eSource: Free Teaching Guides
Select a product from the list below to view available teaching guides. Use the tags on left to filter the list.
Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults
Drawing from her experiences as an Indigenous scientist, botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer demonstrated how all living things—from strawberries and witch hazel to water lilies and lichen—provide us with gifts and lessons every day in her best-selling book Braiding Sweetgrass. Adapted View →
Chasing the Storm
Huge, towering clouds build up in the sky—it’s a super cell. The Doppler radar indicates that the system is rotating. But is there a funnel? Is it touching the ground? Only a storm chaser can confirm when a tornado is present—and help meteorologists warn nearby towns. View →
Chernobyl's Wild Kingdom
After the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear explosion in Ukraine, scientists believed radiation had created a vast and barren wasteland in which life could never resurface. But the Dead Zone, as the contaminated area is known, doesn’t look dead at all. In fact, wildlife seems to be thriving… View →
Forensic Identification
About 4,000 unidentified deceased persons are discovered in the United States every year. But forensic experts are successful in identifying about 3,000 of those bodies within a year. In Forensic Identification: Putting a Name and Face on Death, forensic anthropologist Dr.… View →
For the Good of Mankind?
Experiment: A child is deliberately infected with the deadly smallpox disease without his parents’ informed consent. Result: The world’s first vaccine. Experiment: A slave woman is forced to undergo more than… View →
Genomics
Over the past 50 years, scientists have made incredible progress in the application of genetic research to human health care and disease treatment. Innovative tools and techniques, including gene therapy and CRISPR-Cas9 editing, can treat inherited disorders… View →
Glowing Bunnies!?
Our brave new world is here. With modern genetic technologies, science fiction’s “what if?” has become the scientist’s “why not?” Bioengineering has the potential to remake animals in almost any way we can imagine, and… View →
Last of the Giants
Today, an ancient world is vanishing right before our eyes: the age of giant animals. Over 40,000 years ago, the earth was ruled by megafauna: mammoths, mastodons, saber-toothed tigers and giant sloths. Of course, those creatures no longer exist, and there is only one likely reason for… View →
Meltdown!
Japan. March 11, 2011. 2:46 P.M. The biggest earthquake in Japan’s history—and one of the world’s five most powerful since 1900—devastated the Tohoku region, 320 kilometers (200 miles) northeast of Tokyo. It triggered a huge tsunami that left crippling damage in its wake.… View →
Scientific Rivalries and Scandals
Bribery. Theft. Betrayals and lifelong feuds. Intense competition leading to bitter disputes has characterized the relationships among some of the world’s greatest scientific innovators. This one-of-a-kind series combines math, science, history, and biography to expose the rivalries… View →
Shaking the Foundation
“I cannot think that the world, as we see it, is the result of chance; & yet I cannot look at each separate thing as the result of design.” English naturalist Charles Darwin wrote this in 1860, a year after publishing his theory of evolution. His words show the… View →
Teen Innovators
Teen Innovators tells the stories of discovery and the inventions of nine young students. For example, twelve-year-old Gitanjali Rao, appalled by the tragedy in Flint, Michigan, found a cheaper, more effective way to test for lead in drinking water. Four… View →
Traumatic Brain Injury
Two soccer players collide on the field. A soldier in Afghanistan is thrown to the ground during a bomb explosion. A teen has an accident while riding her bike—and she isn’t wearing her helmet. Each of these incidents can produce a traumatic brain injury ( View →