Old Phones, New Magnets

Rare earth elements make the strongest magnets in the world - and they are sitting inside the old phone in your drawer. This one-page activity tells a real 2026 story: instead of digging up more rare earths, Apple and the mining company MP Materials are recycling them, using a robot named Daisy to take apart old iPhones and save the tiny magnets inside. Students read the story and work out why "closing the loop" matters when less than 1% of rare earths get recycled.

What's Included

• 1 student page: a short news story plus four cards (What's the Story? multiple choice, a fill-in reasoning chain with word bank, Cause & Effect matching, and a Why Does It Matter? sentence starter)
• 1 teacher key page with every answer, a sample written response, the TEKS/NGSS alignment box, a clickable link to the original CBS News / 60 Minutes report, and a short science-connection summary

How It Helps You Teach

• Hits the "importance to modern life" half of TEKS 6.6C with a story about devices students own
• Reinforces the key idea that rare earths are not scarce - they are hard to gather - which is why recycling makes sense
• The key's article link lets you show students the source, which builds trust and supports media literacy

Pair It With

This sheet is part of a four-activity Rare Earth Elements set: Context Clues, Inferences, Science in the News, and Science Sort (Rare Earth Element or Not?). Check out our library for the other three and the full set.

Standards: TEKS 6.6C; NGSS MS-PS1-3. Part of the Daily Science series by Workybooks.