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Community Explorations
Students identify the strengths and weakness in their community. They take a community walk and take pictures of people interacting with the environment and the "green spaces" in their community. They then write a persuasive essay...
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Finding Comfort in an Unfamiliar Landscape
Students recognize the writings of a prominent American writer. They analyze written text making connections to personal prior experience. Students discuss in small and large groups their findings. They organize ideas in writing using...
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Teaching the Five Themes of Geography Through Picture Books
Read the story Make Way for Ducklings and introduce little ones to the five themes of geography. Reread the story, while displaying transparencies to reinforce the five themes. In groups, learners view pictures and identify the themes on...
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Character Building from Inside Out
Students determine how a stop animation movie is created. They compare the similarities of a stop animation movie to a flip book and construct a flip book showing fluid motion. They examine the different theories about why when a series...
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Community Map of The Giver
Students read "The Giver" after finishing the unit on inventions and inventors. Using the information in the novel, they develop a geographic map illustrating the community in the story. They identify human and physical features and...
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Water and Ice
Learners observe what happens to water as it goes from a solid to a liquid. In this exploratory lesson students gain an understanding for the water cycle while working in groups observing what happens to water as it changes...
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What is a Community?
Second graders write sentences in a graphic organizer about communities and what they include. In this community lesson, 2nd graders will also draw a picture based on their description.
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African Americans: 1800 - 1870
Students explore living and working environment of both slave and free African Americans from places throughout the United States.
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"Heritage" - "Hey, That's the Name of Our School!"
Seventh graders gain a better understanding of the canal period in U.S. History, and more specifically, discern the importance of the Illinois and Michigan Canal on the development of Illinois as a state and Chicago as a prominent city.
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How We Get From Here to There
Learners recognize various types of movement people rely on to get from one place to another, locate the forms of movement on a map and choose one form of movement and research its path.
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How can my breakfast help the birds?
Sixth graders design farms with a bird's habitat in mind. In this farm lesson plan, 6th graders research how sun grown coffee destroys a bird habitat, and then they make their own farm with a bird's habitat being preserved. They then...
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What Is Smart Growth?
High schoolers practice planning for the development of an area using the goals of Smart Growth as a guide. They analyze how regions can affect government policies. They role-play citizens who recommend how an area should be developed.
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The Wildland/Urban Interface Dilemma
Students examine all sides of the issues surrounding wildland fire. Groups assume the roles of different people who must decide what to do about a fictitious wildfire. They have a discussion to analyze the issue. A good, real life...
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Whose Breakfast isn't for the Birds?
Students explore coffee production. In this cross-curriculum rainforest ecology lesson, students research regions where coffee comes from and investigate how the native birds in the rainforest are effected by coffee...
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Water Pollution Hot-Spots
Students complete internet research in small groups to identify types of water pollution, spotlight water pollution hot-spots, and design a plan for water prevention.
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Kincaid Creatures
Students brainstorm a list of nocturnal and diurnal wild animals they see in their community and discuss how the animals would be different if they were living during the Ice Age. Using a handout, they discover how archeologists record...
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Female Adolescent Identity Formation: Am I Powerful or Powerless?
Learners explore the "coming of age" process experienced by adolescent girls on their journey from children to adulthood. They focus on the middle years or limbo period in which girls decide who they want to become as women or rather,...
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Unesco: Mexico: Historic Centre of Mexico City and Xochimilco
Built in the 16th century by the Spanish on the ruins of Tenochtitlan, the old Aztec capital, Mexico City is now one of the world's largest and most densely populated cities. It has five Aztec temples, the ruins of which have been...