Florida Center for Instructional Technology
A Human Number Line: Teacher Notes
Twenty-one pieces of tagboard can lead your class to a greater understanding of integersĀ when you use them to form a human number line. After creating this math tool, two strategies for adding and subtracting will have your...
Curated OER
Advertising in the Contemporary World: An Introduction to Persuasive Texts
Beginning a persuasive writing unit with your middle schoolers? Approach it through something that persuades us all: advertising! Through studying video and print advertisement, your class will practice Common Core skills for reading...
Curated OER
Persuasion as Text: Organizational, Grammatical, and Lexical Moves in Barbara Jordanās "All Together Now"
A thorough instructional activity on persuasive writing takes middle schoolers through several activities, including group discussion, collaborative posters, and independent writing. They compare historical speeches and analyze the...
EngageNY
Launching Readers Theater Groups: Identifying Passages from Esperanza Rising for Readers Theater that Connect to the UDHR
Teach young readers how to compare two texts and select passages that exemplify a specific theme with Lesson 6 from Unit 3. Begin by modeling how an expert reader selects examples from a text, performing a think aloud on how Article 2 of...
Curated OER
Rational and Irrational Numbers 2
Is the circumference of a circle always, sometimes, or never rational? Learners answer questions individually and also work in groups to look at sums and products of rational and irrational numbers. They must also be able to use the...
The New York Times
Stress Less: Understanding How Your Mind and Body Respond to Anxiety
What could be more relevant to teens and preteens than experiencing stress? Use an article from the New York Times website to practice valuable Common Core skills for informational text reading, and also get a discussion going in your...
Utah Education Network (UEN)
Classical Appeals and War Speeches
Discuss classical appeals of rhetoric through the speeches of Winston Churchill and FDR. Learners read, annotate, and analyze the speeches by the men before using a graphic organizer to track the use of ethos, pathos, and logos.Ā
Curated OER
Media Literacy in Presentations
Middle schoolers study the three types of mass media messages: visual media, written media, and audio media. After a class discussion which has them list examples of each, learners get into pairs and work on analyzing the "Four A's" in...
Curated OER
Persuasive Writing
Fourth and fifth graders try their hand at persuasive writing. They listen to well-written persuasive articles so they can get a sense of what good persuasive writing is. Then, they brainstorm topics they'd like to write about and are...
Curated OER
Using Context Clues
Middle schoolers receive a handout that lists the five types of context clues. The class divides up into groups of three or four, and each group chooses five unfamiliar words. They write a multiple-choice question for each of their five...
Curated OER
Making a Magical Story
Fourth and fifth graders use their knowledge ofĀ developing character, dialogue, and setting to produce an original story. An excerpt fromĀ The Lion, The Witch, and The WardrobeĀ is used as inspiration to get everyone's creative juices...
Curated OER
Comparing Theories: Lamarck and Darwin
Students compare the evolution theories of Lamarck and Darwin. They use self-assessment and a video to increase their knowledge of evolution theories. They research questions and present them to the class.
Curated OER
'Hunger Games' Science: Investigating Genetically Engineered Organisms
In The Hunger Games novel and movie, a futuristic, dystopian society is the setting. In it, a genetically engineered bird escapes control of the government. Using this as a starting point, teenagers examine the realistic possibility of...
Curated OER
The Debate Over Stem Cell Research
Students complete a variety of activities as they examine the ethical issues behind stem cell research and cloning. They make their own ethical decisions on both subjects.
Student Achievement Partners
"The Glorious Whitewasher" from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain with Mini-Assessment
It's the classic scene: Tom Sawyer is whitewashing a fence. Expose your learners to Mark Twain's humor while reinforcing reading comprehension. Eighth gradersĀ are encouraged to read and reread, achieving as much exposure to the text as...
Curated OER
Mississippi Trial, 1955: Pre-reading Strategy
Pink and Say, a picture book by Patricia Polacco, and an anticipation guide, set the stage for a reading of Mississippi Trial, 1955, Chris Crowe's novel based on the true story of the murder of Emmett Till. Instructional routines, the...
Media Smarts
Selling Obesity
Learners examine health issues that are associated with our fast food culture, and the advertising of it. They begin with a snack-food survey to assess their own eating habits. Pupils are encouraged to think critically throughout the...
Alabama Learning Exchange
J. Alfred Hyperbolizes
Mermaids will sing to your class members as they engage in an activity related to T.S. Eliot's famous dramatic interior monologue. After engaging in a socratic seminar about literary devices in the poem, individuals choose one...
Curated OER
Great Expectations: DRTA Strategy
A Directed Reading Thinking Activity (DRTA) strategy for Great Expectations scaffolds and guides readers as they begin Dicken's novel. Step-by-step directions are provided, as are chapter one pair-share questions, a prediction worksheet,...
Curated OER
The Price of Gasoline: What's Behind It?
When gasoline is in high demand and on short supply, OPEC can raise the price to turn a significant profit. Help learners understand the economics behind demand, profit motive, and monopolies with a lesson that focuses on OPEC and...
Curated OER
Personal Learning Plan
Setting goals, career exploration, and self-awareness are three major components found on the path to college. A wide variety of wonderful teaching tools are provided to help you facilitate an understanding of how simple it can be to...
Curated OER
QAR: Question Answer Relationships Strategy: The Catcher in the Rye
Encourage readers to think deeply about text with a reading strategy that promotes active comprehension. Individuals develop questions on four levels (right there, think and search, author and you, and on my own). Step-by-step directions...
Curated OER
What's Wong? What's Right?
Explore the ethics, responsibilities, and impacts of the career cluster that relates to law. Learners examine various cases where legal action was taken and resulted in a consequence. They'll act out various scenarios, research jobs in...
Curated OER
Goods and Services: Some are Private, Some are Not
Who fixes the swings at the park? The class creates a community bulletin board to explore the goods and services provided for their community in both the private and government sectors. They discuss taxes, consumers' wants and needs, and...