In this lesson, students will analyze an informational text that explains how climate change is leading to the melting of tropical glaciers in Peru and how this is negatively impacting the residents there. Students will examine how the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is assisting the Peruvians in developing strategies to deal with the impact. The lesson plan includes a note-taking guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric. Numerous options to extend the lesson are also included.

Type: Lesson Plan

This diabetes MEA provides students with the opportunity to investigate finding affordable health coverage, a problem common to many people living with diabetes. Students must rank doctors based on certain costs and the specific services they provide. The main focus of this MEA is to determine the best doctors to go to for diabetic care and treatment, weighing factors such as insurance, cost, doctor visits, location, patient ratings, number of years in business, diet, exercise, weight management, stress management, network participation, and support groups.

Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students apply geometric measures and methods, art knowledge, contextual information, and utilize clear and coherent writing to analyze NASA space shuttle mission patches from both a mathematical design and visual arts perspective.

Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

The historic Cape Florida Lighthouse, often described as a conical tower, teems with mathematical applications. This lesson focuses on the change in volume and lateral surface area throughout its storied existence.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will explore representing the movement of objects and the relationship between the various forms of representation: verbal descriptions, value tables, graphs, and equations. These representations include speed, starting position, and direction. This exploration includes brief direct instruction, guided practice in the form of a game, and independent practice in the form of a word problem. Students will demonstrate understanding of this concept through a written commitment of their answer to the word problem supported with evidence from value tables, graphs, and equations.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students use measures and properties of rectangular prisms and cylinders to model and rank 3D printable designs of interchangeable wristwatch bands that satisfy physical constraints.

Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

This MEA requires students to design a custom snowboard for five Olympic athletes, taking into consideration how their height and weight affect the design elements of a snowboard. There are several factors that go into the design of a snowboard, and the students must use reasoning skills to determine which factors are more important and why, as well as what factors to eliminate or add based on the athlete's style and preferences. After the students have designed a board for each athlete, they will report their procedure and reasons for their decisions.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this activity students will conduct research then test the effects of adding products to soil. Students will learn about soil pH, what factors affect the pH of soil and how important it is to the growth of plants. Students will learn to use reputable resources to support their findings. Students will be expected to write a detailed lab report that thoroughly explores the concept while integrating the data from their investigation.

Type: Lesson Plan

County Fairs and Carnivals are wonderful. The smell of the food, the thrill of the rides, and the chance to win prizes make for a perfect combination.

In this Model Eliciting Activity, MEA Winner! Winner! is an activity about the Carnival coming to town with seven (7) exciting games: Rolling Dice, Bottle Bowling, Fishbowl, Weigh in on That! Pin the Wing, Colors, and Spin It! Student groups must look at the cost, rules, and awarded prizes in order to give the best rank order for these games. The groups will be expected to give details on the procedures they used to develop their ranking order. Furthermore, students will be expected to calculate the expected values of the Rolling Dice game and interpret the results in context.

All of a sudden more information is collected about these Carnival Games and now the savvy students must use this information to either revise or rewrite their procedures. Then, when the students are ready to attack this new dilemma, they will encounter Andy, a Carnival Lover, who has had a thrilling time but now discovers his funds are running low. Which games will the students select for Andy and why?

Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. MEAs resemble engineering problems and encourage students to create solutions in the form of mathematical and scientific models. Students work in teams to apply their knowledge of science and mathematics to solve an open-ended problem, while considering constraints and tradeoffs. Students integrate their ELA skills into MEAs as they are asked to clearly document their thought process. MEAs follow a problem-based, student centered approach to learning, where students are encouraged to grapple with the problem while the teacher acts as a facilitator. To learn more about MEA’s visit: https://www.cpalms.org/cpalms/mea.aspx.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this Model Eliciting Activity, MEA students will be presented with seven (7) medications that will help cure an individual of Phalangelpodscribitis (a fictitious ailment). Students will be given the effectiveness of each medication, the cost to patients with and without insurance, and the possible side effects of each. Each team will be tasked with ranking these medications for a client to help decide the pros and cons of the medications that should be used in treating Phalangelpodscribitis (PPS).

Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. MEAs resemble engineering problems and encourage students to create solutions in the form of mathematical and scientific models. Students work in teams to apply their knowledge of science and mathematics to solve an open-ended problem while considering constraints and tradeoffs. Students integrate their ELA skills into MEAs as they are asked to document their thought processes. MEAs follow a problem-based, student-centered approach to learning, where students are encouraged to grapple with the problem while the teacher acts as a facilitator. To learn more about MEAs visit: https://www.cpalms.org/cpalms/mea.aspx

Type: Lesson Plan

Can your school use $5000? What school doesn't?! Well, the money is available, but the student body must decide how the money will be spent!

5K and No More - Producing Data will enable students to fantasize about what they would do to improve their school if allowed to answer the question, "How would $5000 best be spent at your school?" The activity begins with students distinguishing the differences between a sample survey, an experiment, and an observational study through a pre-activity. After this, the students are given five (5) scenarios in which they must discuss the pros and cons of each. In life we want things to be fair, so students must constantly think about bias. The company in this MEA desires the most efficient and effective way to collect information from the students without having to talk to everyone ... who has that kind of time!

Now, just when the students have found the most efficient and effective way to get students to share their thoughts on where the money should go, more information is revealed about the High School. How do we account for the brains and the brawn, the perfect attendee and the most missed days, or for the goth or skater?

Your Savvy Statisticians in the making will figure it out and tell you ALL about it.

Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. MEAs resemble engineering problems and encourage students to create solutions in the form of mathematical and scientific models. Students work in teams to apply their knowledge of science and mathematics to solve an open-ended problem while considering constraints and tradeoffs. Students integrate their ELA skills into MEAs as they are asked to clearly document their thought processes. MEAs follow a problem-based, student-centered approach to learning, where students are encouraged to grapple with the problem while the teacher acts as a facilitator. To learn more about MEAs visit: https://www.cpalms.org/cpalms/mea.aspx

Type: Lesson Plan

Students learn and apply vocabulary, notation, concepts, and geometric construction techniques associated with circles and their tangents to a historical real-world scenario, the Mason-Dixon Line, and a hypothetical real-world scenario, the North-South Florida Line.

Type: Lesson Plan

The focus of this MEA is oil spills and their effect on the environment. In this activity, students from a fictitious class are studying about the effects of an oil spill on marine ecosystems and have performed an experiment in which they were asked to try to rid a teaspoon of corn oil from a baking pan filled with two liters of water as thoroughly as possible in a limited timeframe and with limited resources. By examining, analyzing, and evaluating experimental data related to resource usage, disposal, and labor costs, students must face the tradeoffs that are involved in trying to preserve an ecosystem when time, money, and resources are limited.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will study the concept of speciation and predict an island habitat"s biodiversity based on the island's size and distance from the mainland.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will discuss the costs and benefits of a variety of energy projects in a local area.

Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will investigate the motion of three objects of different masses undergoing free fall. Additionally, students will:

• Use spark timers to collect displacement and time data.
• Use this data to calculate the average velocity for the object during each interval.
• Graph this data on a velocity versus time graph, V-t. They find the slope of this graph to calculate acceleration.
• Calculate the falling object's acceleration from their data table and graph this data on an acceleration versus time graph, a-t.
• Use their Spark timer data paper, cut it into intervals, and paste these intervals into their displacement versus time graph.

Type: Lesson Plan

Using inquiry techniques, students, working in groups, are asked to design and conduct experiments to test the Law of Conservation of Energy and the Law of Conservation of Momentum. Upon being provided with textbooks, rulers, measuring tapes, stopwatches, mini-storage containers, golf balls, marbles, rubber balls, steel balls, and pennies, they work cooperatively to implement and revise their hypotheses. With limited guidance from the teacher, students are able to visualize the relationships between mass, velocity, height, gravitational potential energy, kinetic energy, and total energy as well as the relationships between mass, velocity, and momentum.

Type: Lesson Plan

The lesson is inquiry based, asking students to investigate phase changes and kinetic molecular theory. They are to measure and graph the heating of water while correctly analyzing how the particles kinetic energy changes through each phase change.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will investigate acceleration by releasing a toy car down a ramp.

