Curricula
The Center offers a variety of quality materials for teachers to enhance science in their classrooms. And they're all free! Activities and products are hands-on, inquiry-based and multi-disciplinary, and are intended to engage students in the process of doing science. All of our products address the Sunshine Standards as well as the National Science Education Standards.
These offerings come in different formats, including interactive CD-ROMs, Web sites and downloadable PDFs. Covering topics such as isotopes, electricity, optics and tobacco, the material is designed with flexibility in mind: Teachers can use an entire curriculum or pick and choose among the various units or activities.
Elementary School
MagLab Alpha
Guided by Bearing Bee, Tesla Turtle, Ferrite Fish and other engaging characters, your elementary students will learn all about magnets and magnetism. The 25 different units cover maglev trains, compasses, magnets in space, the Earth’s poles and other topics.
Science, Magnets & You
This standards-based, interdisciplinary curriculum explores magnets, magnetism and electricity. It features a downloadable Teacher Guidebook with activities that encourage students to investigate and ask questions about these phenomena. Fostering skills such as critical thinking, reading, writing and communicating, this curriculum covers many of the same topics addressed in MagLab Alpha, but takes a somewhat different approach.
Science, Optics & You
This resource contains in-depth information on optics, from the nature of light and color to how microscopes work. This curriculum offers teachers many activities to use with their students as well as an extensive Web site. The site contains science history, interactive tutorials, dozens of images captured through microscopes, explanations of how lighthouses and other optical tools work and much more.
Student Teacher Astronomy Resource (STAR)
The STAR program consists of four components: Comet Tales outreach for all grades; The Solar System: To the Planets, Comets and Beyond! for K to 5 students and teachers; Space Stations for informal outreach; and our Stellar Students program, which brings students to view the Magnet Lab's cosmochemistry facilities.
Middle and High School
Isotope Revolution
Designed for high school students, this curriculum explores how scientists use isotopes to find out more about rocks and other artifacts from the Earth (or the solar system), such as age, where it came from and how it was formed. Featuring activities and teacher instructions, Isotope Revolution covers topics such as beta and alpha decay, carbon-14 and the half-life of atoms.
Project MagLab Recertification
These pages offer lots of ideas and material for middle and high school teachers seeking recertification. Teach your students how to squeeze electricity out of a lemon or how to discover the relationship between magnetism and temperature.
Science, Tobacco & You
This multidisciplinary, multimedia resource promotes scientific literacy by encouraging students to ask and answer questions about an issue central to their health and daily lives: Tobacco. The curriculum consists of a supply of teaching tools, a teacher guidebook, an interactive CD-ROM and a student-friendly Web site. The Web site features online games and activities as well as a place for teachers to share ideas. Students will explore the harmful effects of tobacco on their bodies, strategies for handling peer pressure and the role that advertising plays in addiction.
