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Watch the video first, then take the quiz

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How old is that fossil in the window? Learn how scientists use a radioactive isotope called carbon-14 to find out the answer!

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Watch the video first, then take the quiz

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What gives ions their charge? And can you put anions in a salad? Find out in this shocking expose.

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Try this activity to learn elements 1-20

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Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education

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Free STEM-related lesson plans and curriculum for K-12 educators

There is a wealth of STEM curricula and classroom resources available to assist educators in developing in students thinking, reasoning, teamwork, investigative and creative skills that they can use in all areas of their lives. The Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) is committed to providing relevant and complete materials to assist educators in engaging students in STEM subjects. Below you will find activities and free lesson plans that support classroom learning.

K-12 Lesson Plans

Teachers! Are you looking for fun ways to integrate STEM in your classroom? Below are dozens of free lesson plans to help your students embrace STEM education.

View Lesson Plans

Science

This activity is "egg-citing"! In this activity, students will learn about solutes, solvents, and solutions, while discovering saturation and supersaturation. Students will be able to observe sedimentation causing crystals to form on the surface of the eggshell. The result is a phenomenal eggshell geode!

Science

Milk this activity for all its worth! In this engaging activity, students will create plastic from milk and vinegar. Students will learn about physical and chemical reactions and their reversibility. This reaction involves household materials and can be used to demonstrate environmentally friendly practices and renewable resources.

STEM

In this multi‐day lesson, students will set out to design a rocket to help NASA get back to the moon by 2024. They will investigate the best rocket fuel for the highest launch of an Alka‐Seltzer powered rocket and create an outer shell for the rocket to help it fly as straight as possible. The students will use makerspace supplies, computers, and a 3D printer (optional) in order to design and build their rocket. The students will gather and analyze data throughout the lessons and apply the data to improvements of their prototype. Student engagement is bound to blast off in this engaging, crosscurricular lesson!

Reading, Technology

Zac the Robot needs your help! In this three day, interactive lesson, students will learn color and shape recognition, matching of colors and the appropriate words, and coding! Through the use of the story book Zac the Robot by Stephanie Lanier, students will make connections between literature, real-world shapes and colors, and robots. This lesson will "program" the students' love of literature and technology!

Distinguishing Between Physical & Chemical Changes

Science

This 2-day lesson should allow students to review their understanding of physical and chemical properties and emphasize the difference between physical and chemical changes. Specific realworld examples of changes in matter should allow students to apply criteria that are used to differentiate between the changes. Students should then have the opportunity to assess their own level of understanding. This lesson should leave students knowing that physical and chemical changes matter!

What Can I Do as a Student to Make a Positive Impact on the Environment?

Science

This lesson is electric! In this engaging unit, students will discover what they can do for the environment. Students will learn about human impact, efficiency, climate change, renewable and nonrenewable energy, sustainability, and much more! Throughout these exciting activities, students will evaluate real-world applications of gasoline versus hybrid cars, battery power versus solar power, energy consumption, greenhouse emissions, evolving technology, and long-term effects, in addition to evaluating their own town's energy consumption. In this cross-curricular unit, students will apply mathematical reasoning to graph, discover, average, predict, and evaluate data. Students will participate in data collection, investigation, research, argument, debate, application, modeling, and discussion. This unit will charge your students up to become informed environmental citizens!

K-12 th grade

STEM

Clue: an awesome review game. Answer: Clue-ology! This end-of-year review game gives students an opportunity to interact with and review a wide range of concepts and terms that have been explored throughout a term or year. Students will make connections, engage in SEL practices, communicate through original thought with peers, and interpret ideas. This engaging review game will allow students to recall information from the entire course, while being competitive and having fun!

STEM

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a buzzword review game! In this exciting review game, students will recall vocabulary learned in this year's class in preparation for end-of-year testing. Students will alternate between defining the term and guessing. This memory game will help students to recall terms used throughout the year. With this review, students will be buzzing with excitement!

