Curated OER
Cultural and Social Transformations Since 1865
Students research cultural and social issues in the areas of Westward Expansion, Immigration, and Civil Rights. They use their research to create a PowerPoint electronic book to be used by other students.
Curated OER
Community Building
Young scholars explore the issues of urban and suburban sprawl. They work in small groups to create their own planned communities.
Curated OER
Helping People Who Are Hungry
Students discuss the concept of hunger. In this hunger lesson, students discuss the book, The Story of Stone Soup. Student then brainstorm a possible service project ideas and create plans to carry out their service project.
Curated OER
National Service: Lesson Plan
Students explore and take postions on the concept of mandatory community service. They then debate the issue in class as a learning model.
Curated OER
Can We Be Both Conservationists and Consumers?
High schoolers explore their role as consumers and conservationists and what roles they play in today's economic climate. They explore resource allocation issues. Students analyze data and draw comparisons between historical and...
Curated OER
Bullying and Core Democratic Values
Middle schoolers explore the concept of core democratic values. After completing a survey of student populations regarding bullying, small groups analyze their findings and present their findings to the Student Council, principal,...
Ed Change
Exchanging Stories: Names
Students write short stories about their names and share them in small groups to help build community in the classroom.
Social Media Toolbox
Cyberbullying
What can we do to make our school community more aware of cyberbullying? From The Social Media Toolbox, lesson 10 of 16 takes on the tough topic of bullying. Learners research cyberbullying through online research, then create an...
Curated OER
Social Studies: Public Service to a Better Image
Students, in a program entitled "Strategies for Success," examine ways to change public perception of their school. For this project-based lesson, they explore local social and environmental issues, develop a conflict resolution...
Curated OER
Multicultural Issues and the Law: Gender and Race Based Schooling
Young scholars examine the problems associated with gender based and race based education. In groups, they research the history of education and the laws that have changed education and impacted lives. They brainstorm a list of the...
Curated OER
Working Together to Improve Our Community
Learners from the fourth grade research a solution to a community problem and converse with eighth graders via email. Eighth graders study the political process and work with the fourth graders to present information to the public to...
Curated OER
Convey Ideas in Writing
Write an unsent letter about a consumer scam, paying attention to the writing conventions of punctuation and spelling. This lesson plan could be adapted to fit a variety of social issues in which letter writing is appropriate. 4
Curated OER
Workshop 6: Improving the Community
Young scholars participate in a service learning project to improve their community. They work together to decide on a project and how to implement it. They propose solutions to problems the community is facing as well.
Curated OER
Community Quilt
Second graders use prior knowledge about the community to create a quilt. They use complete sentences to explain their block and also use oral language skills to tell about their caption for their quilt piece.
Stanford University
Observing Human Rights Day
How much intervention is appropriate for America to take in cases of human rights violations? Class members ponder a question that has lingered since the birth of America with a series of primary sources that reflect the degree to which...
Curated OER
Bands Reunited: The English Beat and Berlin
Young scholars listen to and discuss popular music that addresses political and social issues of oppression, but in a joyful way. They role play as artistic teams and plan a music video that may be used for a specific song.
Curated OER
Bringing Justice Home ~First Steps toward Community Action
Students explore activities that might some day bring "justice for all" to their communities. They assess how justice is a day-to-day, life or death matter that faces their communities. Interviews are conducted to explain how justice is...
Curated OER
An Issue of Loyalty: Exploring the Treatment of Japanese Americans During World War II
Students consider the meaning of loyalty. They explore the history of Japanese in the United States. and consider the meaning of citizenship. They create a presentation for the class. It can be a poster, Power Point or other...
Curated OER
Cultural Issues
Students observe another culture using a provided simulation script and then make assumptions about that culture based on what they witnessed. They will later be debriefed and talk about the assumptions they made that were not accurate.
Safe Drinking Water Foundation
Making a Difference
After learning about the effects of water pollution, your class will discuss ways to make people in their community aware of the importance of water conservation. Then, your young environmentalists will write a letter to the local...
Missouri Department of Elementary
I’m Thumbody!
Positive and negative thinking is the focus of a lesson that boost self-awareness. Beginning with a whole-class discussion, scholars brainstorm what positive thinking looks and sounds like then compares and contrast the two types of...
Facing History and Ourselves
Appreciate, Apology, Aha
Build a strong classroom community with a closing routine that asks each participant to share something they appreciate about their classmate(s), issue an apology if they may have hurt someone's feelings or an "aha" moment when they...
Newseum
The First Amendment in Action Today
Young activists research a community issue and apply the rights defined in the First Amendment to develop a proposal that would solve the issue—using Pinterest's board "The Freedom to Make A Change Posters" as examples, groups design a...
Social Media Toolbox
Ethical Decision Making
When faced with a dilemma, how do journalists decide how much news to use? Social media scholars explore the philosophies of ethical resolution in the first of a 16-part Social Media Toolbox series. Partnered pupils use a Potter Box to...