Building on their fifth grade experiences with operations on decimal numbers, sixth grade students should find the task to be relatively easy. The emphasis here is on whether students are actually fluent with the computations, so teachers could use this as a formative assessment task if they monitor how students solve the problem.

Learn about the effects that the Second World War had on jazz music as well as the contributions that jazz musicians made to the war effort. This lesson will help students explore the role of jazz in American society and the ways that jazz functioned as an export of American culture and a means of resistance to the Nazis.

This course explores how our views of Jewish history have been formed and how this history can explain the survival of the Jews as an ethnic/religious group into the present day. Special attention is given to the partial and fragmentary nature of our information about the past, and the difficulties inherent in decoding statements about the past that were written with a religious agenda in mind. It also considers complex events in Jewish history -- from early history as portrayed in the Bible to recent history, including the Holocaust.

The purpose of this task is to present students with a situation where it is natural to add fraction with unlike denominators; it can be used for either assessment or instructional purposes.

If James Madison was the "father" of the Constitution," John Marshall was the "father of the Supreme Court""”almost single-handedly clarifying its powers. This new lesson is designed to help students understand Marshall's brilliant strategy in issuing his decision on Marbury v. Madison, the significance of the concept of judicial review, and the language of this watershed case.

This art history video discussion looks at John Roddam Spencer Stanhope's "Thoughts of the Past" exhibited 1859, oil on canvas (Tate Britain, London).

Make sparks fly with John Travoltage. Wiggle Johnnie's foot and he picks up charges from the carpet. Bring his hand close to the door knob and get rid of the excess charge.

This task is closely related to very important material about similarity and ratios in geometry.

The purpose of this task is to present students with a context where they need to explain why two simple fractions are equivalent.

This art history video discussion examines Joseph Beuys' "Table with Accumulator (Tisch mit Aggregat)", 1958-85, Tate Modern, London.

Student teams are challenged to design models of Egyptian funerary barges for the purpose of transporting mummies through the underworld to the afterlife. Planning the boat designs requires an understanding of ancient culture and beliefs so the mummies are transported safely through the perils of the underworld. Students design and build prototypes using materials and tools like the ancient Egyptians had at their disposal. Then they do the same with modern materials and techniques, forming an awareness of the similarities and differences of the barge designs between the ancient materials and tools (technologies) and today's technologies, which are evolved from the earlier ways.

This purpose of this task is to help students understand the absolute value of a number as its distance from 0 on the number line. The context is not realistic, nor is meant to be; it is a thought experiment to help students focus on the relative position of numbers on the number line.

Students explore the inhalation/exhalation process that occurs in the lungs during respiration. Using everyday materials, each student team creates a model pair of lungs.

Through multi-trial experiments, students are able to see and measure something that is otherwise invisible to them seeing plants breathe. Student groups are given two small plants of native species and materials to enclose them after watering with colored water. After being enclosed for 5, 10 and 15 minutes, teams collect and measure the condensed water from the plants' "breathing," and then calculate the rates at which the plants breathe. A plant's breath is known as transpiration, which is the flow of water from the ground where it is taken up by roots (plant uptake) and then lost through the leaves. Students plot volume/time data for three different native plant species, determine and compare their transpiration rates to see which had the highest reaction rate and consider how a plant's unique characteristics (leaf surface area, transpiration rate) might figure into engineers' designs for neighborhood stormwater management plans.

Using ordinary household materials, student “biomedical engineering” teams design prototype models that demonstrate semipermeability under the hypothetical scenario that they are creating a teaching tool for medical students. Working within material constraints, each model consists of two layers of a medium separated by material acting as the membrane. The competing groups must each demonstrate how water (or another substance) passes through the first layer of the medium, through the membrane, and into the second layer of the medium. After a few test/evaluate/redesign cycles, teams present their best prototypes to the rest of the class. Then student teams collaborate as a class to create one optimal design that reflects what they learned from the group design successes and failures. A pre/post-quiz, worksheet and rubric are provided.

This lesson helps students explore the functions of the kidney and its place in the urinary system. Students learn how engineers design instruments to help people when kidneys are not functioning properly or when environmental conditions change, such as kidney function in space.

This lesson introduces students to three of the six simple machines used by many engineers. These machines include the inclined plane, the wedge and the screw. In general, engineers use the inclined plane to lift heavy loads, the wedge to cut materials apart, and the screw to convert rotational motion into linear movement. Furthermore, the mechanical advantage describes how easily each machine can do work and is determined by its physical dimensions.