Week of June 1-5 Learning Materials

NOVA: Australia's First Four Billion Years- The Evolution of Kangaroos
Learn about the evolutionary history of the kangaroo, the only large mammal that hops, in this video excerpt from NOVA.

NOVA: Australia’s First Four Billion Years- Megafauna in Ice Age Australia
Find out about some of the giant prehistoric animals that existed during the last ice age in Australia in this video excerpt from NOVA. Host and scientist Richard Smith visits Victoria Fossil Cave to learn about the large collection of Australian megafauna fossils that were discovered there.

NOVA: Australia’s First Four Billion Years- Ancient Sea Reptiles
Find out about plesiosaurs—giant marine reptiles that lived about 100 million years ago—in this video excerpt from NOVA.

Animal Adaptations: Polar Bear Paws
Polar bear cubs learn how to walk through snow and over ice in this video from NATURE “Snow Bears.” In the accompanying classroom activity, students use the engineering design process to design a slip stopper, mimicking the adult polar bear adaptation of footpads that prevent sliding on ice.

Adaptations of Arctic Animals
Learn what animals live in the arctic region and how they have adapted to this inhospitable environment.

Killer Whales and the Changing Arctic
Learn how global warming is impacting the arctic region and opening the door to killers whales, a region once off-limits to this marine animal, in this media gallery from NATURE: Invasion of the Killer Whales.

Art and Social Justice
Many artists create work that intersects with political activism and social justice causes. Throughout history, art has been used as an accessible tool for communication, raising awareness about social issues and affecting positive change. This video collection will introduce students to artists who create work that inspires dialogue about problems faced by communities around the world, and will provide inspiration for classroom projects with a social, public or political purpose.

Whose Streets?
In this lesson, students conduct a Socratic seminar in preparation for creating a plan of action to submit to local bodies of government with suggestions for improving relations between police departments and the people in the communities that they protect and addressing other disparities in our country’s criminal justice system.

NOVA: Earth System Science
NOVA's Earth system science collection highlights important Earth processes normally invisible to the human eye.

NOVA Labs
A new digital platform where students can actively participate in the scientific process.

NOVA: North American Sky Tour
Learn about the geological history of North America in this video from NOVA Digital. Google Earth flyovers and visualizations from NOVA's Making North America illustrate how particular locations, landscapes, and life forms have changed through time.

Elements of Art
Explore the seven basic elements of art including Line, Shape, Form, Texture, Value, Space and Color. These are the building blocks of all art and are a good place to start when making, looking at or analyzing works of art.

Art School is a video series for people who want to learn about art. See interviews with contemporary artists working in performing, visual and media art, as well as how-to videos that demonstrate new ways to get creative and explain art-making techniques and concepts.

See how art became the great interface when distant cultures met for the first time. Interactive art experience for episode Encounters and The Second Moment of Creation.

Canadian Lynx: Nature: Animal Guide
Canadian lynx are specially adapted to endure cold weather. In addition to a thick winter coat, the lynx has wide, padded, furry paws that work like snowshoes.

Bobcat
The bobcat (Lynx rufus), also known as a wildcat, is native to North America and can be found from Canada down into Mexico. Bobcats are part of the feline family and are about twice as big as a housecat, weighing between 11 and 30 pounds.

The Great White Shark
The experts travel to South Africa to dissect a 900kg, 15-foot-long great white shark. Comparative anatomist Joy Reidenberg uncovers the shark's incredible array of senses, including the ability to detect the electro-magnetic field given off by other creatures.

The Great White Shark QUEST
Meet Cretoxyrhina, the ancestor of the Great White Shark. Like its ancestor, the Great White is an excellent hunter owing to its sense of smell and sharp teeth.

Researching Great White Sharks NOAA
Attaching a tracking device on a white shark, one of the most fearsome marine predators, doesn't just provide a thrilling rush of excitement and adventure! This tracking technology provides researchers with valuable data on shark behavior, such as their migration pattern and what they eat.

And Then There Were None
Writers Gillian Flynn and Christopher Bollen explain why And Then There Were None is Agatha Christie's most compelling mystery. It's an example of how thrillers are so effective when talking about villains and monsters. Christie's masterpiece doesn't rely on a detective to solve the crime, and explores an obsession with both murder and justice.

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
Ignatius J. Reilly is the unlikely, and unforgettable hero of the Pulitzer prize-winning A Confederacy of Dunces.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream:The Love Potion
This media gallery from Shakespeare Uncovered examines how and why the love potion is used in William Shakespeare's comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream. Students will learn what inspired Shakespeare to incorporate the love potion into the play and how it impacts the plot and dialogue.

Looking for Alaska: The Great American Read
Looking for Alaska is a young adult novel about first love, unrequited love, tragedy, and the intense experiences during the teenage years.

Alice in Wonderland-Queen of Hearts
The Queen of Hearts is the most notorious villain in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Moby Dick-Captain Ahab
Experts discuss Herman Melville's love of the sea and how the obsessed Ahab is the anti-hero of the story.

The Giver
The Giver is a Newberry Award-winning book by Lois Lowry that tells the story of 12-year-old Jonas. We explore how Jonas is an ordinary boy who does the extraordinary.

Heroes
From this video segment from, Jakers!, we learn that every story has a hero.

Heroes and Hope in Frank Herbert’s Dune
In this excerpt from The Great American Read, Wil Wheaton describes his relationship with Frank Herbert’s Dune. The best-selling science fiction novel chronicles the tension between good and evil, and the fight over a limited natural resource —"the spice."

