Evidence Lab
How do you know something is true? Students test a claim with their own measurements, find out why one result is never enough, and learn to tell strong evidence from weak.
Fieldbook Learning · United States
Grade 4 science and math lessons
Every unit and lesson for Grade 4, each a real question your class tests with everyday materials. Same class as Year 5 in the UK, Year 4 in Australia, Fourth Class in Ireland, Year 5 in New Zealand, Grade 4 in South Africa, Class 4 in India.
Science
Our Living Planet
Air, water, land and living things, and how each one depends on the others. Students build a sealed jar ecosystem to keep for a month and catch the water cycle in a bag on the window.
Winter Science: Ice, Snow and Staying Warm
Why roads get salted, which mitten really works, how a seal stays warm in icy water, and why a mouse is cosier under the snow than on top of it. Four hands-on lessons on ice, heat and insulation.
Rocks and Erosion: How Land Changes Shape
Why some rocks scratch and some fizz, how a trickle of water carves a canyon, what keeps a hillside in place, and how a boulder ends up as sand. Four hands-on lessons on rocks, weathering and erosion.
Simple Circuits: Make It Light Up
Light a bulb with one wire, hunt for materials that let electricity through, find out why string lights all go dark at once, and build a burglar alarm. Four hands-on lessons on closed loops, safe and cheap.
Your Senses: How Does Your Body Know?
Map the most sensitive spots on your skin, find the blind spot in each eye, lose the flavour of a jelly bean by pinching your nose, and build an owl ear. Four lessons on how senses gather information and the brain makes sense of it.
Earth Day Investigations: Make Your School Better
Four hands-on investigations into the school's own garbage, shade, water and electricity. Each one ends with students taking a real, evidence-based recommendation to the principal or caretaker.
Sun, Earth and Moon
Why it's breakfast time in Calgary and bedtime in Singapore, why your shadow swings round the stick, why the Moon changes shape and why some places barely have seasons. Students build models with balls and lamps, track real shadows and read real sky data from cities around the world.
How Your Body Works
Why your heart races when you run, what happens to your lunch, how your arm bends and where germs hide. Students take their own pulse, build a model gut and a card elbow, and run a handwashing fair test with glitter 'germs'. Everyday materials, no winter, works in any country.
Who Lives Here?
A schoolyard survey with string squares and hand lenses, sorting animals by their features, life cycles from caterpillar to butterfly, and who can live in which habitat. Students look, count and sketch but never collect or harm. Works in any climate and any country, in a garden, on pavement or in a desert.
Keep It Cool: Ice, Insulation and Staying Comfortable
Why salt makes ice melt faster, which wrap keeps a drink coldest, how a seal and a fennec fox each keep their body temperature steady, and how to build a cool box that beats the heat. Four hands-on lessons that start from a freezer and work in any climate.
Bouncing Light: Mirrors, Water and Colour
Steer a beam around a wall with mirrors, find out why a pencil looks broken in water, and split white light into the colours hiding inside it. Three hands-on lessons on reflection, refraction and colour that build on shadows and work in any climate.
Flowers, Fruit and Seeds: How Plants Make More Plants
What is a flower really for? Is a tomato a fruit? How can a seed travel without legs? Three hands-on lessons on pollination, fruits and seeds, and seed dispersal, from a flower you can take apart, through foods you can cut open, to seed models you can drop, blow and float. Nothing is tasted, and it works in any climate.
Restless Earth: Fossils, Soils, Volcanoes and Plates
Press model fossils and read a cliff of layers, shake a jar of soil and watch it sort itself by grain size, plot real volcanoes and earthquakes on a world map to find the edges of Earth's plates, then move model plates and test a building on a shake table. Four hands-on lessons that build on Rocks and Erosion.
Forces at Work: Gravity, Resistance, Levers and Pulleys
Do heavy things really fall faster? Why are fast swimmers shaped like torpedoes? How can a small push lift a big load? Three hands-on lessons on gravity, air and water resistance, friction, levers and pulleys, measured in newtons with homemade and simple tools.
Stars and the Night Sky
Where the stars go in the daytime, why they wheel across the sky all night and why Orion is a winter sight in Canada but a summer one in Australia. Students sort real star data, spin and orbit as human models and read a printed sky chart. No materials needed: just the printed sheets, in either hemisphere.
Think Like a Scientist: The Scientific Method
The steps of the scientific method, taught as a cycle rather than a recipe. Students sort testable questions, inspect unfair tests and plan a fair one, turn a page of practice data into a mean, a bar graph and a claim, and then walk the whole cycle with a real case: Ignaz Semmelweis and handwashing in 1840s Vienna. Nothing to buy: every lesson runs on printed sheets.
The Water Cycle, Start to Finish
A water-drop journey game around eight stations of the room, a 100-square model of where all of Earth's water really is, from USGS data, and a sealed bag of water on a sunny window that shows the Sun driving the whole cycle. Two of the three lessons need nothing but printed sheets.
Living with Water: Salt, Rice and the Mekong
Science and English together, for English learners (CEFR A2–B1). Three investigations from Vietnam: how salt farmers turn the sea into salt, how rice terraces stop a mountain washing away, and how a house in the Mekong Delta stays dry in the flood season.
Monsoon Science: Rain, Sun and the Nón Lá
Science and English together, for English learners (CEFR A2–B1). Why is the Vietnamese nón lá shaped like a cone? Students build paper hats, test them in 'monsoon rain' and 'midday sun', and find the best shape for a rice farmer.
Math
Fence It, Fill It: Area and Perimeter
Which mat is really the biggest? Does the same fence always hold the same garden? Can the same rug need more edging? Four lessons where students tile, stretch rope and chalk the schoolyard to find out that area and perimeter measure different things.
Fair Shares: Fractions and Decimals
Is half always the same size? Where does three-quarters stand? Why is 3/4 + 2/4 not 5/8? Who jumped further, 1.4 m or 1.35 m? Four hands-on lessons where students fold, stand on a giant number line, measure recipes and measure their own jumps to make sense of fractions and decimals.
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