Safety First!
Flinn Scientific provides many safety resources, including free access to safety guides, lab safety courses, Safety Data Sheets, sample science/STEM lab safety contracts and exams, and many other resources. The National Science Teaching Association (NSTA) and the International Technology and Engineering Educators Association (ITEEA) also publish safety resources for educators! Be sure to share these resources with your team to ensure that your school community has safe lab experiences this year.
American Museum of Natural History Resources
The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) has engaging resources for K–12 educators, families, and students interested in learning about science. This collection includes lesson plans, curriculum, hands-on activities, articles, games and interactives, and videos for learners of all ages. In these resources, teachers can access lesson plans for all age levels. Elementary and middle level learners can explore dinosaurs and more through lessons such as What Teeth Tell Us (grades K–4), Relative Speed of Dinosaurs (grades 5–8), and Pixel This! (grades K–8), in which students decode a simple digital image from a string of numbers that represent pixels. High school students can explore the mechanics of a telescope in the lesson Focal Point.
NOAA’s Weather Portal
An important tool developed by the Education Development Center’s WeatherX project is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Weather portal in CODAP, which gives K–12 educators (and anyone with a web browser) access to large-scale weather data from NOAA. This online portal allows users to select and download hourly, daily, and monthly weather measurements from 1,783 weather stations in the United States, with records dating as far back as the mid-1800s. A blog post from the Concord Consortium, a partner in the WeatherX project, provides instructions for accessing the portal, as well as sample weather questions students can investigate with the data.
Water Footprint Calculator
This resource features a Water Footprint Calculator as well as student and teacher resources. Learn about how your choices and habits affect your water use inside and outside of your home, through the food you eat, the products you buy and even the energy you use. And find out how (and why) we created our Water Footprint Calculator.
STEM Teaching Resources from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)
The free K-12 STEM education materials on the NIH Site are provided by the institutes and centers within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and NIH grantees, including Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA) recipients. The external links from this site provide additional information on the resources. NIGMS cannot attest to the accuracy or accessibility of a nonfederal site.