PBS
Button, Button
Youngsters count, classify, and estimate quantities using buttons after a read aloud of The Button Box by Margarette S. Reid. They discuss the difference between guessing and estimating. Based on an experiment, they predict the...
Curated OER
All the News That's Fit to Click: Analyzing New York Times Design
Explore the New York Times, online and in print. Partners take the roles of reader and monitor while each peruses the newspaper. Discussion questions compare the online version to a hard copy print edition. Links provide comparison of...
Illustrative Mathematics
1.OA, NBT, The Very Hungry Caterpillar
First graders are exposed to addition of three whole numbers in a math activity centered around Eric Carle's, The Very Hungry Caterpillar. As the teacher reads, young mathematicians use counters and ten-frames to symbolize the number of...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Phonological Awareness: Phoneme Matching, Phoneme Go Fish
Go fishing for initial sounds with this engaging phoneme game! Similar to the card game Go Fish, pairs use picture cards and try to match initial sounds. They set aside any pictures that are a match and ask their partner for specific...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Phonological Awareness: Phoneme Segmenting, Say and Slide Phonemes
Develop phonological awareness using this partner activity, where scholars segment words into phonemes. Using Elkonin Box picture cards, pairs practice orally segmenting sounds and physically representing the phonemes using counters....
Curated OER
Predict and Clarify with The Old Woman & Her Pig
Primary readers predict and check for understanding by using comprehension strategies. Prepare readers the first day by frontloading vocabulary and using pictures to visualize the words. On the second day, read the story The Old Woman...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Vocabulary: Morphemic Elements: Affix Action
Make a game out of word parts. Pupils work in pairs to advance along the board. One partner reads a sentence from a card, and the other identifies the correct affix that fits with a word in that sentence.
Curated OER
Asda in a Pickle After Rat Found in Gherkins
Practice reading and speaking through a simulation activity in which learners role-play as store managers and angry customers. The class also reviews present and past-perfect tenses. Extensions and a print-friendly handout are provided.
Curated OER
Angles, Lines, and Transversals
Geometers identify and determine angle pair relationships when two parallel lines are intersected by a transversal. They review the concepts of angles by watching streaming video clips online, read definitions of lines and angles from...
Curated OER
Equality of Fractions
Here is a lesson on equality of fractions designed for fourth graders. Learners work in groups and utilize fraction bars to help them work through a variety of activities. They split up into pairs and play an online game called the...
Film English
Serial Taxi
Explore the murder mystery genre through film, discussion, and writing. The plan features several activities centered around a two-minute video that include collaboration, writing, and prediction. After the lesson plan, individuals write...
University of the Desert
What Is Culture?
Introduce your class to the meaning of culture with this great collection of activities and materials. After reviewing quotes from young adults around the world, learners then construct metaphors describing culture and discuss the...
Curated OER
Junior Solar Sprint Series: Gears and Drive Belts
Activate middle schoolers' minds with this physical science activity. Learners vary the diameter of gears and the number of teeth on them to find how energy output is affected. This writeup features well-developed background...
Curated OER
Minorities in Mainstream American Society
So many people fought for Civil Rights in the United States. Read about the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and discuss what the act guarantees. Then pass out a slew of magazines and encourage them to observe how often minorities appear in...
Curated OER
Editing Marks, Part 1
Dander from the show Twisted Whiskers and characters from My Little Pony are featured in this three part lesson plan that explores using story pyramids to scaffold ideas, adding sensory details to enrich writing, and editing using common...
Curated OER
Relationship Role Plays from A Midsummer Night's Dream
Connect a scene from a class play to events in your middle and high schoolers' own lives. First, they act out a scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream in pairs. They work to role play a scene as an extension of the one they have read,...
Curated OER
Different Types of Poetry
Provide pupils samples of different types of poems including haikus, narrative, nonsense, shape, and rhyming poems. In groups, class members read the poems, establish their general meaning, identify poetic devices, and rate the poems,...
Historical Thinking Matters
Scopes Trial: 3 Day Lesson
Was the Scopes trial more complicated than a simple debate between evolutionists and creationists? As part of a structured academic controversy (SAC) activity, pupils consider multiple perspectives of the Butler Act and engage in close...
Film English
My Shoes
Engage your pupils in short story and short film. Using a still from the film as inspiration, pairs compose short stories, which they later share and compare with other members of the class. They then watch the film and respond to a...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Phonics: Onset and Rime, Rime Closed Sort
Practice onset and rime with this word sort activity. Beginning readers lay out the four picture cards along the top of the chart: fan, cap, tack, and lamp. Then, they flip word cards and sort them beneath the image with the same rime....
Curated OER
Homophones
Pare, pair, or pear? Learners explore homophones with this dictionary skills worksheet. They look up definitions to five sets of homophones to see how words can sound the same but have completely different meanings. There are plenty of...
Mathematics Vision Project
Module 6: Congruence, Construction, and Proof
Trace the links between a variety of math concepts in this far-reaching unit. Ideas that seem very different on the outset (like the distance formula and rigid transformations) come together in very natural and logical ways. This...
BBC
Rivers
The water cycle, rainfall, and the flow of water into rivers then out into the ocean are the main ideas covered here. After a teacher-led discussion and activity, learners pair off and write a commentary about the water cycle that is to...
Curated OER
Writing Effective Thesis Statements and Introductory Paragraphs for Research Papers
After reading on the topic of their paper, high schoolers work in pairs to assess how to write powerful, precise thesis statements. The introduction contains three statements: a universal statement, a bridge statement, and a thesis...