Virginia Department of Education
Ecosystem Dynamics
Searching for an eccentric way to enhance lessons on ecosystems while ensuring pupils remain creative and motivated? Upon viewing The Lorax by Dr. Seuss, designated groups design and construct a pop-up book that depicts the specific ways...
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Use iPads to Enhance Your Classroom
Cut through the numerous available iPad apps to find the ones that will help you to start using this terrific tool right away.
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Developing Good Written Communication Skills and the Word Processing Student
Young scholars are introduced to the skills needed to complete a word processing assignment. In groups, they identify the reasons why it is important to communicate in different situations and participate in role-playing exercises. They...
Newspaper Association of America
By the Numbers: Mathematical Connections in Newspapers for Middle-Grade Students
A cross-curricular resource teaches and reinforces mathematical concepts with several activities that use parts of a newspaper. Scholars use scavenger hunts to find the different ways math is used in the paper along with using data...
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Health: Overweight Youth
Investigate the primary causes for the increase in overweight youth and discover its impact on the health care system. After watching segments from the Bill Moyers Now program, your students develop campaigns to implement in school that...
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Learning Vocabulary by Using Reference Materials
Finding engaging ways to help your middle schoolers build their vocabulary is not easy to do. The lesson presented here offers a great way to motivate them to build vocabulary by making it into a game. Teams of pupils use a dictionary...
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I am the Greatest
Students participate in a game blending skill with chance to enhance students' understanding of the concept of place value. They explain that the value of a number increases when digits farthest to the left have greatest value.
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Vocabulary 8
Students define vocabulary words from the, The Pearl. In this vocabulary lesson, students discuss their vocabulary words and create sentences for them. Students also complete a worksheet with the most important vocabulary words from...
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Run/Walk Across America
Walk, jog, or run across America. Maps of individual states, visual progress, competition, and rewards, seem to be great motivational ideas. Make sure that the distances that each class has to walk or run are the same, because getting...
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Short Story Commercials
Learners read short story selections, and work with classmates to produce commercials using digital video equipment.
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The Roving Robotic Chemist
Junior oceanographers and underwater geologists describe the four major steps of mass spectrometry. They compete in small groups to simulate the tracking of a deepwater methane plume using imaginary autonomous underwater vehicles. Give...
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Exploring Parts and Wholes
Students explore the concept of parts making up a whole. In this parts and whole lesson, students come to understand that parts of a system must come together in order for the system to work properly. Students investigate items indoors...
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Avoiding Consumer Fraud: Financial Scams and Schemes
Young consumers get a hefty dose of information on how fraud can put their financial health at risk. The resource provides detailed lecture notes, scaffolded notetaking sheets, vocabulary worksheets, transparencies, and seven links to...
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"Tape Murals"
This is a really neat idea! To practice line variation and hatching, young artists create masking tape murals. They brainstorm a list of hot high school topics, then they get into small groups and begin sketching. Once they have their...
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Character Worksheet Two
In this character learning exercise, students answer questions about themselves and about their motivators and external characteristics. Students answer 22 questions.
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Write It, Read It, Solve It
Writers create an original mystery and have a chance to put it into movie format. The classic elements of a mystery must be present: the crime, the suspects, the motive, the solution and clues. Use iPhoto and Quicktime Movie to integrate...
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Workshop Lesson: Digital Camera
Students perform an activity in small groups in order to investigate different types of shapes found in photographs taken with a digital camera. The integration of technology is used to engage students in the lesson.
National Endowment for the Humanities
The President Under the Articles of Confederation
The Articles of Confederation sounds like one big, fancy title to middle schoolers. Here, scaffolded steps help to ease novices into understanding this all-important American document. Discussion questions, lesson activities, and ideas...
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Teaching Descriptive Word Usage
Second graders practice their creative writing by using descriptive words. In this language arts lesson, 2nd graders utilize their best descriptive writing to elaborate on one of 20 different bean bag characters. Students listen to...
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Creative Writing Poem
Fifth graders write poetry using imagery and practice poetry presentation. In this poetry instructional activity, 5th graders listen as the teacher reads a humorous poem using different voice modulations and presentation techniques. They...
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Cost Effective Buying
Students evaluate energy-related purchases. In this consumer awareness lesson plan, students visit an appliance store and rank the products' cost effectiveness by using a mathematical formula.
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Character Traits
Explore character traits using this resource. After reading the story Goldilocks and the Three Bears, learners fill in a graph identifying character traits. Then, they write and put on a skit. This resource provides a motivating way to...
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Spanish Colonials Encounter Quechan Culture
Students use primary sources from the de Anza expedition of the 1770's to research colonial encounters with the Quechan people from Yuma Crossing, Arizona.
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Exploring a New World
Fifth graders create a PowerPoint presentation about Christopher Columbus. The integration of technology helps them to be engaged in the subject matter. The basis for the information in the presentation is for students to answer some...