Curated OER
Picturing a Story: Photo Essay About a Community, Event, or Issue
Students research Dorothea Lange's documentary projects and create their own photo essay about a subject. In this photo essay instructional activity, students analyze examples of social-documentary photographs of Lange. Students define a...
Curated OER
Language Arts: Retelling Leo the Longhorn
Students reinforce sequencing skills by retelling stories. After being assigned roles in the production, they create dialog, props, and costumes for retelling the story "Leo the Longhorn." Working in cooperative groups, students may also...
Special Olympics
A World of Difference
Kids engage in a series of activities that ask them to consider differences and similarities in characteristics, both visible and invisible. With this new understanding, the class investigates the Special Olympics program and develops...
Curated OER
Teaching Justice: Schooling and the Four Waves of U.S. Immigration
U.S. immigration is the focus of a unit on social justice. Over the course of a school year, young historians read a variety of texts to learn about four waves of immigration that have occurred over time in the U.S. An emphasis on...
Curated OER
Off the Record
Music reflects culture and culture is reflected in popular music. Reading an article on how hip-hop has affected the lives of two young men of different races launches an investigation of the development and influences of various musical...
Curated OER
Home Work
Students identify and examine domestic work, skills, and crafts, they find various arenas of traditional learning in their homes and daily lives. They identify experts at home and in their region whose skills contribute to building...
Curated OER
The Chosen: Writing Strategy
Pondering Rembrandt’s portraits provide readers of The Chosen an opportunity to “listen to [the] silence and learn from it,” as they consider Reb Saunders from a different perspective. After examining several paintings, viewers write...
Curated OER
Preparing the Soil
Students explore philanthropy through literature. In this service learning lesson, students consider character traits as they read Seedfolks. Students record their notes regarding the characters in the story of a community garden in...
Curated OER
Working Together As a Team
Students examine the need for rules to keep order at home, in school, in communities, and in the country using trade books and teamwork activities. They work in cooperative groups to define a positive learning community by writing a...
Curated OER
The One-Question Interview
In this interview worksheet, students choose one interview question. The questions deal with the economy, nonprofit organizations, and community service. There are fifteen questions.
Guidance Group
101 Ways to Teach Children Social Skills
Increasing pressure to improve student achievement has made it easy to overlook the social skills they also need to develop. With this collection of worksheets and activities, you'll be able to improve children's...
Curated OER
Using the Glossary
Fifth graders explore the glossary. For this language arts lesson, 5th graders define unknown words in a text by using the glossary. Students read a text and use the glossary to find unknown words.
Curated OER
Food, Glorious Food?
How are the reactions between American and European consumers different when it comes to genetically modified foods? Use the New York Times article "Consumers in Europe Resist Gene-Altered Foods" to inform your middle schoolers...
Curated OER
"Teaching with Material Objects" - Horn-book
Students explore language arts by creating Venn Diagrams. In this reading materials lesson, students examine a horn-book and create a hypothesis about how to use it and where they derived from. Students compare their horn-book to a text...
Curated OER
Links to the Missing
Students investigate the information required to identified missing persons, then create a personal 'database' of information on themselves and their community.
PBS
Stories of Painkiller Addiction: Commitment to Recovery
Recovery from substance addiction is an ongoing process. The final lesson in a series about painkiller abuse and addiction prompts learners to research various recovery options before writing a short story about a character who is going...
Curated OER
The Play's the Thing
Students describe to a partner theater experiences they have had in their lives that were memorable, and analyze why. They study about one director's original artistic choices for staging Shakespeare by reading and discussing "Nature's a...
Curated OER
The Economics of Information
Create an expert guide to local businesses in this lesson. Through research, young readers consider their local businesses and the services they provide, paying attention to any conflicting information they might find. Working in groups,...
Curated OER
What Famous Landmarks Have You Visited?
Responding to blog posts can increase written communication skills, critical thinking skills, and the use of social media as a means for discussion. Kids will compose a blog post in response to the provided article related to famous...
Judicial Learning Center
Law and the Rule of Law
We hear a lot about the importance of the rule of law, but most people do not really know what those words mean. The lesson is a webpage that defines the rule of law, explains why it is important in a democratic society and provides...
Curated OER
Teddies
Here's a really cute lesson that utilizes all of your children's teddy bears. Each pupil brings their favorite teddy bear to school. The lesson has many wonderful suggestions for learning activities that can be done with the bears once...
Curated OER
Interrupting and Disagreeing Politely
Explore communication by completing argument related worksheets. Learners discuss appropriate ways to communicate with someone they are having a disagreement with and what techniques are not polite. Students read example arguments and...
Health Smart Virginia
Rule Development
A class discussion defines what it means to make the classroom a safe environment. To make their classroom safe, small groups work collaboratively to create a list of characteristics that make up successful learners. Groups share their...
Curated OER
Animals Matter
Students explore philanthropy. In this character education instructional activity, students define and give examples of philanthropy. Students listen to the story A Symphony of Whales and describe how the characters helped the whales....