STEM Resources for Teachers & Students

USGS Biodiversity Information Serving Our Nation (BISON) is a unique, web-based Federal mapping resource for species occurrence data in the United States and its Territories.

Welcome to Classroom Resources--a diverse collection of lessons and web resources for classroom teachers, their students, and students' families. Materials are arranged by subject area to help you quickly find resources in your interest area, and then use them to create lesson plans or at-home activities. Research areas include: Arctic & Antarctic, Astronomy & Astrophysics, Biology, Chemistry & Materials, Computing, Earth & Environment, Education, Engineering, Mathematics, Nanoscience, People & Society, and Physics.

This guide provides teachers with materials, information, and classroom activities to enhance any drinking water curriculum. Students can use the activity sheets to further lessons and stimulate thought. Parents can use the guide to develop science projects that will provoke thought, encourage research, and provide a scientific approach to answering questions. Water tips, facts, myths, and trivia to further awareness of drinking water issues are included. The packet is divided into six sections: a table of contents, activities for grades k-3, activities for grades 4-7, activities for grades 8-12, general information, and science projects.

Find lesson plans, science projects, and other activities that can be done in the classroom or at home to get K-12 students excited about clean energy!

Energy Kids, maintained by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, host a range of resources for both educators and students. Students will enjoy the various educational activities and games available through the site, while educators will find the "for teachers" resources beneficial for classroom planning. Site includes an energy calculator.

"K-12 students and educators need access to quality homework resources, lesson plans and project ideas to learn and teach about the environment. Environmental education (EE) is a multi-disciplinary approach to learning about environmental issues that enhances knowledge, builds critical thinking skills and helps students make informed and responsible decisions."

Find an array of environmental and science based lesson plans, activities and ideas below from EPA, other federal agencies and external organizations. ​

Find an array of environmental and science based lesson plans, activities and ideas from the EPA, other federal agencies and external organizations. Topics include: Air, Climate Change, Ecosystems, Energy, Health, Waste, and Water. Grade levels are indicated. Site also provides predefined search terms for free PDF publications: Activity Book, Coloring Books, Earth Day, Environmental Education, Posters, Science Fair, Students, and Teachers.

"Science.gov searches over 60 databases and over 2200 selected websites from 15 federal agencies, offering 200 million pages of authoritative U.S. government science information including research and development results."

Science.gov searches over 60 databases and over 2200 selected websites from 15 federal agencies, offering 200 million pages of authoritative U.S. government science information including research and development results.

From Thomas Edison's light bulb to Wilbur and Orville Wright's flying machine, inventors and inventions transform the way we communicate, travel and live our daily lives--thanks to the creative process of innovation. That process is highlighted in this video series, The Science of Innovation. In celebration of the 165th birthday of one of America's greatest innovators, Thomas Edison, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and NBC Learn produced in 2013 this 11-part series narrated by NBC News' Ann Curry highlighting innovators from across the country.

The Smithsonian Learning Lab puts the treasures of the world's largest museum, education, and research complex within reach. The Lab is a free, interactive platform for discovering millions of authentic digital resources, creating content with online tools, and sharing in the Smithsonian's expansive community of knowledge and learning. Scroll down the webpage and click on “Science”.

Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, commonly known as STEM, are the essential building blocks to accomplishing the U.S. Department of Energy's mission from coast to coast. STEM Rising is their initiative to inspire, educate, and spark an upwards trajectory to lifelong success in STEM through sharing the Department's National Labs, National Nuclear Security Administration, and program office's programs, resources, competitions, events, internship opportunities and more. View their STEM resources for students, teachers, and the energy workforce on this site and sign up for our monthly newsletter to keep in touch.

National parks are America's largest classrooms. Find lesson plans about these great places. The website is user friendly and easily searchable by location, keyword, and more than 125 subjects, ranging from archeology to biology to Constitutional law. The site also features materials produced by National Park Service programs, including lesson plans from the National Register of Historic Places' award-winning Teaching with Historic Places program. At launch, the website offered more than 700 lesson plans, 140 field trips, 50 traveling trunks, 44 distance learning opportunities, 16 teachers' institutes, 47 online galleries, and 100 teacher workshops, and will add new content as it is developed. Select subjects (Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies); select grade level (Lower Elementary, Upper Elementary, Middle School, High School); or select Common Core.

The Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility Education and Outreach Program creates basic science lessons related to weather and climate for K-12th grade. ARM Education strives to make lessons that are relevant to the needs of the schools in the communities where the ARM Program has their sites, the Southern Great Plains (SGP) of the United States, the Tropical Western Pacific (TWP), and the North Slope of Alaska (NSA). However, almost all of these lessons are useful for students anywhere.

