Curated OER
Humourous Head Planter Spike: Ceramics Lesson
What a great activity. Kids create humorous ceramic character (heads) spikes to enliven a planter. Modern art is full of expressive and exaggerated forms and your class gets to create them out of clay. This would be a lovely activity to...
Foreign Policy Research Institute
Life in a Totalitarian State
This interesting role-playing activity helps your class understand some of the qualities of totalitarianism by assigning each one as a spy or comrade citizen for a duration of five days. Students should find this highly engaging and...
Neufeld Learning Systems
Concept: Ratios and Proportions
Upper elementary and middle school pupils fill out a chart creating six equivalent fractions and then compare them to six different objects and/or shapes. They group together 16 various terms related to ratios and proportions. Pupils...
Curated OER
World War I - America on the Homefront: The Poster War
American propaganda shaped the perspective of many citizens during WWI. Here is an amazing presentation full of dozens of war-time poster examples and facts about what those posters were promoting. This would be a great discussion...
Teach-nology
Elves in My Garden
Perfect for springtime, Christmas, or any other unit in which elves play in the garden, a cloze activity is a great addition to your language arts curriculum. As kids read the story, they fill in the blanks with words from the word bank.
Curated OER
Oreo Moon Phases.
A guide to recreating all the phases of the moon out of Oreo cookies with varying amounts of cream filling. Although a simple activity, there are more involved questions requiring moon cycle and phase comprehension and leading...
Curated OER
Missing Letters
There are multiple objectives to be met in this phonics instructional activity. Each of these six CVC words is missing a first letter: can your scholars figure out what it is? Spellers complete the word along with its rhyming...
Illustrative Mathematics
Hexagonal Pattern of Beehives
Young geometers and biologists investigate the math of nature in an activity that is just the bee's knees. Participants will study the tessellations of hexagons in a beehive, along with the natural rationale behind the specific shape....
Curated OER
Properties of Materials (with adjectives)
Help your students write descriptive lab reports! Designed for ESL students but useful for mainstreamed kids as well, the activity prompts students to think of substances that match twenty given adjectives ("salt" for "soluble," for...
Southern Nevada Regional Professional Development Program
Poetry Aloud/Poetry Out Loud
To appreciate the value of seeing and hearing a poetry performance, groups prepare readings of selected poems and then compare and critique their interpretations and videotaped versions of the same poem. Included in the resource are...
Moorea Coral Reef Long-Term Ecological Research Program
Paper Plate Fishes
Tropical fish make great art projects! Use paper plates to design, color, and assemble round and oval-shaped fish based on photographs of actual fish found along the Moorea Coral Reef. Kids learn about different fins- including the...
Curated OER
Architectural Letters
Have your class construct their own architectural letter. This art project focuses on architecture, or the art of building. You can connect this activity to a biography activity. Your class can decorate their initial to reflect their...
Curated OER
Puck's Girdle
Fifth graders calculate the perimeters, areas, and volumes of everyday objects. They discuss the word problem involving Puck from the Shakespeare play "Mid-Summer Night's Dream," and invent and plan a method for solving the problem in...
Curated OER
The Black Death and HIV/AIDS: Which is the Worse Plague?
Exploring the similarities and differences between the Black Death and HIV/AIDS, students write persuasive essays answering which is the "worse plague." This cross-curricular activity between Language Arts and Social Studies addresses...
Google
Advanced 1: Picking the Right Search Terms
Many people, when searching online, will type in what they are looking for without much thought. But what's the next step, if they don't get the desired results? Careful selection of search terms. Your class can develop a sense for...
Curated OER
Games around the World
There are three little words every teacher is just dying to hear; investigate, discuss, and play. Kids love those words too, and they'll love finding out what types of things children did for fun long ago. As homework, they interview...
Dick Blick Art Materials
Art Journal
Here's a prescription for creativity—keep a daily art journal. Words, images, shapes, objects, all can be used as prompts that exercise the creative imagination. Set aside a couple of moments each day for this engaging activity.
Education Development Center
Language of Algebra
Don't rush into algebra, let learners visualize, guess, and predict their way to a successful math career. The introductory unit incorporates beginner algebraic concepts with shapes instead of variables. Young mathematicians use a...
ELA Common Core Lesson Plans
American Romanticism
Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Rappaccini's Daughter" provides the text for an activity that asks readers to select specific passages from the story, identify the aspect of American Romanticism the passage exemplifies, and then provide an...
Curated OER
Build a Model Watershed
Collaborative earth science groups create a working model of a watershed. Once it has been developed, you come along and introduce a change in land use, impacting the quality of water throughout their watershed. Model making is an...
Futures Channel
Algebra Magic
Abracadabra! Letters can be used in math to represent numbers with the operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division to solve problems! Math magicians will participate in an activity that uses a calculator and a bag...
Curated OER
My Antonia: Prereading Guided Imagery
What makes a place safe? What makes a setting effective? Explore the safe spaces and descriptive language with a prereading activity for Willa Cather's My Antonia. The teacher describes his or her own safe space and then prompts pupils...
Curated OER
Oh, What A Day
Students listen as the teacher reads A Country Far Away. They predict what they will do and what they think their partner student will be doing. Students create a KWL chart for Japan. They collect information about their activities on an...
Curated OER
Food
This activity is sure to interest all learners! To learn new food vocabulary, the teacher does an initial read of Sip, Slurp, Soup, Caldo, Caldo, Caldo. After the first read, each learner gets a series of plastic...