This lesson can be used as part of your unit on reproduction, a stand alone lesson to practice collecting and analyzing data, or as part of a math lesson on statistics. This lesson can be extended in several different ways: you can add graphing, plotting data using a stem and leaf (link) for the dates, finding min, max, mode, averages, etc…
The students enjoy this lesson because it is a fun way to analyze their birthdays and many students didn’t know what day of the week they were born on.
NatGeo has a wonderful website that allows you to select any US state, foreign country, continent, or geographic region and download/print maps for free.
How can you use maps in the science classroom?
Earthquakes – assign each student a region and plot real-time Earthquake data
Tornadoes – select a state and research tornado activity
Hurricanes – track current hurricanes or research historic hurricanes
Mining – where are coal mines located? salt mines?
Weather – plot current weather, fronts, isotherms, etc.
Biomes – color in the biomes for your selected state or country
Animal habitats – where do animals make their homes?
USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map – what zones are in your state? what types of plants can grow there?
Rainfall maps – does the amount of rainfall differ across your state?
I love when we have an opportunity to collect real-time data in class, as part of our unit on tides, we used NOAA’s website (link) to learn how to find real-time tide information, to learn how to read tide graphs and charts, and to find water temperatures for 10 different stations and compare their data. The kids enjoyed picking their own cities and sharing their findings.
Resources:
Tides Google Slides Public (link) – this is a shared Google Slide that gives some basic information on tides and then it goes into a step-by-step tutorial on how to use the NOAA website to collect information.
Data Collection worksheet (pdf) – students will record and analyze their data
The second activity, included graphing information for high tides at Atlantic City for the month of January. Students will learn how to read a tide chart and graph tide data to see the relationship between tides and moon phases. This activity was also a great way to practice graphing skills. Creating graphs by hand, instead of on a computer, is something that they don’t get to do very often.
January Tides Worksheet (pdf) for Atlantic City, NJ.
Blank worksheet (pdf) for students to choose data from a different location.
Tide Charts (link) – set for New Jersey but you can pick different states and locations for monthly tides data.
For more lessons about the Moon, visit the Moon Page, under the Space Science tab.
Before starting the activity, have the students practice finding their pulses and counting. I find that they are more likely to feel their pulse on their neck (carotid) near their jaw.
For the lab, students will first get a baseline for their heart rate. They average their sitting and standing pulse and use that pulse to compare the other activities to. Each student will then make their own hypothesis, which activity will have the highest pulse? The lowest pulse?
Class management tip: We did each step of the lab together, and I kept time using the online stopwatch on the screen. That way, we were all jogging in place or doing jumping jacks at the same time.
Students recorded their data on to the excel spreadsheet and I collected and entered data onto my copy. Each student shared their data, one at a time, while the rest of us entered it. If you have google docs, you can add all data to the same shared Google Sheets.
The template that I have uploaded will automatically do the calculations for you and create a bar graph. You can turn that feature off, by deleting the formulas and graph, if you want students to learn how to use the formula for averages and create charts.
If you are having any issues with the excel sheet, or want to modify it, please reach out to your technology specialist for assistance.
For related lesson plans, please visit my Life Science page.
In this activity, students collected data from different cities around the world and entered the sunrise, sunset, and moonrise times into an excel spreadsheet. I have the spreadsheet set up to automatically graph the data as it is entered into excel for 7 consecutive weeks. (I printed out and photocopied the 4th tab of the spreadsheet to make it easier for the students to collect their data and then enter into the spreadsheet)
For my classes, I gave everyone the information for the New Jersey data (it is in the spreadsheet as an example, but you can easily delete it and modify as needed). This gave everyone a foundation to make their comparisons. Each student was randomly assigned their first city, and when done, were able to choose any city from the list for their 3rd choice.
Middle School Science Blog 