Students study buildings and their function in society. They develop awareness of their environment and its natural resources. They promote an understanding of how the environment, culture, and natural resources affect the design and...

Students discuss their housing options and factors which affect housing costs. Using the newspaper as a resource, students compare and contrast the prices of housing options. Working with partners, students compare and contrast their...

The class is engaged through a discussion of mapping. They determine what they believe makes a good map and what the essential elements of a map are. Students work independently to complete a worksheet on mapping. They follow clear...

Second graders investigate the different holidays that are celebrated in cultures around the world. They identify the different symbols used in celebration and differentiate the interpretation. Students demonstrate in writing how the...

Fifth graders explore fact families. They solve simple math problems. Students determine which mathematical property is used to solve the given problem. They are given five minutes to complete as many mathematical facts as possible.

Students brainstorm a list of important community locations or buildings. We take pictures of inside and outside and include the history of each. They describe the service or product it provides, the date originated, etc. They build a...

Students identify consumers and producers in different communities. Students collect a variety of soil samples and record organisms found in the samples.

Students document their unique characteristics through photography. In this self-discovery lesson, students take photographs of themselves and others. As a class, they discuss similarities and differences, and sort, graph, and find...

Students, in groups, learn and review bird flash cards, after hearing stories about the birds from the teacher. They participate in labs such as owl pellets, feathers, etc.

Students are introduced to simple maps and view a map of a classroom and compare distances of items shown.

Students investigate a world map, a United States map, a state map, a county map and a city map. They locate each student's house on the city map and put a length of yarn from their house to a country of one of their ancestors.

Students explore videos, software and print resources to investigate the concept of community. Students write poems about their town and illustrate them for a collaborative literacy project.

Students discuss and research what children's lives throughout the world are like and consider factors that influence living conditions. Students compare child labor laws for the U.S. and other countries and identify ideal human rights.

Middle schoolers work together to determine how fast trees go. They make predictions and complete simple measurements. They answer questions to end the lesson.

Sixth graders role play predators, prey and other parts of the aquatic ecosystem. They show inter and intra-specific competition as well as the link between abiotic and biotic components in an ecosystem. Students play games about the...

Students assess the impact of human activity on the environment. After reading the book, "A River Ran Wild," they role-play and discuss how people changed the river. Students write stories about living along a river from the point of...

Students study about George Washington Bush and write a biography about him in a small group. To gain a better understanding of him, they listen to a biography on a tape about him. They visit various sites about him to help them examine...

Students investigate how to become advocates in an authentic environmental issue, in this case the invasion of the zebra mussel invasion of the Great Lakes. They complete graphic organizers during Internet research, while reading...

Fifth graders explore the concept of how the more diverse an ecosystem is, the more interdependence of species exists within that system. The complex relationships among diverse species are difficult to identify. As species disappear or...

Second graders engage in a lesson about holidays. They create a holiday windsock and decorate it with illustrations that symbolize different days. The information for the decorations is found through conducting research and discussing...

Young scholars review what they already know about birds. Using the internet, they discover major issues involved with birds in Illinois. In groups, they determine what they can do to help them and contact a local agency.

Students explore a variety of sources, including their experiences in visiting places. They access information online, observe and make determinations based on observations. Students hypothesize about observations of bird behavior.

Third graders review the characteristics of living and nonliving organisms. As a class, they observe a tree and describe the interactions between the living and nonliving organisms surrounding it. To end the instructional activity,...

First graders explore the job done by ornithologists. They role play identifying the characteristics that make a bird a bird. They discuss what makes each bird species unique. Students are introduced to Wisconsin's most common and rare...