solid, liquid, or gas. Vary the strength of the attractive force between particles in this model. Note that for a real substance, the strength does not vary, but this model shows how the strength of the attractive force determines the state of matter if the temperature is fixed.

I created this activity to help students learn to identify the author’s purpose. This activity is meant to help students see the completed strategy while asking them to analyze what is going on. This allows the students to pick apart the completed strategy in order to better understand it. This activity should be completed before asking students to identify the author’s purpose of an entire passage. When talking about author’s purpose use the acronym PIE (persuade, inform, and entertain). This is an engaging way to practice SOL 4.6b.

This video explores autonomous cars with a research scientist, engineer, and team lead at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI).

This skit is a project that I use along with the Avancemos 1 Spanish curriculum. It aligns with Unit 5 Lesson 2 (party and chores vocabulary, affirmative tú commands, hay que and acabar de phrases). I usually opt for flexible grouping and allot five to six 55-minute class periods for this project. Students always enjoy these skits and wow me every year with their creativity. Just remind them (if necessary) that all skit content must be school appropriate.

Modeling traffic data is important for urban planning, creating transportation systems, and even predicting how much foot traffic a retail store can expect in a given day. This genre of dynamic data science activities could be classified as “finding a needle in a haystack,” giving students a chance to mine big data to make insights about traffic use. According to the Bay Area Rapid Transit District, about 400,000 people used the BART system daily in 2018. In BARTy, students investigate BART data from 2015 to learn about passenger use and explore traffic patterns.

Learn how to set up a safe backyard habitat, including the critical components to make your yard a sanctuary for wild animals. Join Wildlife Center staff and backyard naturalists to learn how we can create safe spaces to attract wildlife while minimizing our impact and chance of disturbance for our wild neighbors.

There is a lot of science to discover in your backyard! Check out this collection of activities to learn about wind, animals, plants and more.

Objective:1. Go over Rules and Court Regulations2. Set up tournament. Double Elimination bracket attached (10 teams) can be modified and website attached3. Lessons on Smash and Drop Shot from UGA. 

Badminton Lesson1. Lesson Plan (serve, overhead clear and drop shot)2 UGA inforamtional video and info sheet 3. Quiz on Badminton

In this experiment, two chemicals that can be found around the house will be mixed within a plastic baggie, and several chemical changes will be observed.

Video lesson intended for grades 3-5 with a mindfulness moment, warmup, instruction and practice of basic balance and transfer of weight movements, and a sequence of two movements. Video is 15:48 minutes in length.Video created by Virginia's Chief Movement Officers cadre in collaboration with Focused Fitness, Virginia Department of Health, and Virginia Department of Education.

This simulation serves as an introduction to balancing equations, the included student sheet by Elyse Zimmer is just one of the guided inquiry sheets available with this resource. The google form assessment will allow you to gauge student understanding after your lessons on balancing equations.

Students are provided situations of tax, tip, discount, and other practical consumer applications. Students need to be able to determine if their situation is a credit or debit in order to complete a checkbook register on their devices.

In the Ball Bounce task, teams of three students collect real-time ball bounce data for two minutes to organize, display and use to form predictions. After collecting and organizing their data, students first observe how the data behave. Then they make predictions using data, scatterplots, or the equation of the curve of best fit to solve a
practical problem. This task offers students collaborative experience in using mathematical models of linear functions.

Students collect position-time data for a ball rolling down a ramp. Students then plug the data into the companion Excel document, which automatically plots the data for them. Students then answer the analysis questions on the companion document.

Teachers will implement a lesson recognizing and naming shapes. The teacher will blow up balloons (at least one for each student) and have the four different shapes drawn on them.  Students will hit balloons around the room, while keeping them off the ground, in a designated area until the music stops or the teacher says freeze.  Students will then grab a balloon and then identify and locate the matching shape card that is  drawn on the ground or posted around the room. 

This resource consists of a Java applet and expository text. The applet is a simulation of the ballot experiment: The votes in an election are randomly counted. The event of interest is that the winning candidate is always ahead in the vote count.