Students will categorize cells as prokaryotic or eukaryotic by identifying the presence or lack of a nucleus.

Students compare and contrast potential and kinetic energy by creating a real-world model through a movie.

Students will work in partners to investigate Newton’s second law by testing a series of experiments with varying conditions.

Students will work with partners to investigate how mass, potential energy, and kinetic energy act on objects dropped from varying heights.

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Students will work collaboratively through a fictitious, real-world scenario to determine the probability of each breeding pair of dogs producing offspring with the desired trait for a fictitious client.

Students collaboratively determine how the characteristics of a real-world job correlate with each of Newton’s Laws and why that is relevant to their own lives.

Students engage in viewing day three of ecosystem changes in lab groups to determine if the ecosystem is healthy or unhealthy based on scientific data and factors.

In this lesson, students will investigate how gene expression is a regulated process controlled by DNA and the interpretations of codons through translation.

Students will design and test models that will identify crustal features formed by convergent plate boundaries.

Students will use hover pucks to measure speed over a distance of six meters. Once speed has been calculated, students will determine velocity using the same data. Finally, students will be able to label all points of acceleration.

In this lesson, students will be introduced to the concept of motion representation using distance vs. time graphs. Students will recognize labeling of axes, steepness related to speed, horizontal lines as non-motion, and downward slope as return to origin.

Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills Related to the Unit

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After a brief review of direct and indirect sunlight, students will arrange heat maps and globes around a drawing of the Sun based on the tilt of Earth and how it affects Earth’s temperature.

Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) Related to the Unit

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In collaborative groups, the students investigate the transport of water within potato cells placed in various tonicity solutions.

All matter contains energy. Energy can be transferred from one object to another. Energy transformation can occur through the conversion of energy from one form to another. Energy is never created nor destroyed; it is always transferred and/or transformed. Students will demonstrate how energy is transformed and transferred in an ecosystem. To do this, students will create energy pyramids by stacking cups that represent organisms and available amounts of energy. Students will graph and analyze the data.

Students will explore abiotic and biotic factors in various ecosystems by working through stations. Students will be able to identify and describe abiotic and biotic factors within an ecosystem.

Students use prior knowledge of body systems as they make connections to systems in plants. Students learn that some plant systems have similar functions as the respective animal systems. The lesson highlights the following systems in plants: root system, shoot system, vascular system, and reproductive system.