California Department of Education
What Skills Do I Need?
Get your class started down the path to a great career! The first of a six-part series of career and college lessons inspires learners to use their interests to explore career options. The activity also provides resources where...
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The Cream Cake Mystery - Seeing Patterns
A great language arts lesson designed for emerging readers awaits your class. Rhyming words are the focus. Learners play an interactive learning game on the computer that helps them to understand words that rhyme. As with all of these...
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Suitable Schools
Students explore education requirements for different professions, and define the skills and knowledge that adults use in their everyday lives. They define and describe what students, teachers and parents expect from formal schooling.
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Schools and Schoolbooks, 1780-1820
Students review 18th century New England schoolbooks to explain how changes occurred in early American education.
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Storytelling
First graders create a new scene for the book Curious George Takes a Job. In this storytelling lesson plan, 1st graders continue the story after the teacher reads them the book.
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Watch and Learn
Students explore a particular problem with the development of new television shows and create original reality-based educational programming.
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The Lewis and Clark Expedition
Students explore the challenges of the Lewis and Clark Expedition through a physical education simulation. In this cross-curriculum physical education lesson, students work in groups of three to log 8000 steps, stopping to participate in...
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Civil Rights
Twelfth graders survey how controversial court cases have changed the viewpoints of civil rights. In this U.S. Government lesson, 12th graders work in small groups to prepare summaries of specific court cases, then present their...
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Awesome Animals
Sixth graders write descriptive narratives about animals. In this descriptive writing lesson, the teacher models how to write a paragraph with interesting sensory words and exciting verbs. Students choose a picture of an animal they want...
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Alien Invasions
Students create an educational pamphlet on the origins, spread and impact of invasive plant species in their community.
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Sing Out Loud: The Slave Spirituals Historical and Cultural Implications during Reconstruction
Young scholars identify, summarize and present facts about cultural, educational and political inequalities of Reconstruction, explain hidden codes of slave spirituals and their importance in slaves' communication, and create poetry...
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That's The Story!
Images can inspire powerful writing. Engage your class in narrative writing with the idea included here. Individuals each snap a digital photograph that includes action. The teacher then mixes these up and hands each class member a photo...
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Applying Principles of Civic Liberty
Third graders relate the everyday duties in the classroom and in the community. In this character education instructional activity, 3rd graders compare duties in the classroom to duties in the community and chart them on a Venn diagram....
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Main Idea/Detail Relay
Fourth graders discuss the difference between main ideas and supporting details. They use large placement cards made by the teacher with main idea and supporting detail statements on them to practice.
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Body Sequencing
Fifth graders listen to a story told by their teacher. They have cards of all of the events in the story. They must "jump" into the correct order of events.
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Active Voice
Students identify the qualities that contribute to effective verbal and non-verbal communication. They use those qualities as criteria by which to judge an in-class political debate on education.
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Walking in Other People's Shoes
Students study the story of student journalist Casey Parks' September, 2006, journey to Central Africa with New York Times columnist, Nicholas Kristof. They then act as representatives to the tourism boards of developing countries and...
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Interdisciplinary Lesson Plan
Third graders study Thanksgiving. In this physical education and spelling lesson, 3rd graders play a race game by being the first group who can spell the word Thanksgiving first.
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Mixing Colors with "Little Blue and Little Yellow"
Students mix colors to make new colors. In this color mixing lesson, students listen to Leo Lionni's Petit Bleu et Petit Jaune, before retelling the beginning, middle, and end of the story. They watch as the teacher mixes food coloring...
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Following Directions
In this writing worksheet, students listen to an example of a teacher giving directions. Then, students read 4 hints about writing directions and write their own directions for putting on a coat or using a pencil sharpener.
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Washing Hands
Students formulate questions about a germ book before it is read to them. In this washing hands lesson plan, the teacher gets glitter on each students hands that represents germs. Before the teacher reads a book about germs the students...
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Understanding and Supporting Our Peers with Cognitive Challenges
Young scholars explore different federal laws promoting the education for the handicapped. In this literacy lesson, students brainstorm how they can help individual with Down syndrome. They read a fiction book related to the topic and...
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Strangers
Students learn and discuss what to do when approached by a stranger. In this stranger lesson plan, students answer questions based on a book that the teacher reads. They then participate in a discussion about rules and guidelines to...
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A (Class)Room of One's Own
Students assess the educational and social issues of boys and girls in school as a springboard to interviewing women in the fields of science, in order to study of their early interests and experiences in these typically male-dominated...