Rainforest Alliance
Colombia Biodiversity
How diverse is the rainforest? How much more diverse is a rain forest than a temperate forest? Explore these focus questions in a lesson that explores the plants, animals, and insects in forests. After listening to a reading...
Mesa Public Schools
Country Project
Give your young learners the chance to discover more about countries in their world community with a research project. Class members write reports on an assigned country and include such major features as geography, important historical...
University of Washington
Connecting Youth to Quality Health Information
Many teenagers don't have adequate access to health and nutrition information beyond a quick Internet search. Guide them into health advocacy and proficiency with a instructional activity focused on MedlinePlus as a reliable source for...
Curated OER
Committing to Respect: Lessons for Students to Address Bias
Here's a guide designed to build safe, respectful learning environments, and to build understanding of the value of diversity through lessons packed with activities for specific grade levels.
Columbus City Schools
Biome Basics with a Disastrous Twist
Bored with your current biome bag of tricks? This bundle is a bountiful bag of biome fun! Travel the globe with seventh graders and explore the biotic and abiotic factors that define our world's biomes. Then, introduce a little...
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.
Scholastic
Owl Moon Teaching Plan
Capture the engagement of young readers with this collection of activities based on Jane Yolen's book, Owl Moon. Following a shared reading of this children's story, the class explores the geography of the American Northeast,...
Federal Reserve Bank
The Story of the Federal Reserve: High School Lesson Plan
Is there a bank for the banks? Pupils analyze the complexities of the Federal Reserve system by breaking it down into easy-to-understand sections. Step-by-step investigation using flow charts and graphs of how the monetary system works...
California Academy of Science
Exploring Our Growing Need for Water
Pupils explore the amount of water people use in agriculture and for personal use. They compare water usage for various crops to that of raising animals before considering solutions for increased access to safe drinking water worldwide....
Curated OER
Langston Hughes Was a Dreamer Too
Encourage your pupils to imagine their own dreams for the future. After studying three poems by Langston Hughes and listening to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech, young poets craft their own dream stanza.
National Gallery of Art
Impressive Prints
Explore printmaking with a discussion and project. Pupils first view and talk about various examples of prints and cover positive and negative space. They then come up with fictional animals and make prints of their creature using...
National Gallery of Canada
Morphosis
Experience anthropomorphism and metamorphosis in action with flipbooks! Instead of giving human characteristics to animals, though, pupils will show a transformation from human to animal or vise versa through their drawings. The...
School Improvement in Maryland
Regulatory Agency
Five governmental regulatory agencies are tasked to respond to market failure. Groups investigate the roles of each of these agencies as well as the social, economic, and political impact of their actions.
Museum of Tolerance
Disenfranchised People of the New Nation
Why are some immigrant groups in the United States embraced while others become disenfranchised? To answer this question, teams investigate why groups emigrated to the US, why some of these these peoples were...
EngageNY
Unknown Length and Area Problems
What is an annulus? Pupils first learn about how to create an annulus, then consider how to find the area of such shapes. They then complete a problem set on arc length and areas of sectors.
NOAA
Ground-truthing Satellite Imagery with Drifting Buoy Data
Ground-truthing ... is it even a word? The last installment of a five-part series analyzes how scientists collect sea surface temperature data. Scholars use government websites to compare temperature data collected directly from buoys...
Messenger Education
Snow Goggles and Limiting Sunlight
Why would someone need contact lenses that offer UV protection? With a 28-page packet full of instruction and worksheets, students discuss solar radiation and its potential harm to eyes. They make snow goggles similar...
Visa
Pro Lesson Module — Financial Football
Learners won't fumble their knowledge of personal finance after an engaging game of Financial Football! As they choose their favorite teams and desired plays, young economists demonstrate their financial literacy with a question...
PBL Pathways
Students and Teachers 2
Examine trends in student-to-teacher ratios over time. Building from the first task in the two-part series, classes now explore the pattern of student-to-teacher ratios using a non-linear function. After trying to connect the pattern to...
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
List of Chemicals in Space
What is space made of? It turns out that there are many compounds found in space! The 10th lesson of a science series provides a list of the compounds found in space and asks young scholars to research the characteristics of these...
Colorado State University
How Can I Turn a Solar Oven into a Refrigerator?
Whether you want to heat things up in science class or cool things down a bit, an intriguing lab's got you covered! Science scholars explore the principles of thermodynamics using a solar oven, then change the conditions to turn their...
Kenan Fellows
Terrarium in a Bottle: Modeling the Atmosphere, Greenhouse Effect, and Water Cycle
You've heard of farm to table ... but what about farm in classroom? Junior agriculturalists embark upon a two-week journey into the science of growing things. Based upon the classic terrarium in a two-liter experiment, the lesson plan...
Concord Consortium
Going Up
Going on up—and up and up! An open-ended task asks learners to model the movement of an amusement ride with parametric equations. They then analyze their equations to determine how the shadow of the ride's car moves as it rises at a...
Syracuse University
Erie Canal
While canals are not the way to travel today, in the first half of the nineteenth century, they were sometimes the best way to move goods and people. Scholars examine primary sources, including maps and pictures, to investigate the role...