Each Teacher Guide includes:

• Lesson Plans
• Paperback copy of the storybook Aisha Makes Work Easier
• Teacher Background Information
• Assessment Tools
• English Language Learner suggestions

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This unit guides students to learn about how factories use processes, systems, and machines to help make work easier and safer for workers. The storybook "Aisha Makes Work Easier" - set in and around the U.S. city of Boston, Massachusetts - as well as follow-up lessons reinforce concepts about simple machines. Special emphasis is given to the sometimes surprising settings in which we can find simple machines in our everyday world, as well as in a potato chip factory.

The lessons add depth to the notion that simple machines help make work easier, and also introduce the idea that different systems can help make work simpler. Students will compare individual craftsmanship to factory production, and explore the benefits and disadvantages of the assembly line as a production process. Students will measure the force required to complete a given task with and without simple machines, to understand the types of advantages simple machines offer. During the culminating design challenge, students will put their data to the test as they combine a series of simple machines to complete the various tasks of a model potato chip factory and make work easier.

• FOSS Connection: Levers & Pulleys
• STC Connection: Balance and Weighing
• Insights Connection: Lifting Heavy Things