Class CrunchLabs
Mark Rober × NSTA · Grades 6–8
Free middle-school STEM from Mark Rober's team in partnership with the National Science Teaching Association.
Free
Overview
Free middle-school STEM from Mark Rober's team in partnership with the National Science Teaching Association. Newton's laws, projectiles, simple machines, engineering design process. Each unit anchored to one of his videos plus a build challenge using household materials.
Strengths
- •Free
- •NSTA partnership means the pedagogy is real, not just YouTube energy
- •Mark Rober is the engineer your middle schooler already watches. Engagement is unfair to other programs
- •Build challenges use household materials (rubber bands, cardboard, cups)
- •Lesson plans, slides, and rubrics included and professionally produced
- •Six-to-eight-week complete unit at zero cost. Pod-perfect
Limitations
- •Skews male in voice and example
- •Best for grades 6–8. Younger kids will be lost
- •Not a complete K–8 science program. Supplements, doesn't replace
- •Video-heavy
Best fit for
- •Middle-school kids who roll their eyes at textbook science
- •Pods of older kids running a summer STEM intensive
- •Reluctant-learner boys whose YouTube algorithm has already done the persuading
- •Families who want free, high-quality, screen-tolerant STEM
The honest read
Mark Rober left NASA's JPL to make science irresistible to kids. CrunchLabs is the full-length curriculum version of that mission. Balance with Real Science Odyssey or nature journaling for a wider lens. For the kid who'd rather build a trebuchet than read a textbook, this is the curriculum that meets them where they are.
Get Class CrunchLabs
Free middle-school STEM from Mark Rober's team in partnership with the National Science Teaching Association.
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Class CrunchLabs
Free