Building a Solar Oven using Design Thinking

Science

Students will apply their learning of energy and energy transfer in the design, build, and test of a solar oven. This lesson is a way of using a summative task as an assessment for learning. Students will work in small groups to solve problems, give quality feedback, conduct research, and build and test a prototype.

Modeling, Questions, and Climate Change

Science

In this lesson, students will create and refine a model of the factors contributing to global climate change. They will use this model as the focal point for generating questions that will lead to research on the topic. Students will work to improve their questions by changing them from recall to extended thinking. Students will use these questions to conduct research, which will inform their revisions of their model.

Bringing back the extinct
Science

In this lesson, students will learn about the causes of extinction and how adaptations allow species to survive. The students will research extinct animals and determine what could have helped the animal to survive. Then the students will make a model of their organism and present their research to their peers.

Iggy Peck Bridge Design and Build Challenge
Visual Arts

Using the story Iggy Peck Architect, students will engage in a makerspace design challenge to get Iggy and his classmates safely across the river. Within the challenge students will be engaged in design, engineering, collaboration, and being introduced to new materials in the makerspace.

Deciphering Chromosomal Mutations Caused by Radiation
Biology

This biology lesson plan involves the exploration of real-world applications of genetics. Students will review vocabulary related to chromosomes, learn about the effect of radiation exposure on chromosomes, and evaluate a chromosome assay for dicentric chromosomes. See the accompanying presentations: chromosomal mutations lesson and pair share dicentrics activity.

How do Shapes Make Pictures?
Pre-K

In this Pre-K lesson, students will participate in an engaging hands-on lesson about shapes. In the culminating activity, students' will create shape pictures that will then be 3D printed to create sculptures.

Is Oobleck a solid or a liquid?
Kindergarten

In this lesson, students will have the opportunity to use the scientific method to investigate Non-Newtonian fluids. Non-Newtonian fluids may act as a solid or liquid depending on the force applied to them. Therefore, students are able to experiment with different states of matter and classify the matter as a solid or a liquid based on its physical properties.

Statistics Unit Lesson Plan
Math

This lesson melds the engineering design process with statistics. Students will build a zip line car to fulfill an engineering challenge. Data will be taken from the zip line runs.

Using the data from the zip line runs, students will work with measures of central tendency, histograms, and circle graphs.

Oreo Lunar Models
Science

In this activity, students will have a hands-on experience that allows them to create visualizations of the phases of the Moon. They will be identifying not only what the moon likes like from earth, but also where each phase occurs relative to the Moon's position with the Earth and Sun.
Watch this K-12 Snapshot Lesson Plan: "Cookie Lunar Model"

STEM Resource Book for Teachers
STEM Resource Book for Teachers
This document contains links to hundreds of websites with a variety of resources for educators. Websites are hyperlinked, annotated, and listed by subject and grade. The document includes a table of contents to help you quickly find what you are looking for whether it is an academic competition for your students, professional development opportunities, or an amazing E-Resource that can be used in your classroom.

Harnessed Atom

The Harnessed Atom middle school STEM curriculum provides teachers with non-biased information on energy science and nuclear energy for classroom instruction. Developed under a contract with the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Energy, the curriculum covers the essential principles of energy and matter and provide teachers with an engaging platform to excite students' learning about these topics.

If you would like a copy of the curriculum, including a teacher guide, 30 student books, and a cd with relevant presentations, please fill out the following survey: https://orausurvey.orau.org/n/TheHarnessedAtomKit.aspx

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curriculum and classroom resources for teachers

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There is a wealth of STEM curricula and classroom resources available to assist educators in developing in students thinking, reasoning, teamwork, investigative and creative skills that they can use in all areas of their lives. The Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) is committed to providing relevant and complete materials to assist educators in engaging students in STEM subjects.

