ORC Resource Types

Discipline: Science

Professional Commentary: This lesson is designed to help students better understand Earth's oceans and the role they play in the water cycle. The two-fold lesson begins with an experiment that demonstrates water evaporating and coming back down....

Discipline: Science

Professional Commentary: This resource introduces students to Earth's moon and the eight other planets in our solar system. Students learn about the geology, composition, and orbits of other planets by planning a trip to another planet....

Discipline: Science

Professional Commentary: The activities in this lesson focus on sorting and ordering things so that they can be easily retrieved at a later date. These experiences can provide students with the foundation they will need to address more sophisticated information management problems in the future....

Discipline: Science

Professional Commentary: During this lesson students observe the amount of water in an open container over time, and they observe the amount of water in a closed container over time. Students will compare and contrast the sets of observations over time....

Discipline: Science

Professional Commentary: This resource introduces students to our local star, the Sun. Specific topics of study include the sun's structure and features, including sun spots, magnetic fields, and solar flares....

Projects: Standards First

Discipline: Science

Professional Commentary: In this promising practice lesson students explore the relationship between a bird's beak and its ability to find food and survive in a given environment. Students also explore how various organisms satisfy their needs in the environments in which they are typically found....

Discipline: Science

Professional Commentary: Students illustrate where germs exist, how they can get into the body and affect the body, and how the body defends itself against them. In lower elementary school students learn about health in a general sense; e.g., that eating a balanced diet and getting exercise and rest helps people stay healthy....

Discipline: Science

Professional Commentary: Students explore the effect of heating and cooling on the dispersal of food coloring in water. The primary purpose of this activity is to allow students to observe that hotter conditions can speed up changes in materials....

Discipline: Science

Professional Commentary: This lesson is designed to help students understand the changes that a blue crab goes through during molting, and why it is important for scientists to understand these changes. It is important to understand the changes an animal goes through during its life span in order to research what may be causing that animal some difficulty...

Discipline: Science

Professional Commentary: Students experimentally measure the strength of a magnet and graph how the strength changes as the distance from the magnet increases, and as the barrier (masking tape) is built between the magnet and an iron object. This lesson presumes that students have had some introductory experiences with magnets and the types of materials that are magnetic....