San Diego Natural History Museum: Glow: Living Lights [pdf]
http://www.sdnhm.org/exhibits/glow/index.html
The San Diego Natural History Museum (SDNHM) has recently added a downloadable Teacher's Guide to its Web site for Glow: Living Lights -- "the first-ever museum exhibition to explore the phenomenon of bioluminescence." The 48-page Teacher's Guide is loaded with great lesson plans for grades 3-6. The activities may be used without a visit to the actual exhibit, although the Teacher's Guide also includes useful material for those lucky enough to make the trip. Glow: Living Lights "is an excellent platform for a number of scientific disciplines, including chemistry, biology, ecology, and oceanography." In addition to the Teacher's Guide, this Web site provides a fun, general guide to bioluminescence geared toward kids, which includes games, quick facts, a glossary, and related Web links. [RS]
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The Astrobiology Curriculum [pdf]
http://astrobio.terc.edu/overview/overview.html
TERC, in conjunction with NASA's Astrobiology Institute, has developed a set of educational materials for grades 5-12 (but written with 9th graders in mind). Using the field of astrobiology as a springboard, the lesson plans are designed to help students learn "that scientific knowledge is not a set of accumulated facts, but is a dynamic and, at times, confusing and amorphous set of current speculations." And if you're going to introduce confusion and amorphous speculation into the classroom, you're probably safest with astrobiology, an inherently fascinating field that should keep students interested and engaged. A series of downloadable resource guides are currently available, which "enable students to examine the nature of life, what it requires, its limits, and where it might be found." [RS]
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Office of Science Education: LifeWorks: Explore Health and Medical Science Careers
http://science-education.nih.gov/LifeWorks.nsf/index.htm
The National Institutes of Health Office of Science Education presents LifeWorks, an online guide to exploring careers in the health and medical sciences. LifeWorks offers a number of features such as Career Finder -- a searchable database of over 100 career descriptions. Details include required education and average salary. The site also features interviews with people working in the health and medical fields. While no formal lesson plans are provided, LifeWorks should be a useful resource for students who may be interested in pursuing health-related careers. [RS]
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Actionbioscience.org: America's Oceans in Crisis
http://www.actionbioscience.org/environment/pew.html
The recently published report from the Pew Oceans Commission on the state of America's ocean ecosystems provides the basis for this Actionbioscience learning activity. Students read an abridged reprint of the report's executive summary, and discuss coastal development, overexploitation of marine resources, pollution and runoff, policy change, and other related topics. The site provides a number of well-selected Web links for learning more about the plight of America's ocean resources, including a link to the original Pew Oceans Commission report and another to a U.S. Navy Web site offering excellent background information and educational quizzes. [RS]
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AskERIC Lesson Plans: All About Fish [Microsoft PowerPoint, pdf]
http://askeric.org/cgi-bin/printlessons.cgi/Virtual/Lessons/Science/Animals/ANM0210.html
This site contains a lesson plan for 1st graders offered through AskERIC, the Web-based service of the Educational Resources Information Center. The lesson, submitted by Ana Nolan, has students study the characteristics of fish and create a Venn diagram comparing and contrasting fish with humans. The site includes a downloadable PowerPoint presentation that nicely reviews fish ecology and anatomy, and provides a short exercise in fish identification. Downloadable worksheets for the comparing/contrasting activity are also included. The lesson requires three 30-minute sessions to complete. [RS]
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Environmental Education Station
http://web.centre.edu/enviro/
The Environmental Education Station functions primarily as a portal to environmental information on the Internet. Offered through Centre College and University of the South, this Web site contains an excellent collection of links to detailed information on various environmental topics, including global warming, environmental audits, land reclamation, biodiversity, and more. The Environmental Education Station also includes a fairly extensive index of syllabi and readings for environmental science courses in universities across the U.S. Readers will find lectures, interactive resources, and other materials under the Miscellaneous heading in the Teaching Materials section. The site also offers a public domain image gallery, which could be of use in putting together lectures, presentations, and the like. [RS]
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GreenCOM Resource Center
http://www.greencom.org/greencom/resource_center/resource_center.asp
"GreenCOM promotes the practice of strategic participatory communications worldwide and conducts projects in USAID countries." Environmental educators and communicators are welcome to browse the GreenCOM Resource Center's "unparalleled" collection of over 3,000 titles in at least 20 languages. Educational materials in this collection cannot be downloaded from the Web, but the database should be valuable nonetheless for locating materials of interest. If the publisher listed for a title is GreenCOM, users may email GreenCOM for a copy. [RS]
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Daily Lesson Plan: Healthy Hearts
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/lessons/20030612thursday.html
This Daily Lesson Plan from the New York Times Learning Network has students explore the causes and cures of diseases affecting the cardiopulmonary system. Designed for grades 6-12, the lesson covers pulse-taking, cardiopulmonary anatomy, cardiopulmonary diseases and advanced technological treatments, and so on. The lesson is based on a recent NYT article, which may be accessed for free and without registration. Helpful Web links are provided for the group research portion of the lesson plan, and the suggested extension activities provide interesting ways to explore cardiopulmonary issues in greater depth. [RS]
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