Curated OER
Lesson Skill: Determining Audience and Purpose
“. . . the car looked as it had caught some terrible disease.” Pairs read and then illustrate a passage from either “The Year I Drove through the Car Wash” or “Riding Is an Exercise of the Mind” in preparation for a discussion of...
Media Smarts
The Newspaper Front Page
Hot off the presses! A perfect instructional activity idea for a journalism class or even a language arts class looking to incorporate some informational texts. Young writers analyze the front pages of various newspapers to determine the...
Curated OER
Writing For Different Audiences
Evaluate the use of vocabulary in written paragraphs to make the determination of its appropriateness for a particular audience. As a class, seventh graders develop a fictional team and write three paragraphs to different audiences based...
Edmond Public Schools
SOAPSTone
Break an article down with a SOAPSTone chart. Class members determine the speaker, occasion, audience, purpose, subject, and tone. The chart includes a question for each of these elements, provides some clarifying text for each, and...
Media Smarts
Media Awareness Network: Hate or Debate?
Discuss the difference between legitimate debate on a political issue and arguments that are based on hate through a science-fiction scenario that shows how a controversial issue can be discussed in both ways. Then learn how purveyors of...
Curated OER
Audience Analysis Worksheet
In this audience analysis worksheet, students evaluate the appropriateness of their speech to a particular audience. Students will determine what adaptations would be necessary for the speech to be successful under various circumstances.
Literacy Design Collaborative
The Art of Persuasion: How Rhetorical Devices Influence Audiences
Scholars analyze a variety of text to identify the development of claims and persuasive techniques writers use. In each text, pupils determine the argument and the persuasive techniques and complete a task introduction worksheet. The...
Curated OER
Using Blood-Typing to Determine Causes of Death in Surgery Patients
In this simulation activity, young biologists examine blood types to determine whether the death rate in a hospital was caused because of incorrect identification of patient blood types. You will need obtain and follow the procedures of...
Facebook
Reputation
What's the key to maintaining a good reputation? Keep your friends close—and your secrets even closer! Social scholars score a deeper understanding of sharing during a lesson from a privacy and reputation module. Participants consider...
Curated OER
Prewriting
As a class, 7th graders observe examples of brainstorming and then complete brainstorming worksheets themselves. They compose and describe planning strategies. Prior to writing an essay, they identify the purpose and the audience.
Shodor Education Foundation
Racing Game with One Die
Pupils roll a die to figure out which car advances on a race track. They determine the rules for each car moving forward and, given the statistics of the winner, compare if it matches their predictions.
Computer Science Unplugged
Conversations with Computers—The Turing Test
Will the real computer please stand up? The premise of this activity is for the class to ask questions to a human and to a computer and to determine which is which. The class asks a given set of questions, and the person playing the role...
Shodor Education Foundation
Recursion
Perform the operation ... and then do it again. Scholars investigate recursive formulas by creating and graphing them. Using the interactive, pupils set the variable, determine the initial value, and type in a recursive formula.The...
Shodor Education Foundation
Possible or Not?
What does the graph mean? Pupils view 10 graphs and determine whether they are possible based on their contexts. The contexts are distance versus time and profit versus time.
Curated OER
Watch What You Say!
Explore how to use appropriate language for a variety of real-world settings. Here, middle schoolers determine the audience for various types of magazines, and identify words that are appropriate for various friends and family members....
Curated OER
Editorial Writing
Use your class's knowledge of pollution and water treatment to write an editorial to town citizens. They apply prior knowledge in order to compose a letter intended for newspaper publication, focusing on writing to an appropriate audience.
Virginia Department of Education
Determining Purpose and Audience
Build the writing skills of your junior high wordsmiths with activities that introduce many essential skills of writing. As a class, they develop working definitions of formal vs. informal writing, explore different categories of...
Curated OER
Determination of Phosphorus Content in River Water
Divide your chemistry or environmental science class into two groups. Each group tests water samples from a river for the concentration of phosphorus using a different method. With chemists, you can use this activity as they learn to use...
Kenan Fellows
Letter Writing to Politicians on Environmental Issues
Let your voices be heard! Pupils research local and national environmental concerns using the Internet. Class members determine an issue they deem important and draft a letter to a local politician expressing their concern about the...
Curated OER
Perfumania
Students identify various geometric shapes. Apply the given formulas to determine the volume of these shapes. Design their own container to conform to specifications provided. Use their knowledge of volume formulas and shapes to compute...
National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science
Mask of the Black God
Finally, an astronomy lesson for the high schooler! Explorers are able to read star maps for finding objects in the night sky by determining celestial coordinates. In particular, they locate the Pleiades and read about a Navajo legend...
Curated OER
Press Review
How can word choice affect a political speech? Middle and high schoolers examine the text of the 1999 State of the Union Address, and then determine how newspaper articles and television reports describe and analyze the event. Use this...
Curated OER
Termination of Parental Rights
Learners study the causes for a juvenile court to terminate all rights of a parent to a child. They do case studies of a few examples of this scenario taking place. This lesson invites quite a bit of debate amongst the pupils, and...
Curated OER
Comparison of Protein Sequences From Two Samples of Crabmeat Using Gel Electrophoresis As an Introduction To the Biotechnology Lab
Students discover that proteins that are the product of DNA translation are different for different species. They determine that by analyzing their mass and charge they can differentiate between two different species. They use some of...