Kelly's Kindergarten
April Daily Resources
Spring has sprung in your classroom! An entire month of activities relating to spring prompts learners to color, draw, write, and work on phonics.
British Council
Smoking Stinks
There are lots of good reasons not to smoke. Make sure your middle and high schoolers understand each and every one with a lesson that prompts them to read anti-smoking posters, note the main points, and write a short response on the...
Curated OER
Scripting the Past: Exploring Women's History Through Film
Explore women's history through films and filmmaking. An innovative research project prompts class members to create their own screenplay about a figure in women's history. After outlining their characters, settings, and plots, young...
Curated OER
Shizuko’s Daughter: Biopoem
The characters in Shizuko's Daughter by Kyoko Mori are complex and vivid. Compare their characteristics with a biopoem, which prompts learners to complete a format with adjectives, relationships, and additional details that describe each...
Virginia Department of Education
Identifying Audience and Purpose
Use a fun and creative activity to introduce junior high learners to how writing changes for different audiences and purposes. The activity begins with a reading by the instructor where teens visualize a food fight in the cafeteria. In...
National Park Service
Lesson 5: Coded Spirituals, Metaphor in African Spirituals
If a picture is worth a thousand words, song lyrics also can communicate many meanings. Using the lyrics of spirituals, young historians analyze them for coded messages about freedom. Resources include a chart to help individuals track...
Curated OER
A Conventional Family
Students explore writing techniques by analyzing their own families. In this family values instructional activity, students view the film "The Incredibles" in class and discuss the different types of modern-day families. Students write...
Curated OER
2002: The Year In Review
Students research and create a book highlighting significant events and trends throughout the world in the year 2002. Then, through creative writing, they respond to the events or trends themselves and how they affected our world.
Curated OER
The Rest Cure: Gender in Medicine and Literature
Read and discuss "The Yellow Wall-Paper" and the gender issues that the story brings up. Use articles from the time period to analyze, complete with specific discussion questions. After two days, scholars write an essay based on topics...
Curated OER
Imagining Back Story: Creating an Artifact for an Extra-Extended Text
Young scholars create a "back story" for a character from Measure for Measure. In this Measure for Measure lesson, students read the text closely as they look for clues about where the character came from and how he or she became what...
Lied Center of Kansas
The Ugly Duckling and The Tortoise and the Hare
Both The Ugly Duckling and The Tortoise and the Hare are great additions to an elementary language arts lesson. Young readers focus on the literary elements of each story, including characters and plot development, and apply counting and...
Curated OER
Fanatically Grammatically Correct
Research guidelines for correct usage, then explore how creative writers employ punctuation as an essential tool in their craft. Secondary classes create board games to teach elementary school students how to properly punctuate. From the...
Curated OER
The Metamorphosis During Reading Activity: Problematic Situation
Imagine waking up to find a giant bug staring back at you in the mirror! Think about the plight of Franz Kafka's Gregor in The Metamorphosis with a group discussion activity. Class members reflect on what it would be like to suddenly...
Curated OER
Compare and Contrast Poems vs. Lyrics
Combine your pupils' love of music with their growing knowledge of poetry! First, have them bring in their favorite songs for a discussion on word choice and literary devices. Then, use a Venn Diagram to compare and contrast the...
Virginia Department of Education
Graphing Linear Equations
Combine linear equations and a little creativity to produce a work of art. Math scholars create a design as they graph a list of linear equations. Their project results in a stained glass window pattern that they color.
Global Oneness Project
Protecting Wilderness
Would you live in a tree for three years to protect a redwood forest? Viewers of Rainhouse Cinema's Among Giants documentary consider the actions of Earth First! environmental activists who moved into the treetops of a grove of giant...
Global Oneness Project
Resurrecting a Home
Davina Pardo's documentary Minka asks viewers to consider that value of preserving traditional dwellings and traditional building techniques by examining how American journalist John Roderick and Japanese architect Yoshihiro Takishita...
Gobal Oneness Project
Building a Community of Trust
Barrio de Paz is the story of Nelsa Libertad Curbelo, a nun, who works with the gang youth of Guayaquil, Ecuador. The 17-minute documentary focuses on her explanations for the rise of gangs and for how gang culture reflects societal values.
EngageNY
Estimating Digits in a Quotient
Boiling down any division problem to a one-digit divisor problem sure makes estimation easy. The lesson shows how to estimate division problems by using place value understanding and basic arithmetic facts to simplify the division. Some...
Facebook
Online Presence
What happens when an online post gets the wrong kind of attention? Learners evaluate the good, the bad, and the occasionally ugly side of social media posting with a instructional activity from a vast digital citizenship series. After...
Curated OER
The Learning Network: Re-envisioning Classic Stories
Readers reflect on enjoyable stories they know, brainstorm criteria that make a story "good," analyze a New York Times article about innovative children's performances, re-envision classics on their own, and peer edit drafts. Use this as...
Curated OER
Dance: Sharp and Smooth Energy Qualities
Young scholars use different qualities of movement to express themselves. For this lesson on movement, students use different qualities of energy and then use their experience as an inspiration for writing poetry.
Curated OER
Proving (a Theorem) and Disproving (a Theory)
As a cross-curricular instructional activity, your class examines the issues of gender discrimination, careers, and gender roles. They read and discuss an article, prepare a proof of the Pythagorean theorem as a class, and develop a...
Foreign Policy Research Institute
Democracy Wall
How free are people in the United States, or in the world for that matter? The class reads and compares two articles that discuss levels of freedom enjoyed by different people around the globe. They discuss why some people have more...