Curated OER
Documentary-Style Research Projects
Show your pupils how to use guiding questions to help them focus their research into a topic. Using the framework provided by these questions, researchers explore a topic, collect interesting facts, and prepare a PowerPoint presentation...
Curated OER
Gathering, Evaluating,and Organizing Information for a Research Report
It's never too early to build research skills! Students locate information relevant to a subject they are doing a research project on. They take notes and sort the information under main topic headings. Through research, they gain an...
Penguin Books
An Educator's Guide to Al Capone Does My Shirts
It's hard to imagine that life on Alcatraz could be dull. A series of intriguing lessons take readers through the novel Al Capone Does my Shirts. Pre-reading questions introduce the text and a range of suggestions, from comic strips to...
Curated OER
Exploring Owls
What can young scientists discover from dissecting an owl pellet? Explore the owl food chain, beginning with an introduction to these predatory birds. Suggested strategies here include creating a podcast and purchasing a poster, however...
Curated OER
Encouraging Students to Embrace Their Inner Author
Everyone is a writer! Youngsters compose an original piece of writing. In this writing lesson, they come up with their own idea for a piece of writing, revise it, and then publish it with illustrations. This lesson includes three...
Curated OER
Wildlife Fact File
Learners research a specific animal. In this animal science lesson, students use a "Wildlife Fact Sheet" to take notes on their specific animal. Learners use the Internet and reference books to gather information.
Curated OER
A Pixie Biography Report
Students practice biographical writing after completing research on the subject. For this journalism lesson, students read a story of an important person's life and discuss the important moments along the way. Students utilize their...
Curated OER
5 Mother's Day Lessons and Activities
Students complete a craft project. In this Mother's Day lesson plan, students learn about Mother's Day around the world, write an essay about their mother, create a Mother's Day card, create coupons for meaningful time with their...
Curated OER
Trees, Trees, Trees!
Students increase their awareness and knowledge of trees. They be involved within the world around them at home and at school and hopefully become caretakers of their environment. They adopt a tree of their choice and research it.
Curated OER
Unit Plan Template
Use this U.S. History unit plan as a template for creating your own! Simply download the resource and edit the text fields with your own customized unit plan. This is a great jumping-off step, especially for newer teachers.
Curated OER
The Revolutionary War: A Timeline
Fifth graders, in groups, spend one to two days researching their person or event. After the research process, each student has to write two to three sentences describing their person's most important contribution to the American...
Curated OER
Trees, Trees, Trees! - Adopt A Tree
Students adopt a tree, take a bark rubbing from that tree, and conduct research about that type of tree. They write an original piece about their tree using three facts and in a genre of their choice.
Curated OER
Biography: Telling Someone's Life Story
There are many different ways to help your students get excited about writing biographies.
Curated OER
Sim's Cities
Students investigate city management and government by creating a fictional city in groups. In this civics instructional activity, students create rules and a mascot for their fictitious city which they create from poster board cubes....