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In these lesson plans paired to the February issue of Science News, students will investigate how researchers applied chemistry principles to create a potential needle-free solution to deliver insulin and will answer questions about how biologically derived innovations could address technological limitations of 3-D printing.

Students will investigate how researchers apply chemistry principles to create a potential solution to help diabetes patients. Students will define the problem of why it’s difficult to create skin patches to deliver diabetes drugs and brainstorm possible solutions by thinking about the structure and function of the different layers of the epidermis.

To 3-D print tiny things, researchers need tiny tools. Learn about how nature’s age-old designs might be repurposed to address technological limitations. Discuss obstacles that hold 3-D printing technology back from reaching its full potential, all while answering questions about how biologically derived innovation might expand to other applications and lead to a more sustainable future.

Universities that opened their campuses in fall 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, faced an uncharted, months-long experiment in infection control. Science News looked at the measures five universities took. Each school cobbled together periodic testing with rules about masks and public gatherings.

For 3,000 years, humans have connected emotions to some of the same body parts. An analysis of clay tablets reveals that ancient Mesopotamians felt love in the heart and fear in the gut, as we do today.

In this activity, students will design an experiment to observe how exercise affects their ability to concentrate in class. Students will then read the Science News Explores article “Short exercise workouts can boost classroom performance” and analyze how their experiment differed from the experiment described in the article.

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.