Fun Educational Activities For 9th Grade

Exciting educational activities from NASA and the USGS teach ninth-graders about gravity, plate tectonics, planets, radiation, volcanoes and ground water. Discovery Education has lesson plans to teach about cultural stereotyping and how technology works, and CoolMath's Algebra Crunchers generates an endless stream of algebra problems for teens to solve. Scholastic teaches kids how to become effective storytellers and Quizlet has over 2,000 interactive flash card sets, with audio, for ninth graders.

Learn about gravity, mass, acceleration and buildings in space from the The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). NASA has a 9th-grade student area with videos, a gallery of planet photos and an interactive game, Extreme Planet Makeover, which allows students to make their own planet, choosing its distance from other stars, planet size and age and star type. NASA's Educators' section has ninth-grade resources such as a do-it-yourself podcast project using NASA videos and audio recordings, a math project about radiation levels and design competitions.

Discovery Education has 9th-grade activities in the subjects of science, technology, social studies, health, math and language arts. Lesson plans teach teens how televisions work, about cultural stereotyping, how to solve algebra problems and how to analyze the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe. The site also has a Brain Booster library full of games that require logic and reasoning skills in addition to basic K-9 academic skills and printable worksheets. A student area on this site has homework help in all subjects, interactive games and step-by-step tutorials on their WebMath site.

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) has educational resources in the topics of ecosystems, biology, geography, geology and water. The lessons include classroom and computer lab activities. Simulate data collections of water quality in San Francisco, learn about desert geology and how volcanic gases affect the atmosphere. Study environmental impacts on birds, mammals and reptiles and learn how to read topographic maps. Geomagnetism, astronomy, plate tectonics, fossils, caves, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes and ground water are also topics covered in lessons and activities on this site.

Quizlet has over 2,000 interactive and printable flash cards, worksheets and quizzes for the ninth grade. Term lists with audio pronunciations, quizzes that can be programmed regarding answer types, interactive and printable worksheets to review nearly any topic are easily navigated. The site's ninth-grade subject areas include:

• arts
• literature
• languages
• math
• science
• history
• geography

The National Library of Manipulatives has dozens of interactive games for 9th graders, including tan-grams, multi-shaped dominoes, online spinners for probability games, histograms, tessellations and fractal art generators. CoolMath is an "amusement park of math," which includes algebra and geometry lessons, problem sets and an Algebra Crunchers game. Scholastic also has quality games, activities and lesson plans in the subjects of language arts, social studies, science and math. The site has special activities that teach kids how to be news reporters, and has a storytelling workshop online.