Curated OER
Pay It Forward Project
Create a list of random acts of kindness and have your class perform them during a designated week. Learners will also participate in a project centered around being kind to others. Each grade chooses their kindness project, and then...
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Art Critic for a Day!
Middle schoolers practice evaluating art by creating a research project and presentation. They use the Internet and library to discover a piece of art or artist whom they feel has an impact on the world of art. Next, they create a...
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Palace Adventure
Young language arts learners write and illustrate a short fantasy story based on the book Corduroy. First, learners need to develop a character. Then, through their writing and illustrations, they take their characters on adventures...
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Graffiti Project
Students inspect performing arts by participating in a class presentation. For this art collage lesson, students examine the graffiti art created on New York subways and discuss the life of Keith Haring. Students create their own images...
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Family Portraits
Students discuss, analyze, and interpret "Portrait of a Dutch Family" by Fans Hals and then create subject specific projects for assessment. This cross-curricular lesson is well-suited for Language Arts or Visual Arts classrooms and...
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The Hare and the Water: A Tanzanian Folk Tale
"The Hare and the Water," a Tanzanian folk tale, lends a global perspective to literary analysis. Learners spend the first two days reading and storyboarding. On day three, they examine folk tale elements (worksheet included), and design...
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Creating Classroom Rules
Perfect for establishing classroom protocols, this activity gets even the youngest learners thinking about rules and their consequences. The lesson begins with a discussion and a reading of the poem Humpty Dumpty that gets youngsters...
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Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Words: Art, Art History, Language Arts, Creative Writing
Learners write a story inspired by Vincent Van Gogh's "Starry Night" and then try their hand at their own rendition of this famous piece of art. In a twist, students incorporate the stories into their paintings.
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A Zoo Book for All
A visit to the local zoo launches an integrated life science/ language arts research project into the habitat, feeding habits, offspring, lifespan, and other interesting facts about animals. Each group selects two animals to photograph...
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Collage to Writing
Practice expository and creative writing with your class. Pupils use magazines to find pictures, cut them out, and create a collage. This work of art is then used as a writing prompt. They describe the collage in either a creative or...
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Online —On Stage—and Action
Use your tablets to participate in a culture-sharing project with a class in a foreign country. Your class can communicate and share ideas with a class in another country, swapping information regarding language and culture. Together you...
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Navajo Pottery: Beautiful Objects
Young potters make their very own version of the classic Navajo Pottery. With helpful worksheets and applicable cross-curricular activities, the lesson is an enriching way to mold both your clay and the multicultural acceptance of your...
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Who's Who at Our School
Young scholars interview staff members at their elementary school in order to get to know them better. They write interview questions, conduct an interview, write a paragraph about the staff member, and take digital pictures of that...
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Language, As Experienced Through Pin-Hole Photography
Students read about and discuss photographic principles and, under the direction of the art teacher, construct individual cameras from heavy black cardboard and thin sheet metal with a hole for the lens and black tape for the shutter.
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Come Visit My School
Learners practice basic camera skills. They create several panoramic movies. They create a virtual tour of their school.
BBC
Sweet Tooth - Full Stops
Young writers engage in a instructional activity which reinforces the concept of when to use periods, "full stops" as they're called, when writing. There is a terrific online activity built into the plan which gives the kids valuable...
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Kids Get School Named for Obama
Students read about the renaming of a school for Barack Obama. In this political lesson plan, the teacher presents vocabulary words from the news article, then the students read the article and answer comprehension questions. Lesson...
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Snappy Solutions, Sizzling Sentences
An examination of the figurative language in Gwendolyn Brooks’ To Young Readers challenges your writers to think about the richness of language. Ask your class why Brooks says, “Good books are bandages.” This discussion of alliteration,...
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Collaborative Literature Circle For the 21st Century
Using ichat or Edmodo 4th -6th graders participate in an inter-school literature circle. Students from two different schools pair up online through ichat and use a blog to conduct a book circle. This lesson is wonderful; it fully...
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Note-Taking: K.I.S.S. "Keep It Short and Simple"
Note-taking is an essential study skill, and it needs to be taught! In the context of a research project on energy sources, learners find multiple sources, evaluating, paraphrasing, and citing them correctly. Two lists with note-taking...
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Paper Recycling Program
Students design a campaign to encourage paper recycling at the school. In this recycling lesson, students try to persuade other students and staff members to adopt a new recycling program. Students work together in groups to come up...
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The Secret School
Fourth graders complete an activity with the book The Secret School by AVI. In this literacy lesson, 4th graders finish the story and write a Haiku poem describing their favorite part of the story.
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Classroom Capers: Creating a Magazine
Fourth graders build language skills in the context of creating a classroom magzine. They participate in activities which help students communitcate ideas and information for a variety of purposes and for specific audiences using the...
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African Folktales
Learners examine the art of storytelling. In groups, they write their own African folktales, design costumes, props and scenery, and videotape folktale presented in dramatic form.