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In 2025, the Trump administration froze or terminated more than 3,800 research grants from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. The roughly $3 billion in cuts targeted initiatives related to diversity, equity and inclusion; environmental protection; vaccine hesitancy; public health and more.

Pair these lesson plans with articles from the February issue of Science News Explores to compare ants’ levels of group coordination and cooperation to that of humans and learn how carbon chemistry offered clues to scientists about an ancient Incan individual.

In a research study about group coordination and cooperation, researchers tasked both humans and ants to solve the same sort of puzzle individually and in groups. Students will describe what they learn about the study’s experimental design, first after watching videos of the ant trials, then after watching videos of the human trials, and finally after reading a comic that summarizes the research study.

The ancient Incas used a system of knotted strings — called khipus — for recordkeeping. Learn how carbon chemistry can offer clues about the diet and social status of an ancient Incan individual. You can also carry out calculations to determine average annual growth rates based on information from the story.

Incorporate articles from the January issue of Science News to examine a diagram on woodpecker muscle groups and relate them to human anatomy and analyze a polar bear’s place in the Arctic ecosystem.

Protein is having a moment. It’s cropping up as an additive in all sorts of foods, and social media influencers tout high-protein diets as key to big muscles. But people in the United States typically get enough protein; they just might not be getting the right mix.

Scientists have long noted that polar bears seem to leave much of their prey behind, preferring to eat only the blubber. On first glance, this might look wasteful. But abandoned portions of that carcass might actually benefit other species in the ecosystem. Practice carrying out percentile calculations while answering questions about polar-bear predation strategies, all while discussing the ecological interplay between various species in a harsh Arctic biome.

In this lesson, students will review the human muscular system and then explore how its movements compare with those of woodpeckers. Students will also examine a diagram that shows different woodpecker muscle groups and analyze data from a research article about how those muscles are used while hammering.

Cancer is typically a disease of older people. But since the 1990s, rates of early onset cancer have been rapidly increasing globally.

Golden apple snails can completely regrow a functional eye within months of having lost one. Understanding how the snails re-create or repair their eyes might someday lead to therapies to heal people’s eye injuries or reverse some eye diseases.

In this activity, students will read the Science News Explores article “There’s life beneath the snow — but it’s at risk of melting away” and reflect on how the author of the article educates the reader. After finishing the article, students will create their own ecosystem portrait to educate their classmates about a unique ecosystem.

In this educator guide, you’ll find lesson plans matched to articles from the December issue of Science News that ask students to answer questions about gravitational waves and signal-to-noise ratios and to write a scientific question that could be answered using brain scanning technology.