Microbes & Disease

Teach science using
Experiments and Activities
Target Grades 6•7•8

Are Your Students Engaged?

Are you eager to see your students become scientists in your classroom?
That's the goal of this course...
As fellow scientists they need to learn to investigate, discover, measure, observe, examine...
These skills take time and repetition. 

But repeating stuff can be boring...

That’s where labs come in!
 Many of the labs are teaching the same fundamentals but use different materials to keep things interesting.  

Written instructions include:

• list of materials
• straight-forward directions
• questions and writing prompts
• explanations for the students and teacher 

These Labs Are:

• Straight-forward without being simplistic
• Written to students
• Designed to be print-and-go.
• Watch experiments; read directions; access background information.

Subject Area:

Life Science

Target Age:

Middle School: Grades 6•7•8

Microbes & Disease

Get started right away!
Print or download lessons

Enroll Today

$17

This course is designed for teachers to give them hands-on resources to teach science in their classroom.

This course is a collection of written resources to use in your classroom. You can start as soon as you sign up!  

You can use the lessons in any order. Within a section, lessons progress from concrete to abstract and from fundamental concepts to more tangential ones. Feel free to rearrange them to suit your needs.

The written instructions should answer your questions. And, the Teacher Notes sections in each activity will give you plenty of background information. You won’t have to do any outside research unless you want to. 

As a class, choose 6-8 labs to serve as your core content (Δ marks my choices but you might pick different ones). Core labs provide fodder for class discussions and content for tests. Additional labs go deeper or broader—some are tangents, and some repeat the core concepts for kids who need that. Offer as many as you have equipment for. Ideally, everyone should complete the core labs and some kids will have time for additional labs.

All all of the instructions are written directly to the students so you can just print and go.

I think so, though my background is classroom teaching. It’s a collection of activities that will help you teach the content.  

Course Curriculum

Microbes & Disease

Get started right away!
Print or download lessons

Enroll Today

$17

Hello! I'm Carolyn Balch, the author of Engaging Science Labs.

I started my career as a high school physics teacher. Then, I entered the field of museum education at the National Air and Space Museum, which is part of the Smithsonian Institution. There I wrote science education materials and ran teacher workshops.

When my children were born, I left the workforce and when they were little, our family got involved with a school start up. My children grew and with them, the school. I ran science experiments for different classes and joined the faculty as the middle school science teacher when the school grew.

Now I teach part-time and during the rest of the week I work on the curriculum I use during my teaching. Each online course is a unit of study from a hands-on, laboratory-experience perspective. I write instructions for each activity and create video for many of them. I want you to feel thoroughly prepared to teach these lessons.

© 2025 engagingsciencelabs