Missouri Department of Elementary
Express Yourself!
Encourage scholars to express themselves with help from an engaging song. Sung to the tune of "London Bridge is Falling Down," participants sing phrases that offer tips for dealing with emotions—sad, happy, worried, proud, mad, and...
Bowland
Pointzero: Confined
Groups plan their escape carefully. Three three-tiered puzzles help a story character escape their situation, each involving integer sequences, transformations, and geometric constructions. The teacher resource includes...
BioEd Online
Arm Model
Arm your young scientists with knowledge about anatomy as they build their own model of the elbow joint. Help them get a firm grasp on how muscles and bones interact to allow movement as they try different positions for the muscles on...
Chicago Teachers Union Quest Center
Factored Form of a Quadratic Function
Build upon linear functions to learn about quadratics. The lesson introduces the concept of zeros for quadratic functions and makes the connection to the linear factors of the function. It presents quadratics in both graphical and...
Partners Against Hate
Building Community and Combating Hate
Put a little love in your classroom! Help middle school scholars understand differences among people and build a sense of community within their school through 10 well-organized lessons. Each unique lesson incorporates writing,...
Common Sense Media
Show Respect Online
Through discussion and a variety of worksheet types, pupils learn to review their e-mails for grammar, appropriateness, and respect before sending.
Chicago Botanic Garden
Weather or Not
What is the difference between weather and climate? This is the focus question of a lesson plan that takes a deeper look at how weather data helps determine climate in a region. Using weather and climate cards, students decide...
Curated OER
Poetic Elements Are Fun!
Engage your class in the elements of poetry with a series of lessons and activities. The plans cover simile, metaphor, personification, onomatopoeia, alliteration, and imagery. Learners come up their their own metaphors, identify poetic...
EngageNY
Performance Task Preparation: Peer Critique and Mini-Lesson Addressing Common Errors: Revising Draft Essay to Inform
Time to revise! Using a writing evaluation rubric, scholars participate in a peer editing process to provide feedback on each others' informative essays. Next, pupils begin revising their drafts based on the feedback they receive.
CPALMS
Point of View: A Close Reading of Two Bad Ants
Chris Van Allsburg's Two Bad Ants provides third graders with an opportunity to examine point of view and how the point of view of others may differ from their own.
Virginia Department of Education
Types of Variations
Scholars determine how two quantities vary with respect to each other. They complete a fill-in-the-blank activity by stating whether the entities vary directly, inversely, or jointly, create equations that match different variations, and...
Nuffield Foundation
Intrepreting Information about Sweating and Temperature
Why do we sweat? Scholars analyze data about body temperature, sweating, and other factors to better understand sweating. They note the changes after drinking ice water to sweating, skin temperature, and body temperature. Analysis...
BioEd Online
Bone Structure: Hollow vs. Solid
What is meant by the phrase "form follows function?" Allow your budding biologists to discover first-hand through two activities. In the first, groups work together to discover whether a solid cylinder or an empty cylinder can support...
BioEd Online
Muscle Fibers
What better way to learn about muscle than by dissecting one? Using cow muscle (beef), learners compare bundles of yarn to muscle fibers as they explore each. The supplemental reading about astronauts losing muscle mass in space and what...
Curated OER
Forms of Exponential Expressions
Your young physicists analyze the forms of four equivalent exponential expressions representing an amount of a radioactive material in a substance. They show how each expression is equivalent to the others and what aspects of the decay...
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Failure: Seeds of Innovation
"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again!" Through this assignment, emerging engineers examine how failed experiments are simply part of the process of an outstanding design. They begin with some reading about the microwave oven,...
ReadWriteThink
Exploring Plagiarism, Copyright, and Paraphrasing
Plagiarism, copyright, and fair use are the focus of a three-part instructional activity designed to inform scholars of how to properly cite others' work. First, pupils use a KWL chart to begin thinking and...
California Department of Education
Workplace Skills
What skills do employers look for in potential employees? Introduce scholars to the skills that pay the bills during the second of six career and college readiness lesson plans. Once they have defined critical 21st-century skills, groups...
Curated OER
Right to vote...in the wrong place
Young scholars create a presentation for other class members or for a local citizens' group explaining how they can guard ensure voter rights. Students research the Ohio Secretary of State's stand on provisional voting rules.
Michigan Sea Grant
Water Quantity
It may be tricky for a young mind to conceptualize that less than 1% of all water on earth is useable for humans to drink. Simulating the amount of fresh water available on earth by removing measured amounts of water from a five-gallon...
Curated OER
Makes Cents to Me: Penny Drive
St that people have wants and must find ways to get them. In this philanthropy lesson, students understand the ways people get things and arrange a penny drive to help others. Students arrange an artistic project to reflect on their fund...
PBS
Ken Burns: Jackie Robinson - A Journey Back to Separate but Equal Conditions
Baseball great Jackie Robinson fought for social justice. His efforts to push for equal access are detailed in an episode from from the Ken Burns: The Jackie Robinson Collection. After viewing the clip, class members engage in a...
Nemours KidsHealth
Empathy: Grades 6-8
Middle schoolers develop an understanding of what empathy is and learn what they can do to show compassion to others with the help of articles and activities in a four-page packet. Learners develop PSAs to post around the school, engage...
Curated OER
Fishing for Success
Students listen to story Rainbow Fish to the Rescue, and identify strategies to assist those in need.