Curated OER
What Makes Our Community Special?
Explore websites, complete research, and use technological tools to create a final multimedia presentation on what makes a community special. Learners of all ages work with a partner to research an interesting aspect of their community,...
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Dewey Decimal Game
Engage all the upper elementary classes in your school in a game to learn Dewey Decimal Classification. On 5 or 6 consecutive visits to the library, teams from each class learn how the system works, locate books in each category, and...
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Living in an "Olympic" Country
Students research countries participating in the Olympic Games. They create a database which includes graphs for comparing population density, the number of athletes, per capita income, etc. for each country. This project is completed...
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Orville and Wilbur Wong and the Fantastic Flying Machines
Upper elementary and middle schoolers examine the role of Chinese immigrants in America. They investigate literature, history and cultures of Chinese-Americans. This ambitious plan takes two weeks to complete, and it brings in elements...
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Sidewalks to Success in Middle School
Students write a brochure that educates incoming middle school students on how to succeed.
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Living History Video Project
Fifth graders videotape an interview with a community member. In this service learning project, 5th graders are matched with a resident at a local retirement center. The students spend time corresponding with this person and ultimately...
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Survivor In The Classroom
Young scholars engage in a lesson which adapts the idea behind Survivor to an outside-of-class project. How many students would survive? young scholars take responsibility for meeting deadlines while strengthening their writing and...
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Trick or Treat for Unicef
Creative thinkers develope advertisements. They work in groups to create an advertisement featuring the importance of contributing to UNICEF. They research, learn about point of view, and present final projects to the class.
Discovery Education
Is Our Community Influenced by the Opioid Epidemic?
Opioid abuse is becoming a national crisis, but combating the influence of opioids requires examining the ways it affects individual communities. A thorough teacher guide provides step-by-step instructions about implementing an...
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Virtual Colony Project
Students develop strategies to create a successful colony by analyzing the environment, individual rights, and responsibilities. They gain an understanding of the challenges faced by colonists.
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Working in a Team
Learning how to interact and work cooperatively in a team is an essential skill, both in school and the world beyond the classroom. Pupils use a self-check, group skills worksheet to evaluate their behavior in a recent group situation,...
National Institute on Drug Abuse
The Brain's Response to Drugs
Marijuana affects the brain differently than inhalants, which have a different effect than opioids. Elementary and middle school classes read about these drugs as well as nicotine, methamphetamine, hallucinogens, and steroids before...
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Reading to Elementary Children
Middle schoolers participate in a cross-age reading program. In this language arts lesson, students choose a class of younger children and read them the book The Legend of the Bluebonnet. Middle schoolers reflect upon their service...
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Welcome to My World
Elementary schoolers discuss what a community is, and what their community has to offer them. They create posters, or flyers for the different businesses or places in their community to place around their school. After the learners have...
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My Hero Learning Circle
Students participate in a collaboration activity. In this My Hero Project lesson, students discover what a hero is to someone halfway around the world and themselves. Over the 16-week session, circles, made up of between 6-9 classes from...
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Newspaper Reporting and Writing
Young scholars will examine advertisements, explore ways to inform, locate pictures of Hemingway, read sports articles, and follow directions to create a finished project - a newspaper. their newspapers are multifaceted with not only...
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A Day in the Life
Students inquire about the politics and culture of Ancient Rome. In this Ancient Rome project/unit, students research life during ancient Roman times and create a newspaper with articles on politics, sports, culture, and economics.
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Mr. Lincoln's Hat
Bring out the inner artist with this Abraham Lincoln lesson plan. Elementary students work on a home project creating a hat similar to Abraham Lincoln's hat. They will use geometry and measurement to create the scale of the hat, then...
Public Media for Northern California
An Educator’s Guide to Teaching Gun Control Issues | The Lowdown
The topic of gun control is vast, controversial, and difficult to introduce to students. This gem of a resource covers both sides of the issue and provides topic background, various multimedia and print resources, analysis questions, and...
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The Cat in the Hat is 50!
Have your class react to a number of statements about The Cat in the Hat, then read a news article about a special event honoring the birthday of the popular book. The teacher introduces an article with a discussion and vocabulary...
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I Had a Hero Lesson
Students read "I Had a Hero" a memoir written by a Peace Corps volunteer serving in the Democratic Republic of Congo. They discuss the story, respond to it in writing, complete comprehension activities and relate the account to their own...
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Childhood Lost: Child Labor in the United States, 1830-1930
Working in groups, middle and high schoolers describe and discuss photographs depicting working conditions experienced by child laborers in the 19th century. They then write a persuasive paragraph supporting an amendment to regulate the...
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It's All Greek to Me!
While the ideas for Ancient Greek research are solid, there is little detail to help make your job easier. The focus here is familiarizing your class with online databases and print resources in their school library. After direct...
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The Mosaic School
Students complete activities to learn about world cultures. In this multicultural instructional activity, students define the terms diversity, culture, and mosaic. Students research their family's country of origin and complete...