Resource Type: Instructional Resource -- Best Practice Discipline: Mathematics Ohio Standards Alignment: Grades 6–8 Professional Commentary: This lesson features two creative twists on the standard lesson of having students measure several circles to discover that the ratio of the circumference to the diameter seems always to be a little more than 3. This lesson starts with squares, so students can first identify a simpler constant ratio (4) of perimeter to length of a side, before moving to the more difficult case of the circle. The second good idea is to measure with a variety of units, so students can more readily see that the ratio of the measurements remains constant, not only across different sizes of figures, but even for the same figure with different measurements.... Resource Type: Instructional Resource -- Best Practice Discipline: Mathematics Ohio Standards Alignment: Grades 8–12 Professional Commentary: This lesson is a nice example of using geometric models to gain a deeper understanding of numerical relationships. Students are challenged to arrange towers of small squares that are the same height as a given large square.... Resource Type: Instructional Resource -- Best Practice Discipline: Mathematics Ohio Standards Alignment: Grades 5–8 Professional Commentary: This two-lesson unit allows students to investigate the triangular numbers in an interesting, real-world context, the Supreme Court. Beginning with the classic handshake problem, students generate geometric and algebraic representations for the patterns they encounter and conclude with a formula for the nth triangular number.... 264 The Expanding Universe Resource Type: Instructional Resource -- Best Practice Discipline: Science Ohio Standards Alignment: Grades 11–12 Professional Commentary: This best practice lesson is designed to help students gain a deeper understanding of cosmology. Students develop a model of the expanding universe and gather evidence to support the Big Bang theory.... 265 Star Light, Star Bright Resource Type: Instructional Resource -- Best Practice Discipline: Science Ohio Standards Alignment: Grades 6–12 Professional Commentary: Star Light, Star Bright explores the nature of the electromagnetic spectrum. In this lesson, students identify the different properties of waves and the relationship that exists between energy, wavelength, and frequency.... Resource Type: Instructional Resource -- Best Practice Discipline: Science Ohio Standards Alignment: Grades 9–12 Professional Commentary: This best practice lesson engages students by having them observe visible spectra of known elements and identify an unknown element or combination of elements by visible spectra. Throughout this lesson students observe various light sources including tubes that have been filled with various types of gases.... 267 Carl Sandburg’s “Chicago”: Bringing a Great City Alive Resource Type: Instructional Resource -- Best Practice Discipline: English Language Arts Ohio Standards Alignment: Grades 9–12 Professional Commentary: In this lesson, students will look at Carl Sandburg's poem "Chicago" in a literary, historical, and biographical context. By first examining primary photographs, maps, and other documents that depict Chicago at the turn of the century, students will anticipate Sandburg's description of and attitudes towards the city.... 268 Finding Impact Craters with Landsat Resource Type: Instructional Resource -- Best Practice Discipline: Science Ohio Standards Alignment: Grades 6–10 Professional Commentary: In this best practice lesson students consider the sudden release of a tremendous amount of kinetic energy when an extraterrestrial object strikes the Earth. They write about the effects that such a collision might have on the land, atmosphere, water, and living things.... Career Fields: Agricultural & Environmental Systems, Engineering & Science Technologies, Health Science, Law & Public Safety, Transportation Systems Projects: Standards First 269 Nature’s Pharmacy: Killing the Cure? Resource Type: Instructional Resource -- Best Practice Discipline: Science Ohio Standards Alignment: Grades 9–12 Professional Commentary: This best practice lesson provides students with an opportunity to explore ethnobotany within the realm of pharmaceutical development. The lesson begins with students reading and discussing an interview with Mark Plotkin, president of the Amazon Conservation Team and research associate at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of Natural History.... Resource Type: Instructional Resource -- Best Practice Discipline: Mathematics Ohio Standards Alignment: Grades 7–10 Professional Commentary: Students build a family of cylinders, all from the same-sized paper, and discover the relationship between the dimensions of the paper and the resulting cylinders. They order the cylinders by their volumes and draw a conclusion about the relationship between a cylinder's dimensions and its volume.... |