Curated OER
Welcome to Our Classroom
Students create a brochure for new students. In this writing process lesson, students brainstorm, create and edit ideas for making a brochure for new students. Students use a word processor to make the brochure and edit, copy,...
Curated OER
Trey and Dave go to Africa: Music
Trey from Phish and Dave from the Dave Mathews Band took a trip to Africa to explore music, culture, and history. Your class watches this episode from VH1's Music Studio to understand how African culture and music have influenced modern...
Curated OER
The Presidents Song
Remember learning to spell “encyclopedia” by singing along with Jiminy Cricket? How about using a singing exercise to learn the names of the presidents? “The Presidents Song,” includes the names, in order, from Washington to Coolidge....
Curated OER
Indirectly Direct
Students use prior knowledge of angle and lines as they conduct an experiment with a rolling marble to determine the shape of a mystery object located under a metal pie tin.
Curated OER
Chinese Calligraphy
Explore the beauty of Chinese Calligraphy. This well-developed lesson will take your class on a journey through the history of Calligraphy, engage them in technique and style, then challenge them by having them create new strokes to...
Curated OER
Pre-Columbian Cultures in the Americas
Native American studies is fun, educational, and highly motivating. Fifth graders will gain a deeper understanding of the six major pre-Columbian culture areas on the North American continent. They will choose one group and conduct...
Curated OER
Teaching the Holocaust Through Poetry
W.H. Auden’s poem “Refugee Blues” launches a study of the problems of refugees. Background information about the poem and general information about Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria are provided, as are discussion questions and...
Curated OER
Graphic Novel Writing Workshop
Khaled Hosseini’s video “Using Real People and Events” motivates learners to reflect on their own experiences and to use those experiences as the basis of a graphic novel that expresses a universal truth. The richly detailed plan...
Discovery Education
The Everyday Science of Sports
Physical science juniors will enjoy this sensational enrichment on aerodynamics, especially if they are also sports fans! With a focus on physical features and behaviors, collaborative groups make observations on five different golf...
Scholastic
Study Jams! Fractions
What can quesadillas teach your class about fractions? More than you might think. AJ and Zoe from the StudyJams! crew use this Mexican cuisine to explain how fractions are just equal parts of a whole, defining the key terms numerator and...
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
The Making of the Fittest: The Birth and Death of Genes
Adaptations must be made as environments change. This fabulous presentation features Icelandic icefish, a transparent, scaleless specimen that even has colorless blood. Genetics and adaptations concepts are explored as scientists study...
Intel
Plugging into the Sun
What's cooking? A sizzling STEM unit challenges scholars to build a solar cooker that can successfully cook an egg. The unit opens with a study of Earth's rotation, the sun's energy, and shadows. Pupils use a compass and thermometer to...
Have Fun Teaching
Inferences (2)
Encourage young readers to use their prior knowledge, as well as text clues, to draw inferences from text. Provide them with this worksheet that asks them to record a passage, the background information they already have, the text clues...
Curated OER
Summary and "The Fallacy of Success"
Suggested to accompany a class reading of The Great Gatsby, this plan begins with a discussion emphasizing the reputation of Vanderbilt University. Then, after the class has a working knowledge of the wealth associated with the school,...
Curated OER
Mini-Lesson Planning for Inferences
Making inferences and drawing conclusions is a key component to successful active reading. Encourage your class to use context clues and prior knowledge to infer different elements of a story, including the setting, plot, and character...
NASA
Analyzing Tiny Samples Using a Search for the Beginning Mass Spectrometry
Teach the basics of mass spectrometry with a hands-on activity. The fourth in a series of six lessons explores how mass spectrometry measures the ionic composition of an element. Learners then compare and contrast relative abundance and...
Curated OER
Salmon Stories
Work on author's purpose with this lesson plan, which focuses on sequence of events and audience as well. Middle and high schoolers describe the 50 State Quarters Program for background information. After discussing the images on...
Curated OER
Drugs and Safety Precautions
Drugs can both help and harm depending on how they are used. Fifth graders complete a activity that provides background information on prescription drugs. They read the text and then describe why medication manufacturers label pill...
Curated OER
Why Opposites Attract: Observing Magnetic Fields
Learners brainstorm background knowledge and any questions they may have about magnetic fields. They investigate the role that William Gilbert had in laying the groundwork for modern experimental science. Students observe magnetic fields...
Curated OER
Healthy Eating
Fourth graders learn the five basic food groups and what each one consists of. They develop an understanding of why eating healthy is important. They have background knowledge in healthy eating due to the exposure in previous health...
Curated OER
An Internet Lesson on Anne Frank
Fifth graders study Anne Frank's life during the Holocaust using various Internet sites to answer a questionnaire with facts from their research. They examine background knowledge of the Holocaust and World War II before completing the...
Curated OER
Christopher Columbus: The Man, the Myth, the Legend
Learn more about maps by examining Christopher Columbus's voyage to the New World. Kindergartners will learn about basic map skills and how to identify the compass rose, oceans, and land masses. They will also discover the purpose of...
Curated OER
The Red Badge Of Courage: Directed Reading Thinking Activity
As part of a Directed Reading Thinking Activity (DRTA) class members are asked to predict events in Patricia Polacco's Pink and Say based on illustrations in the story, on their knowledge of Steven Crane's The Red Badge of Courage,...
Florida International University
Design Your Own
Apply scientific principles to designing an experiment to study organisms living on the coral reef in our oceans. Through reading, individuals learn about the coral reef ecosystem and important factors that affect its function....