They will collect data, calculate the velocity of the car as it goes down a ramp, graph this velocity verses time, and then find the slope of the V/T graph. They will understand that this represents the acceleration of the velocity of the car ((v2-v1) = a * (t2-t1)).

They will also plot an acceleration verses time graph (A/T), and use this graph to calculate the velocity of the car and for a certain time interval, A * T = V

Type: Lesson Plan

Through this engaging activity students work as a group to create models of isotopes with stickers and construction paper. Students also use models created by their peers to analyze the number of subatomic particles and determine isotopes' names. All worksheets and data collection sheets are included.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students compete with one another to design and build a roller coaster from insulation tubing and tape that will allow a marble to travel from start to finish with the lowest average velocity. In so doing, students learn about differences between distance and displacement, speed and velocity, and potential and kinetic energy. They also examine the Law of Conservation of Energy and concepts related to force and motion.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students learn about geometric construction tools and how to use them. Students will partition the circumference of a circle into three, four, and six congruent arcs which determine the vertices of regular polygons inscribed in the circle. An optional project is included where students identify, find, and use recycled, repurposed, or reclaimed objects to create "crafty" construction tools.

Type: Lesson Plan

This MEA is designed to have teams of 4 students look at data in a two-way table. Teams must discuss which categorical or quantitative factors might be the driving force of a song's popularity. Hopefully, popular songs have some common thread running through them.

Each team must write down their thought process for creating the most popular playlist of songs for a local radio station. A major constraint for each team is explaining how they will maximize the 11 minutes available with the most popular songs.

Students will be provided with letters from a local radio station, WMMM - where you can receive your "Daily Mix of Music and Math." WMMM has 10 songs and the researchers have collected data on each. Student teams: it is your responsibility to pick the playlist and write a letter to the station supporting why you made your selection. The winning team gets an opportunity to record a sound bite to introduce their playlist on the radio.

Now, just when the teams believe they have addressed WMMM's request, a twist is thrown in the midst, and the student teams must return to the drawing board and write a second letter to the station which may or may not affect the team's original playlist.

Do you have the musical swag to connect the associations?

Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. MEAs resemble engineering problems and encourage students to create solutions in the form of mathematical and scientific models. Students work in teams to apply their knowledge of science and mathematics to solve an open-ended problem while considering constraints and tradeoffs. Students integrate their ELA skills into MEAs as they are asked to clearly document their thought processes. MEAs follow a problem-based, student-centered approach to learning, where students are encouraged to grapple with the problem while the teacher acts as a facilitator. To learn more about MEAs visit: https://www.cpalms.org/cpalms/mea.aspx.

Type: Lesson Plan

The topic of this MEA is work and power. Students will be assigned the task of hiring employees to complete a given task. In order to make a decision as to which candidates to hire, the students initially must calculate the required work. The power each potential employee is capable of, the days they are available to work, the percentage of work-shifts they have missed over the past 12 months, and the hourly pay rate each worker commands will be provided to assist in the decision process. Full- and/or part-time positions are available. Through data analysis, the students will need to evaluate which factors are most significant in the hiring process. For instance, some groups may prioritize speed of work, while others prioritize cost or availability/dependability.

Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

The Sunspot Activity Case Study is set up as a series of short activities centered around readings or graphs. Students learn about solar cycles that cause a change in the amount of solar radiation received by the Earth. Students are asked to analyze how these solar cycles might be contributing to global warming and climate change.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will create 3 graphs showing the average monthly temperatures of 6 cities. Cities at similar latitudes are paired together on a graph. One city represents inland conditions and the other represents ocean-side conditions at that latitude. There are 2 versions of the activity. Version A for independent learners asks them to formulate a conclusions about how proximity to an ocean affects a community's climate. Version B for developing learners, follows each graph is the same set of 3 questions which are designed to focus student attention on the temperature differences experienced between inland and ocean-side communities. In the final portion of the activity, students are asked to come up with general temperature patterns for inland vs. ocean-side communities.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this activity, students will utilize measurement data provided in a chart to calculate areas, volumes, and densities of cookies. They will then analyze their data and determine how these values can be used to market a fictitious brand of chocolate chip cookie. Finally, they will integrate cost and taste into their analyses and generate a marketing campaign for a cookie brand of their choosing based upon a set sample data which has been provided to them.

Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this physically engaging activity students will debate with their peers whether a randomly drawn statement/diagram/compound name or formula applies to ionic bonds, covalent bonds or both types of bonds. Then sort themselves throughout the room accordingly. Peer support and collaboration are encouraged while the teacher facilitates proper placement. Activity concludes with a T chart graphic organizer and a writing assignment where students personify the bond types.

Type: Lesson Plan

The Turning Tires MEA provides students with an engineering problem in which they must work as a team to design a procedure to select the best tire material for certain situations. The main focus of the MEA is applying surface area concepts and algebra through modeling.

Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will research various types of amusement park rides and use their findings to design a feasible ride of their own. They will summarize their findings and present their ride design to the class. Each student will then write a persuasive letter to a local amusement park describing the reasons their ride design is the best.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students explore constant velocity through collecting data on a motorized buggy car. They collect data, graph their Displacement - Time (D-T) data to find the slope of the line and thus the velocity of their buggy car. They then formulate the D = V * t equation gotten from their graph and use it to extrapolate variables. Then they plot the Velocity - Time (V-T) to explore finding Displacement through that graph. They formulate V*t = Displacement from this graph. Finally, they use this equation to extrapolate "what if" questions about their buggy car.

Type: Lesson Plan

The Plants versus Pollutants MEA provides students with an open-ended problem in which they must work as a team to design a procedure to select the best plants to clean up certain toxins. This MEA requires students to formulate a phytoremediation-based solution to a problem involving cleaning of a contaminated land site. Students are provided the context of the problem, a request letter from a client asking them to provide a recommendation, and data relevant to the situation. Students utilize the data to create a defensible model solution to present to the client.

Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

Compare and contrast mitosis and meiosis in this interactive tutorial. You'll also relate them to the processes of sexual and asexual reproduction and their consequences for genetic variation.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Learn to distinguish between questions that can be answered by science and questions that science cannot answer. This interactive tutorial will help you distinguish between science and other ways of knowing, including art, religion, and philosophy.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Click "View Site" to open a full-screen version.

By the end of this module, teachers should be able to:

• Name the key instructional shifts in English Language Arts and Literacy
• Label the College and Career Readiness, also known as CCR, anchor standards for Reading
• Use the language of the Reading Standards for Literacy in Science and Technical Subjects to identify what students should know and be able to do
• Arrange and sequence the Reading Standards for Literacy in Science and Technical Subjects
• Distinguish the changes in rigor as a Reading standard progresses from one grade band to the next

This is Module 1 of 4 in the series, "Literacy across the Content Areas: Reading and Writing to Build Content Knowledge."

Type: Professional Development

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. The author tries to convince the reader that two pi, or tau, occurs more often in mathematics than pi by itself. The author provides several examples and indicates the history behind society's choice of pi rather than tau.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text is intended to support reading in the content area. Nuclear power has become a suggested solution to the issue of energy dependence, but what exactly is nuclear power? This article focuses on the many aspects of nuclear power including how it's created through fission and harnessed for electricity. Discussion of the pros and cons of nuclear energy and storage methods is also covered.

Type: Text Resource

Click "View Site" to open a full-screen version. This tutorial is designed to help secondary science teachers learn how to integrate literacy skills into their science curriculum. This tutorial will demonstrate a number of strategies teachers can impart to students to help students learn how to translate visual information into words. The focus on literacy across content areas is intended to help foster students' reading, writing, and thinking skills in multiple disciplines.

Type: Tutorial

Click "View Site" to open a full-screen version. This tutorial is designed to help secondary math teachers learn how to integrate literacy skills within their curriculum. This tutorial focuses on evaluating the reasoning and evidence of an argumentative claim. The focus on literacy across content areas is designed to help students independently build knowledge in different disciplines through reading and writing.

Type: Tutorial