This is the educator's guide for a set of activities that teach students about humans' endeavors to return to the moon. The emphasis is for students to understand that engineers must "imagine and plan" before they begin to build and experiment. Each activity features objectives, a list of materials, educator information, procedures, and student worksheets. Students should work in teams to complete the activities. Note: Activities do not align to all objectives that are listed; specific activities align to specific objectives.

In this lesson, students construct paper rockets and evaluate their rockets' flight. Following the flight of the rockets, students reconsider their rocket designs, make modifications, and fly the modified rockets to determine if the changes affected rocket performance. Students conclude the activity by writing a post-flight mission report.

Students will design and build a paper roller coaster using cardstock paper and clear scotch tape that will perform 4 loops and 8 turns/curves.  7th Grade will have to complete 8 loops and more curves/turns. Students will use the engineering design process while completing this project.

Within the physical science strand of 7th grade science, students focus on the motion of objects. In this task, students assume the role of an animator who must convincingly demonstrate the motion of several objects using point of reference techniques. Students will then write fictional narratives to accompany their “flip book” animations. The interdisciplinary nature of this lesson allows students to creatively build meaningful connections between different science strands (physical and life) using written and visual expression while promoting 21st Century Skills. This lesson was developed by NCDPI as part of the Academically and/or Intellectually Gifted Instructional Resources Project. This lesson plan has been vetted at the state level for standards alignment, AIG focus, and content accuracy.

Sample Learning Goals
Explain the Conservation of Mechanical Energy using kinetic, gravitational potential, and thermal energy.
Describe how changing the mass, friction, or gravity affects the skater's energy.
Predict position or estimate speed from energy bar graph or pie chart.
Calculate speed or height at one position from information about a different position.
Describe what happens to the energy in the system when the reference height changes.
Design a skate park using the concepts of mechanical energy and energy conservation.

In this STEM activity, teams of students will form "rocket companies" and compete in a commercial endeavor to construct a rocket capable of lifting payloads into Earth orbit. Through a strong interdisciplinary approach, balancing science with technology, engineering and mathematics, they will develop a budget, purchase construction materials and track expenditures while designing the rocket. Students will apply principles and design, comstruct, test and launch a water rocket using a real-world problem-solving simulation.

Students compare the viscosity of common household substances by measuring how fast marbles move through the liquids.

This course was created by the Rethink Education Content Development Team. This course is aligned to the NC Standards for 7th Grade Science. 

This course was created by the Rethink Education Content Development Team. This course is aligned to the NC Standards for 7th Grade Science. 

This course was created by the Rethink Education Content Development Team. This course is aligned to the NC Standards for 7th Grade Science.  

In this video, students learn acceleration is the change in velocity. That means acceleration can mean a change in speed or direction.

Students compare the speed of the Galileo spacecraft to more familiar speeds (walking, driving, etc.) and graph their results.

In this lesson, students learn about vocabulary such as gravity, force and speed, and then apply those meanings as they participate in small cooperative groups to test different variables such as weight, speed and elevation. Students record and compare such data as time it takes for toy cars to roll down a ramp, the distance a toy car travels and they determine the averages for time and distance.

Students will investigate constant and changing (accelerated) motion. They will calculate speed from distance and time measurements and observe the differences between the distance vs. time graph for each motion.

In this activity, students will use a trundle wheel to measure distance and a stopwatch to measure time.

In this activity, student teams construct and launch water rockets. Students will measure and record the altitudes achieved by the rockets.