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Read the article then take the quiz about Isotopes

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Newsela | Explainer: What is radiocarbon dating and how does it work?

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Radiocarbon dating has helped solved countless archeological mysteries from the previous 55,000 years of Earth.

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Ask Ms Shenker for the

Energy-Level Models worksheet

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Please check your vocab list in your binder and write anything missing in your notes

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Read this page and create a definition for Periods and Groups on your Chem Vocab List

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The periodic table is organized like a big grid. Each element is placed in a specific location because of its atomic structure. As with any grid, the periodic table has rows (left to right) and columns (up and down). Each row and column has specific characteristics. For example, magnesium (Mg) and calcium (Mg) are found in column two and share certain similarities while potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) from row four share different characteristics. Magnesium and sodium (Na) also share qualities because the are in the same period (similar electron configurations).

Even though they skip some squares in between, all of the rows read left to right. When you look at the periodic table, each row is called a period (Get it? Like PERIODic table.). All of the elements in a period have the same number of atomic orbitals. For example, every element in the top row (the first period) has one orbital for its electrons. All of the elements in the second row (the second period) have two orbitals for their electrons. As you move down the table, every row adds an orbital. At this time, there is a maximum of seven electron orbitals.

Now you know about periods going left to right. The periodic table also has a special name for its vertical columns. Each column is called a group. The elements in each group have the same number of electrons in the outer orbital. Those outer electrons are also called valence electrons. They are the electrons involved in chemical bonds with other elements.

Every element in the first column (group one) has one electron in its outer shell. Every element in the second column (group two) has two electrons in the outer shell. As you keep counting the columns, you'll know how many electrons are in the outer shell. There are exceptions to the order when you look at the transition elements, but you get the general idea. Transition elements add electrons to the second-to-last orbital.

For example, nitrogen (N) has the atomic number seven. The atomic number tells you there are seven electrons in a neutral atom of nitrogen. How many electrons are in its outer orbital? Nitrogen is in the fifteenth column, labelled 'Group VA'. The 'V' is the Roman numeral for five and represents the number of electrons in the outer orbital. All of that information tells you there are two electrons in the first orbital and five in the second (2-5).

Phosphorus (P) is also in Group VA which means it also has five electrons in its outer orbital. However, because the atomic number for phosphorus is fifteen, the electron configuration is 2-8-5.

Hydrogen (H) and helium (He) are special elements. Hydrogen, in its neutral form, does not have a neutron. There is only one electron and one proton. You probably won't find atomic hydrogens floating around by themselves. Atomic hydrogen wants to combine with other elements to fill its outer shell. Your chemistry work will most likley use molecular hydrogen (H ₂) or hydrogen ions (H⁺, protons).

Helium (He) is different from all of the other elements. It is very stable with only two electrons in its outer orbital (valence shell). Even though it only has two electrons, it is still grouped with the noble gases that have eight electrons in their outermost orbitals. The noble gases and helium are all "happy," because their valence shell is full.

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Chem4Kids.com: Elements & Periodic Table: Periodic Table

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The periodic table is organized like a big grid. Each element is placed in a specific location because of its atomic structure. As with any grid, the periodic table has rows (left to right) and columns (up and down). Each row and column has specific characteristics.

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Chem4Kids.com! A chemistry quiz on basic facts of atoms. Other quizzes cover topics on matter, atoms, elements, the periodic table, reactions, and biochemistry.

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Worksheets - Finding this a bit tough...

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Worksheets - Finding this a bit tough...

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Pick up The Atomic Basics Worksheet from my desk

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Watch the video on the Periodic Table of Elements

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Try this challenge... too hard, go back and watch the video

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Atoms are everything! Tim and Moby introduce you to atoms, which contain all the elements in the universe, and to the concepts of atomic number and atomic mass.

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1st build an  atom, then learn about the symbol, then play the game

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Read the article and take the quiz

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Newsela | Chemistry group offers seat at periodic table to 4 new elements