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SCIENCE
At Risk? Investigating Dams
By JENNIFER CUTRARO and HOLLY EPSTEIN OJALVO
Overview | What are dams and how do they work? What are some of the issues surrounding the construction and maintenance of dams? In this lesson, students explore the kinds of dams used in waterways around the world. They explore dam design, investigate the history of dams and investigate how dams affect wildlife and communities. Read more…
How Green Is My School? Conducting an Energy Audit
By JENNIFER CUTRARO and HOLLY EPSTEIN OJALVO
Overview | How can new buildings be designed in ways that minimize their energy use? How can energy be used more efficiently in existing buildings? In this lesson, students learn about green building design, perform energy audits of their schools and then develop proposals for making their schools more energy efficient. Read more…
Mind and Body: Investigating the Health and Science of Meditation
By JENNIFER CUTRARO and HOLLY EPSTEIN OJALVO
Overview | What is meditation? How have scientists explored the effects of meditation on the mind and body? In this lesson, students participate in a guided meditation, then learn about meditation and current research showing how meditation affects the brain and body. They then annotate diagrams of the brain and body with the information they’ve learned about meditation’s effects. Read more…
100 Ways to Celebrate the 100th Day of School With The Times
By KATHERINE SCHULTEN, SHANNON DOYNE and HOLLY EPSTEIN OJALVO
Depending on when you started the academic year — and how many snow days you’ve had so far — the 100th day of school should be coming up any day now.
To mark this milestone, we present 100 ideas, some for individual subject areas and others for a whole class or school to do together.
Add your own ideas in our comments section … or, if you take us up on any of ours, write in and tell us how it went!
General Ideas
1. List 100 things you’ve learned this year, whether academic or personal.
2. Create a timeline of your life that lists 100 events, beginning with your earliest memories.
3. Make and illustrate a list of 100 things you would like to accomplish in your lifetime.
4. What 100 places would you like to visit before you die?
5. Make predictions about what life will be like 100 years from now. Be specific!
6. Make yourself a 100-day to-do list. And stick to it!
7. Read the blog post 100 Things Restaurant Staffers Should Never Do. Then write a 100 Things List of what teachers, parents, friends, boyfriends or girlfriends, store clerks, neighbors or anyone else should never do.
8. On the flip side, write a 100 Things list of what the same group shouldalways do.
9. Come up with a 100-day challenge for yourself, doing the activity of your choice for 100 consecutive days. You might read for an hour each day, pursue a religious or spiritual practice, exercise, write in a journal, etc. Noah Scalin’s 365 project might inspire you: This blog features artists who have committed to doing everything from drawing a bird image to photographing a gnome to writing a haiku to decorating fingernails every day for 365 days.
10. Or, take a 100-hour challenge in which you don’t do something, whether it means going without Facebook, caffeine, television or gossip.
All Smiles: Studying the Science of Smiling and Related Behaviors
By JENNIFER CUTRARO and HOLLY EPSTEIN OJALVO
Overview | What is a smile, and what can scientists learn from studying smiling? In this lesson, students learn about the science of smiling and explore related research in cognitive science and evolutionary biology. They experiment with interpreting different types of smiles and then design experiments of their own to further explore how people use and respond to communicative expressions and gestures. Read more…
Reader Idea | Trees and Transcendentalists
By KATHERINE SCHULTEN
Here is another in our Great Ideas From Readersseries.
If you’ve used The Times for teaching and learning and would like to see your idea in our blog, write inand tell us what you’ve done.
Teacher: Kathleen Harsy
School/Location: Riverside Brookfield High School, Riverside, Ill.
Grade or Level of Students: 11th graders
Idea: Showing the relevance of the Transcendentalists today by combining poetry, video and photography in a two-day lesson.
Why We Chose It: Trees, Transcendentalists, great American poets, Times video: what’s not to like? We admired how this teacher wove so many resources together — and how she explained, step by step, exactly what she did. (It didn’t hurt that she says our e-mailed lesson plans give her “easy access to inspirational ideas.”)
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The Pros and Cons of Genetic Data: Debating Personal DNA Testing
By JENNIFER CUTRARO and HOLLY EPSTEIN OJALVO
Overview | What is personal DNA testing and how does it work? Why are some doctors and health professionals concerned over the growing availability of these tests for consumers? In this lesson, students review current technologies for DNA testing. They explore the reliability of these tests and debate the medical and ethical issues surrounding personal genetic testing. Read more…
One Year Later: Studying Post-Earthquake Haiti
By JENNIFER CUTRARO and HOLLY EPSTEIN OJALVO
Overview | What can we learn from natural disasters like earthquakes, and from the quake that devastated Haiti in 2010? In this lesson, students review the Haiti earthquake, reflect on the changes that have occurred since then and develop personal responses. They engage in one or more projects in which they explore the implications of the disaster from the perspectives of science, engineering, health, history, arts and culture, and the media. Read more…
Reader Idea | Global Poverty and the Guinea Worm
By KATHERINE SCHULTENHere is another in our Great Ideas From Readersseries.
If you’ve used The Times for teaching and learning and would like to see your idea in our blog, write inand tell us what you’ve done.
Teacher: Heidi Schallenberg Sweeney
School/Location: Park Middle School, Scotch Plains, N.J.
Grade or Level of Students: Ages 11 to 13
Idea: Making students aware of the Guinea worm, a public health issue tied to global poverty
Why We Chose It: As Ms. Schallenberg Sweeney writes, it’s hard to get middle school students to care about distant conflicts or health crises, yet she created a unit on the Guinea worm that was interesting enough to keep her students’ attention on “a stifling hot day in June.” Imaginatively combining Times resources and teaching materials from the Peace Corps, the unit results in student-created public service announcements.
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