Tools and Guidelines for Lesson Development
These guidelines have grown over the years from our experience working with teachers on lesson development and classroom testing.
Design and Construction
- Send us URL's of your completed lessons. We'd like to see what you're up to!
- Lesson plan template Use a summary page to provide information on subject, age/grade level, required background, materials, and time needed. See our template for a sample layout.
- Start with several ideas for topics that fit with your curricular requirements. Then search the Web and see what science data, processing tools/services, and expert help are available.
- Be flexible. Search engines can be very helpful in finding what you want, but not everything imaginable is on the Internet yet! Therefore:
- Be an opportunist. Be ready to take advantage of a great tool or resource that you find while looking for something else.
- Engage students in an investigation:
- Identifying a question
- Forming a hypothesis
- Planning and carrying out a test of a hypothesis
- Obtaining remote-sensing data, both numerical and image data
- Graphing data, interpreting and deriving data values from images
- Sharing information in verbal accounts, images, or graphs
- Drawing conclusions based on the way data support a hypothesis
- Presenting and discussing alternative explanations with other students
- Use the unique resources and capabilities of the Web and Internet:
- access multiple data sets at remote locations
- query experts using email
- run programs offered on research Web sites
- collaborate with others across the nation or the world
- Use National and State Science Education Standards. Showing how the lesson aligns with grade-appropriate standards, using pages like these for grades K-4, grades 5-8 and grades 9-12, helps define its function in a larger curriculum informed by scientific inquiry.
- Keep it simple at the start. There's always room to expand
- Include author contact information, preferably via email
Tools and Help
- Lesson Quality Checklist is a set of questions to help you produce top-quality, robust Web lessons.
- National Science Education Standards
- SEGway Grab Bag page of images, movies, interactive Java and other tools.
- NASA's Quest Project: Online chats and Learning Channel events you and your class can join.