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The students will identify patterns in fossils and explain their understanding of how rock layers are deposited. They will use the evidence from the activity to make inferences about what the Earth was like during the time the fossils existed. Students will develop an understanding of how fossils give scientists clues as to what the early Earth was like in the past. Students will also show how fossils can be used to relatively date rock layers using the Law of Superposition and index fossils.

Type: Lesson Plan

While working in groups, students will be provided various materials to design models that illustrate the refraction, reflection, and absorption of light.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson is a physical survey of our school's microhabitat. Students will make quantitative and qualitative observations of the flora and fauna, as well as making notes on the biotic and abiotic elements within the area they are examining. Through the collection and organization of data, students will make assumptions as to the relationships between all components comprising the microhabitat, including limiting factors.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students play a dice game to explore the differences between direct and indirect evidence. Student pairs roll dice and record the numbers rolled as a series of colors instead of numbers. Other pairs of students try to crack the color code to figure out the sequence of numbers rolled. In this way, students gain an understanding of how indirect evidence of climate change can be interpreted. In conclusion, the class discusses the various records made by humans and indirect evidence found in nature that can be studied to understand how climate has varied through time.

Key Concepts

• Scientists collect data from many sources to identify, understand, and interpret past changes in Earth's climate.
• Natural records of climate change, such as tree rings, ice cores, pollen and ocean sediments offer indirect evidence of climate change. They require knowledge of how the natural recorder works.
• Records made by humans , such as artwork, harvest records, and accounts of changing seasons, are more direct, but can be incomplete.

Type: Lesson Plan

Learn how math models can show why social distancing during a epidemic or pandemic is important in this interactive tutorial.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Learn about different types of scientific investigations as you discover the Zebra Longwing, a special type of butterfly that calls Florida home. In this interactive tutorial, you'll also learn how scientists collaborate with each other and share empirical evidence. 

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Charlotte Sjunneskog, currator of the Antarctic Reasearch Facility, discusses the ocean sediment cores that are collected and what scientists look for in these samples.

Download the CPALMS Perspectives video student note taking guide.

Type: Perspectives Video: Expert

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. The science fair project of two junior scientists in Nigeria may hold the key to ending "morning breath." Through experimentation, the two teenage girls determined that African walnuts were able to kill bacteria that cause bad breath. Their project was presented at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. The article outlines the scientific mindset that led William Herschel to arrive at the discovery of infrared light, an unexpected consequence of an experiment he was conducting. More generally, the article demonstrates the scientific process, from hypothesis to observation and from inference to conclusion.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. The text compares the bone and muscle structure of early Homo sapiens and Neandertals. It describes the ability to run long distances in one and not the other and explains how this difference may have evolved.

Type: Text Resource