Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District
Parts of Speech Adjectives: Building Blocks of Grammar
How do you describe a jellyfish? Individuals write adjectives for Nomura's jellyfish, take notes, and check understanding with a formative assessment. Notes include the definition for adjectives, guiding questions to help writers...
University of Kansas
Newspaper in the Classroom
Newspapers aren't only for reading—they're for learning skills, too! A journalism unit provides three lessons each for primary, intermediate, and secondary grades. Lessons include objectives, materials, vocabulary, and procedure, and...
Tech Coach Corner
Understanding Sentences
Go over how to read complex sentences. Learners work on identifying key ideas, examining sentence structure, looking up new vocabulary, and paraphrasing. An overview of methods to help class members read difficult texts, half of the...
K12 Reader
Why Do We Need Pronouns?
Who needs pronouns? Everyone! Show your class the power of pronouns with this worksheet. Learners read a sample paragraph that doesn't include any pronouns and then revise that paragraph by filling in the appropriate pronouns.
Smarter Balanced
How We Learn
What's the best way to learn the elements of the periodic table? The inventions of Thomas Edison? Patience? To prepare for the performance task assessment on how people learn, class members share ideas about ways to learn in a variety of...
Smarter Balanced
Food Waste and Food Access
Forty percent of food in the US goes uneaten while 14.5 percent of US households lack a secure supply of food. As part of the preparation for a performance task assessment, groups consider statistics such as these about food waste and...
Smarter Balanced
View Through a Telescope
Preparing for an assessment? Here's an activity that will ensure that all class members have the background knowledge they need to demonstrate their skills on a performance task related to the solar system and the tools astronomers use...
Curated OER
Uniform Design
Learners investigate the military by examining their uniforms. In this design lesson, students analyze the military uniforms from different locations and time periods. Learners create new ideas for current military uniforms.
K12 Reader
Prepositional Phrases II
Hidden within these sentences are prepositions; think your students can find them? After first reading a brief explanation of this part of speech, young grammarians are asked to examine eight sentences, underlining the prepositional...
Smarter Balanced
Environmental Interdependence (Environmental Awareness)
Whether introducing a study of environment awareness or preparing your classes for a performance task related to environmental interdependence, you will find this resource useful. Key terms and concepts are introduced so that all...
Nazareth College
Creative Writing
Students discuss creative writing—what makes something creative writing? Each learner starts writing a story and after 15 minutes, they pass their story to another who adds to it. After another 15 minutes of writing, the story is passed...
Education World
Every-Day Edit: How Icy Is Iceland?
For this editing worksheet, student read a 4-sentence paragraph while looking for capitalization, punctuation, spelling, and grammatical errors.
Channel Islands Film
Arlington Springs Man: Lesson Plan 1
Learning to craft quality questions is a skill that can be taught. Class members use the Question Formulation Technique to learn how to create and refine both closed-ended and open-ended questions. They then view West of the West's...
Smarter Balanced
Zoos
How do the experiences of animals living in zoos differ from animals living in the wild? To prepare for a performance assessment on this question, class members are introduced to key concepts and vocabulary, and then groups use a Venn...
Education World
Every-Day Edit: President Warren G. Harding
For this editing learning exercise, students read and edit a short paragraph on President Warren G. Harding to find 10 errors involving capitalization, punctuation, spelling and/or grammar. Students correct each error.
Smarter Balanced
Archaeological Discoveries
Artifacts, inscriptions, and monuments. Here's an activity designed to ensure that all learners are familiar with the key terms and concepts they will need to begin a study of archaeological discoveries.
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Uncommon Animals
Need to prepare for a performance task assessment on the topic of uncommon animals? Here's an activity that ensures all learners have the knowledge of key terms and concepts to approach the assessment.
Curated OER
Transition Words
Do your emergent writers need extra practice using transitions? After reading a brief definition, learners select a transition from the provided word bank that best completes the sentences in each set. No answer key is provided.
Smarter Balanced
Exploring the World
To prepare for the Exploring the World Performance Task, class groups generate a list of places they would like to explore, examine images of seven natural wonders of the world, and consider why these sites are wondrous. A map and images...
Smarter Balanced
Monuments (and Landmarks)
Distinguishing between and understanding the purpose of landmarks and monuments is the focus a short activity designed to provide all learners with the context of a performance task. Images of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, the...
Smarter Balanced
Importance of Nutrition
Prepare your class members for the performance task assessment on nutrition with an activity that asks class members to rank images of foods from least nutritious to most. Participants also offer reasons for why they ranked the foods the...
Smarter Balanced
Classifying Vertebrates
What features do scientists use to classify animals into groups? Class groups examine a series of paired images of vertebrates (a bass and a trout, a toad and a newt, a crocodile and a tortoise, an owl and a robin, a tiger and a bear)...
Curated OER
Lessons from the Holocaust
Students investigate the horrors of World War II by participating in a role-playing activity. In this holocaust instructional activity, students read handouts describing the atrocities committed against the Jews in Germany during the...
Curated OER
Where is the Preposition?
Provide your pupils with extra preposition practice. Participants are asked to identify the portion of sample sentences that contain the preposition. The lesson could be extended by asking learners to identify the preposition as well. An...