Support for long-term classroom planning and professional development. Information covering important topics for today's educators and parents. This activity book, for grades 5 to 8, contains 32 activities that integrate mathematics, science, and technology to promote critical thinking. Each two to four page activity is reproducible and follows the same format. The purpose is stated, background information is discussed, materials needed are listed, and the procedure is given.
Some activities provide data tables to be filled in and others suggest extensions and follow up.
A 15 page teacher's guide contains estimated times for each activity and offers suggestions on how to plan, prepare and teach the activities. For example, one activity calculates the diameter of celestial bodies by using scale models. The term scale is discussed in the background section. Various celestial bodies are listed in a table with the actual diameter. The procedure has the students calculate the scale diameter in centimeters for each celestial body and list it in the table.