Discover a wealth of curricular ideas, scientific data, maps, and other resources to support biology, geography, geology, geospatial data, and hydrology! Selected USGS educational resources useful to educators in primary (K-6) and secondary (7-12) school grades. Many of these resources can be used directly in the classroom (see Resource Symbols) or will be useful in classroom lessons or demonstration activities preparation, or as resources for teacher education and curriculum development.

Activities for kids and teens, parents and teachers. Games and activities about intellectual property and patents.

This is a global science gateway comprised of national and international scientific databases and portals. It accelerates scientific discovery and progress by providing one-stop searching of databases from around the world.

To empower our youth to be the next generation of conservation leaders, we will: Employ thousands of youth to protect and restore our environment, and revitalize our communities; Educate millions of youth about our lands, waters, wildlife, culture, and heritage; Engage youth from all backgrounds and all walks of life.

Activities for kids and teens, parents and teachers. Games and activities about intellectual property and patents.

Many, many apps created by NASA on this webpage! Your students will love “NASA Selfies” which lets you generate snapshots of yourself in a virtual space suit, posing in front of gorgeous cosmic locations! This simple interface means you just snap of photo of yourself, pick your background, and share on social media!

"NASA Kids’ Club – a place to play games and learn about NASA!" -- From NASA's Kids Club web page.

One can find NASA internships and fellowships programs; NASA Apps, ebooks and much more.

Divided by K-4, 5-8, and 9-12. Search hundreds of resources. Lesson plans and teaching materials to support STEM curriculum.
Toolkits are compilations of free downloadable resources with various science themes. For example, toolkits may contain ready-to-print posters, social media graphics, or bookmark templates. Topics include Mars, total solar eclipses, and science calendars. Explore and download resources today!

NTRS provides access to NASA full-text online documents, images, and videos. The types of information included are conference papers, journal articles, meeting papers, patents, research reports, images, movies, and technical videos – scientific and technical information created or funded by NASA.

Launched in 1998, NASA Space Place's mission is to inspire and enrich upper-elementary-aged kids' learning of space and Earth science online through fun games, hands-on activities, informative articles and engaging short videos. With material in both English and Spanish and resources for parents and teachers, NASA Space Place has something for everyone.

From the NIST kid's page, it teaches what is the International System of Units (SI), the modern metric system. What is the seven SI base units, their defining constants and how to use each unit. There are also coloring pages for fun.

The League of SI Superheroes use their incredible powers of measurement to perform amazing feats of science and engineering.

With NOAA’s Data in the Classroom, students use real-time ocean data to explore today’s most pressing environmental issues, and develop problem-solving skills employed by scientists. Access online and classroom-ready curriculum activities with a scaled approach to learning and easy-to-use data exploration tools.

The National Climate Assessment offers information about the causes, effects, risks and possible responses to human-caused climate change. This guide for educators was developed by the NOAA, the NCAnet Education Affinity Group, and members of the CLEAN Network. Lesson plans focus on key regions in the report and climate issues in each region.

Education resources are distributed across many websites and program offices at NOAA and on NOAA partner websites. This portal is designed to assist educators in accessing these materials from one centralized interface. The content here is a sampling of NOAA's education resources and more can be found at each linked location.

This section provides direct access to lesson plans developed by scientists and educators in conjunction with expeditions supported by the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research. These lessons are geared toward students in Grades 5-12. Presented here as web-based education materials, each lesson plan corresponds with a specific ocean exploration and can be supplemented with daily logs prepared by scientists and educators during each mission at sea. Images and video captured in the daily logs provide an invaluable resource for teachers and students as they explore these lessons.

Comprehensive lesson plans present NOAA science through activities using online data from NOAA, and other trusted Web sites. The lessons are correlated to National Science Education Standards and the Ocean Literacy Essential Principles and Fundamental Concepts. The Lessons are designed to supplement existing curricula at the middle and high school levels.

Beautiful and educational videos about marine life and our oceans. These videos were created by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Science On a Sphere® (SOS) is a room sized, global display system that uses computers and video projectors to display planetary data onto a six foot diameter sphere, analogous to a giant animated globe. Researchers at NOAA developed Science On a Sphere® as an educational tool to help illustrate Earth System science to people of all ages. Animated images of atmospheric storms, climate change, and ocean temperature can be shown on the sphere, which is used to explain what are sometimes complex environmental processes, in a way that is simultaneously intuitive and captivating. SOS Explorer™ (SOSx) is a flat screen version of the widely popular Science On a Sphere® (SOS). The revolutionary software takes SOS datasets (over 400), usually only seen on a 6-foot sphere in large museum spaces, and makes them more accessible. The visualizations show information provided by satellites, ground observations and computer models.

SciJinks is all about weather! Short for Science Hijinks, it is a joint NOAA and NASA educational website that puts fun and adventure into learning about weather, satellite meteorology, and Earth science. It is geared toward middle- and high-school aged kids and their educators.

NOAA Climate.gov has a variety of resources for teachers including information on teaching climate literacy as well as a variety of lesson plans.