Curated OER
New Pen at the Zoo
Students create two drawings for a new animal pen design at the zoo. They must draw the ideas keeping the amount of material available in mind. They compare and contrast their two designs and write how they are similar in perimeter and...
Curated OER
Survival
Students identify characteristics of Australia, Africa and Antarctica and compare and contrast them to each other. They work together to identify adaptations that animals have used to survive. They also practice classifying animals.
Curated OER
Having Tea Among The Stars
Students study the struggles and achievements of women in the field of astronomy. They create comparisons of the lives of these women through research. They write a vignette with their group that describes these women sitting down to tea...
Curated OER
Simbolismo de colores.
Students investigate the use of colors in different areas of society. They make contrasts of its uses in places like home and school. Realia is used to determine the ability of students to recognize colors and how they relate to the...
Curated OER
Brine Shrimp Life Cycle
Second graders investigate the life cycle of the brine shrimp. They use a variety of resources to find the details of each step. Students compare the life cycles of different organisms. They create diagrams of the different stages while...
Curated OER
Venn Diagram for Beatrix Potter Books
In this Venn diagram comparison learning exercise, students use a Venn diagram to compare two Beatrix Potter books. There is room for the student to write the titles of the books of choice, and the diagram outline to use for comparing...
Curated OER
Finding Promise in Compromise
Examine how the 'safe passage' for Palestinians between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank affects those living in Israel and reflects both conflict and cooperation between the Israelis and Palestinians. The class compares the perspective...
Curated OER
Persuasive Speech in Julius Caesar
After reading Julius Caesar 1.2 and 1.3, break your class into pairs for this role-play. Each pair will receive one of four prompts (or more, if you create additional examples), in which one person tries to persuade the other to do...
Curated OER
The Final Analysis: Cause and Effect, Fact and Opinion
Middle schoolers read and review informational texts, analyze cause and effect, and distinguish fact from opinion. They assess a "one-minute mystery" you read aloud for cause and effect relationships. Resource includes complete set of...
Curated OER
Reinvigorate Your Vocabulary
Eighth graders participate in a variety of activities to examine the meanings and roots of word derivatives and the meanings of words. Using context clues, they determine the meanings of words omitted from a passage and complete a prefix...
Curated OER
Freak the Mighty: Chapter 18 Semantic Feature Analysis
Intelligent? Arrogant? Obnoxious? After completing Chapter 18 of Freak the Mighty, individuals fill out a semantic feature chart for characters in Rodman Philbrick's novel. Group members then use their charts to discuss relationships...
Curated OER
The Republic; Roman History, Democracy
Students explain the ways in which current American system of government both resembles and differs from the system of government in Rome form about 510 to 264 B.C.
Curated OER
Immigration in the United States
Students explore how recent immigration and migration patterns impact social and political issues. They apply affective learning techniques
Curated OER
Is Monopoly the Microsoft Board's Game?
Students first participate in an in-depth discussion about capitalism, monopolies, trusts, mergers, and the Sherman Antitrust Act. They work in groups to investigate past examples of corporations tried for antitrust act violations.
Curated OER
"Remembering My Childhood on the Continent of Africa" by David Sedaris
David Sedaris is quite the story-teller. Read "Remembering My Childhood on the Continent of Africa" and follow it up with this two-page instructional activity. Readers will revisit the text to answer higher level thinking questions....
Curated OER
This Little Light of Mine
Elementary schoolers discover how electricity travels and create an electron flow through a closed circuit. They work together to make a closed circuit and observe the electricity being made. This outstanding lesson plan is well worth...
Curated OER
Gender in the Classroom by Deborah Tannen
Bring some informational text into your high school classroom with this worksheet. As your pupils read Gender in the Classroom by Deborah Tannen, provide them with this analysis sheet. They study specific quotations and sections of the...
University of California
The Civil War: Strategies and Battles
Was it the War against Northern Aggression or the War to Unify the Union? Scholars investigate the key battles and strategies of the American Civil War to determine just why the North was victorious in the end.
Curated OER
Poetic Elements
Poetry is all about sound and rhythm. The sound of the words, the rhythm of the lines, and the emotional atmosphere created by these elements and the literary devices poets use, compress whole stories into a few stanzas. The specialized...
Curated OER
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: Poems for Two Voices
"That man is not truly one, but truly two." The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde offers readers a change to craft a poem combining words and phrases from Robert Lewis Stevenson's novella to create a poem...
American Press Institute
Newspapers in Your Life: What’s News Where?
Big news isn't necessarily newsworthy everywhere! How do journalists decide what to cover with so much happening around them? A instructional activity on media literacy examines the factors that affect the media's choice of stories to...
National Endowment for the Humanities
Tales of the Supernatural
Scary stuff! Whether approached as the first horror story or a "serious imaginative exploration of the human condition," Frankenstein continues to engage readers. Here's a packet of activities that uses Mary Shelley's gothic...
Curated OER
“The Story of an Hour” Extension Activities: Teacher’s Guide and Notes
Enhance and extend instruction of "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin with one or all of these ideas. You might want to cover characterization and summary, or improve understanding of context clues and irony. You can cover any...
Curated OER
Technology-commected Folklife Lesson Plan: Fables
Students discuss ways the stories were alike and different. The teacher demonstrate how to draw a Venn diagram using Microsoft Word. They label the two circles and enter the likenesses and differences on the diagram.