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...
ProCon
Is Homework Beneficial?
Does homework improve student achievement, or does it increase stress? Scholars use the included debate topics website to prepare for a class discussion or debate about whether homework is advantageous. After reading a brief background...
Curated OER
Destressing: Don't Sweat the Small Stuff
Students interview peers, teachers, counselors, parents and local health providers to see how they identify "good" stress and suggest teens cope, write news feature about stress, complete with extra boxes, such as list of signs to spots,...
Curated OER
Sports Action Figure
Fourth graders identify art elements and design principles in art such as movement, unity, space and color planning.
Curated OER
Be a Celebrity and Share Your Life with Us
Sixth graders discuss their likes, dislikes, hobbies, goals, and special events in their lives. They write a five paragraph autobiography focusing on style, transitions, and details. This is well-suited for either explanatory or...
Curated OER
Technological Grand Conversations
Conduct a written literary discussion and diminish stress about public writing. Class members, already arranged into literature circles, compose and post responses to novels, signing with initials or class number. The process continues...
Curated OER
A Primary Source Picture Book
Travel through Europe with ten-year-old Teddy Roosevelt in this writing activity, which uses the picture book My Tour of Europe: by Teddy Roosevelt, by Ellen Jackson. After reading the book, readers compare it to passages from The...
Curated OER
ICYouSee: A Lesson in Critical Thinking
Stress the importance of authenticating online resources and understanding the sources of websites' information with this activity. Using a Web-based activity, the activity prompts young learners to think critically about determining the...
Curated OER
Making Sense of Homographs
What is a homograph? Develop your students' vocabulary with a word association tool. Language arts classes discover what a homograph is and how it can be used as a visual thesaurus. They discover the other uses for homographs...
Curated OER
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
Young scholars, after reading and discussing, "The Metamorphosis," by Franz Kafka, explain the symbolism of Gregor's metamorphosis moving beyond a literal view of "he turned into a bug" into the idea that...
Curated OER
"The Party"
Students are introduced to the world of drama and explore and discuss the prospect of being an "outsider." They are encouraged to look into another person's experiences with drama. Each group of students act out short scenes to be...
Teach Engineering
You Are There... First Flight
Glide into the study of flight. An engaging lesson has scholars research information on the Wright brothers. They develop props and produce a recreation of the first flight at Kitty Hawk. They then report on the event as if they were...
Curated OER
Teaching Awareness of Human Development
Students examine the process of human development and identify the reasons for a good nights sleep. Individually, they write a list of the situations in their lives which are stressful. As a class, they discuss myths about stress and...
Curated OER
Social Studies: Adolescent Characteristics
Students examine the various characteristics of adolescence. In a Powerpoint presentation they observe the physical, emotional, and social traits of adolescence. In groups, they investigate researchers associated with developmental...
Curated OER
Teaching with Nature
Students participate in a nature walk to learn about their natural environments. In this nature study lesson, students brainstorm a list of things to look for on their nature walk. Students go on the nature walk and locate objects they...
Curated OER
Coping with loss
Students explore ways of dealing with death or grief. They participate in empathy exercises and in small groups discuss how death is perceived in society. In addition, they write a paragraphs in response to provided questions.
Curated OER
The Teller of the Tale, Part 3
Young scholars practice use of volume, stress, pacing, enunciation, eye contact, and gestures needed to meet the needs of the audience when presenting their own tales based on Chaucer. They receive teacher and student feedback and...
Curated OER
Poetry Pop-Up
Third graders, after exploring the process of writing poetry through imagery words that go beyond pen and paper, create a Poetry Pop-Up Book. They incorporate the use of the Thesaurus and clip-art/digital photography to assist them in...
Curated OER
Western Folklore Presentations
Students choose a folktale character to research using electronic encyclopedia, software, the Internet, media center and printed material. They focus their research around specific criteria to force the students to be selective and...
Curated OER
Creative Writing Using the Senses
Fifth graders, utilizing a thesaurus to identify alternative word choices and meanings, eat a sweet treat and then list eight different adjectives for each of the five senses. They then describe a sweet with at least then adjectives...
Curated OER
Hattie and the Fox
Who is Hattie? Youngsters explore animal characteristics by reading poems and stories in class. They read the book Hattie and the Fox about a fictitious fox and his drama with the other farm animals. Then they reread the story over...
Curated OER
Healing Art: Health and Illness
Students examine African artifacts relating to health and illness
NOAA
It's a Roughy Life
Scientists recently discovered several previously unknown species at the Bear Seamount off the coast of New England. Scholars research these new species — benthopelagic, benthic, and seamount fish — and find out what makes them...
Curated OER
Using Onomatopoeia to Tell the Story of an Imaginary Field Trip
Students explore language arts by utilizing word choice to compose a paragraph. In this phonetics lesson, students discuss the importance of a "voice" in their writing as they read the book Rattletrap Car. Students write paragraphs about...