Lower E. Spring 2027

---

Plate Tectonics: Learn about the layers that make-up the Earth, plate tectonics, and constructing erupting miniature volcanoes using organic material. 

 Earth’s Composition: Learning about the multiple layers of the atmosphere above the Earth’s surface through the making of a model that will include the activity and description of each layer. Students will also play an interactive game to quantify the surface of the Earth covered by land versus water. 

Covering from the sun: making different colored boxes to compare the heat absorbing properties of different colors. 

Heredity: Students will learn about their own dominant and recessive physical traits, and perform a gummy bear gene inheritance exercise.  

Growing Plants: Perform a long investigation manipulating the needs of plants to successfully grow. 

Grass Seed Bombs: Creating seed bombs used to grow pants in land that is difficult to reach through normal means. Students will also create a simple catapult to launch their seed bombs. 

Using Chemical Energy: Exploring the potential energy in chemicals that create a chemical reaction and using the energy produced to complete a task.  

Gravity: Learning about gravitational forces or inertia and applying powerful forces to overcome friction and move various objects and types of matter. 

DNA: Students will model a 3D double helix sequence using crafting or edible materials and label its parts before performing a simple DNA extraction on two different living organisms to compare the amount of DNA in each.  

Microscopes: Active discussion about the basic units of matter and learning how to use a microscope’s magnifying power to visualize the details of microscopic objects. 

Sodium’s effect on density: Manipulation, comparison, and modeling of different temperatures and salt concentrations on the density of water.  Advanced students may calculate the displacement of water created by each kind of material

Preservation of Life: Performing and comparing various preservation methods on leaves at different life stages.  

Antibiotic Efficacy: Performing a controlled experiment to test 4 different types of antibiotics on grown gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria

Protein Synthesis: Engaging in a game that will guide students through the step-by-step process of using a cell’s genetic code to make proteins found across different animals. 

Report Day- Students will be guided in writing a 1 page report on one of their previous labs on their computers using word and excel programs. 

Air Resistance: Designing and building functional parachutes with different kinds of matter to compare their performance against unseen gravitational and air resistance forces. 

Collisions: Predicting, analyzing, and graphing the effects of manipulating variables that affect a car’s movement. 

Report Day- Students will be guided in writing a 1 page report on one of their previous labs on their computers using word and excel programs. 

Neurons and the Action Potential: Create a model of a nerve cell or neuron, and play team-based game to depolarize a “neuron” and fire an action potential when it reaches a “threshold” that will simulate an “all or none” event. 

Autonomic nervous system: Comparing the divisions of the autonomic nervous system through activation of each division with both a motor and mental activity. Additionally, playing an “all-or-nothing” game to understand the active process, called the action potential, that is required for brain cells to become activated and then transmit information to other cells.