Achievements of Stephen Hawking Lesson Plan
Learn about Stephen Hawking - his personal history, his struggle with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), his thought processes and how he developed his groundbreaking ideas about Black Holes, the Big Bang, and the discovery of Hawking Radiation.

Do Events Inside Black Holes Happen?
Join Gabe on this week’s episode of PBS Space Time as he debunks popular black hole misconceptions, and rethinks what the term, ‘black hole’, even means. Thought you knew what a black hole was? Think again!

Can We Time Travel
Use the discussion questions to stimulate conversation both before and after viewing with your family or connect with friends and get their perspective.

Are We Alone?
Use the following discussion questions to stimulate conversation both before and after viewing with your family or connect with friends and get their perspective.

Achievements of Stephen Hawking
In this lesson, students learn about Stephen Hawking - his personal history, his struggle with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), his thought processes and how he developed his groundbreaking ideas about Black Holes, the Big Bang, and the discovery of Hawking Radiation.

What Are We?: Molecules
In this clip from Genius by Stephen Hawking, learn about molecules and their behavior on an atomic scale.

What are We?
In this clip from Genius by Stephen Hawking, learn about the process of evolution and how nature has adapted.

Light Years
In this video segment adapted from Shedding Light on Science, learn how light can be used to measure distance. Meet Kim McLeod, an astronomer at Wellesley College who studies some of the most distant objects in the universe.

Hubble Telescope Looking Deep
In this video segment adapted from the Space Telescope Science Institute, learn how the Hubble Space Telescope created this amazing picture of the early universe.

Hubble & The Expanding Universe
Learn how Edwin Hubble made some of the most important discoveries in modern astronomy in this video from NOVA: Invisible Universe Revealed.

How Big Is Our Universe?
This interactive resource from the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics illustrates the immense scale of the universe and demonstrates some techniques astronomers use to measure distances.

Space Chase USA
Space Chase USA explores the transformative events residents of Cocoa Beach, Florida, found themselves engaged in as the future of space exploration arrived on their sleepy shores.The full Space Chase USA documentary is broken down into 20 chronological segments.

Moon Memories
The Space Coast history is especially rich because of the collective memories of the citizens. During the hectic space race days, the engineers were fueled by passion as they worked to accomplish Kennedy’s goal. Retired NASA employees and contractors share how they didn’t work a day in their lives.

Living and Working in Space Collection
No CC
This collection includes videos and digital media that have been selected to help bring the stories of human space exploration and its early history to you.

Voyager: Humanity’s Farthest Journey
In 1977, The Voyager program sent two spacecraft to explore the solar system and travel to interstellar space. In this video from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, learn how Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are now the farthest any spacecraft has traveled from the Sun, and are still making discoveries in the outer reaches of the solar system.

Poppy Northcutt, NASA Pioneer, Chasing the Moon
Learn how Poppy Northcutt overcame sexism and a “boys’ club” atmosphere to become the first female engineer in NASA’s mission control in the 1960s—a situation she describes as a “complete peculiarity” at the time—in this video adapted from Chasing the Moon: AMERICAN EXPERIENCE.

Ed Dwight, First Black Astronaut Trainee
Hear Ed Dwight’s firsthand account of his experience and the challenges he faced as the nation’s first black astronaut trainee in this video adapted from Chasing the Moon: AMERICAN EXPERIENCE.

The Road to Apollo: An Interactive Journey
Discover the breathtaking failures and successes and the stakes and costs of the American space program as you take an immersive journey through Project Apollo’s missions 1, 8, and 11 in The Road to Apollo: An Interactive Journey from American Experience.

Exploring Racial Barriers at NASA
Decades after the enrollment of NASA’s first black astronauts, people of color are still a minority in aerospace. Dr. Bernard Harris, Jr., the first African American to perform a spacewalk, discusses challenging stereotypes with a young woman who dreams of planning a mission to Mars.

NOVA Newton’s Third Law of Motion
This video from NOVA illustrates the significance of Newton's law to space-walking astronauts and the engineers who design their spacecrafts.

Earthrise
Earthrise tells the story of the image captured of the Earth from space on Apollo 8 in 1968.

Mooncraters Activity
This DragonflyTV segment demonstrates how to make models of moon craters, and how craters form.

Phases of the Moon
In this interactive resource adapted from the National Air and Space Museum, learn about the relationship between the Moon's orbit and its phases.

Explore the Moon
These interactive images from NOVAprovide panoramic views of each of the six Apollo landing sites and offer a hint of what astronauts faced on the surface of the Moon.

Observing the Moon in the Sky
Observe images of the Moon during the day and night with this slideshow. The images can stimulate students’ thinking and questions about when and how the Moon appears in the sky.

Reconstruction: The 15th Amendment and African American Men in Congress
After the war was over and slavery abolished, Reconstruction was underway. Although there were challenges ahead, African Americans were filled with unprecedented hope.

Reconstruction: The Black Codes
The end of the Civil War brought about the freedom of four million slaves. The era of Reconstruction that followed the war sought to remedy the inequities of slavery while readmitting the Southern states back into a reunified nation.

Reconstruction: Ida B. Wells- Pioneer of Civil Rights
Ida B. Wells, a journalist and owner of the Memphis newspaper Free Speech and Headlight spent a lifetime working for civil rights and women’s suffrage. She helped to launch the National Association of Colored Women and was one of the founding members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).