Penguin Books
An Educator's Guide to Al Capone Does My Shirts
It's hard to imagine that life on Alcatraz could be dull. A series of intriguing lessons take readers through the novel Al Capone Does my Shirts. Pre-reading questions introduce the text and a range of suggestions, from comic strips to...
California Education Partners
Summer Olympics
Quickly get to the decimal point. The last assessment in a nine-part series requires scholars to work with decimals. Pupils compare the race times of several athletes and calculate how much they have improved over time. During the second...
California Education Partners
Bake Sale
Work with fractional cookies. The three-part assessment task checks the pupils' ability to find the product of fractions and whole numbers, mixed numbers, or fractions. Learners determine the amount of ingredients needed and how many of...
California Education Partners
Soccer Snacks
Make the cookies healthy. The assessment task asks pupils to determine the number of cookies they could make based on a given amount of ingredients. Given two sugar substitutes, learners determine which substitute would be better and...
California Education Partners
Four Square Wars
Obviously, four is the perfect number when you're playing Four Square. Scholars first use multiplication and division to solve a set of problems on the number of balls needed, the number of games, and the number of players required for a...
California Education Partners
Fun on the Farm
Let imaginations run wild as participants design animal pens. A performance task challenges young mathematicians to determine the perimeter or a missing side length of different animal pens. They then design pens that meet given...
California Education Partners
Lashelles Garden
Let knowledge grow bountifully like plants in a garden. Given a diagram of a rectangular garden split into plots, scholars determine the area of the entire garden and the areas of the individual plots. As a culminating activity, they...
California Education Partners
Theater Field Trip
Here's an assessment task that's better than watching a show. Young mathematicians solve word problems involving multiplication and division with equal groups. They must find the total number of attendees on a trip to a theater based on...
California Education Partners
Tile Mural
Paste this resource into your lesson plans like you'd paste a tile onto a mural. Given a diagram of a tile mural with rectilinear figures, future artists determine the perimeters and areas of the figures. They must then develop their own...
California Education Partners
Window Washers
Aim high with a task on window washers. An assessment task challenges learners to determine the number of windows two people wash. They do this using a given number of window rows on each side of a building. In addition, they find the...
Curated OER
You Know the Answer
In this problem solving worksheet, 4th graders are given an answer to a question and must solve the mathematical problems to discover the secret question. Students solve for 18 problems using addition, subtraction, multiplication and...
Curated OER
Environmental Destruction in Vietnam
Students watch video clip on Environmental Destruction of Vietnam, select and discuss passages from essay, Resuscitation of the Dead Earth, that emphasize destruction to the land, and write essay on whether United States should have been...
Curated OER
Library of Congress Learning Page: The Historian's Sources Lesson Overview
Students study techniques for analyzing primary sources. Finally, students apply these techniques to analyze documents about slavery in the United States.
Curated OER
The Long I Sound
Practice saying, sounding out, and identifying the long I sound with your class. They say each word on the sheet, unscramble the letters to spell the word correctly, and write the correct word on the line provided. The worksheet states...
Curated OER
Everyone Can Benefit from Professional Development
These resources will point you in the direction of valuable professional development opportunities.
Curated OER
Investigating Brass Instruments and Pitch
Students observe the sounds of different brass instruments in order to understand how to create different pitches. In this musical instructional activity, students create a "brass" instrument from everyday household objects. The students...
Curated OER
Finding Excellent Nonfiction in Long-form Journalism
How to find engaging, rigorous nonfiction texts through long-form journalism.
Curated OER
Celebrate Endangered Species Day at Your School
Learn how your school can join numerous conservation organizations in celebrating Endangered Species Day on May 17th.
Curated OER
Coast-to-Coast Book Design -Part 2: What is Design?
Students explore the concept of design, and identify items in their lives that have been designed. They explore the concept of book design and create and arrange their own page layout.
Curated OER
60-30-10
Students use ratios and proportions to represent quantitative relationships as they investigate the concept of how percentages are used by designers. Students decorate the same room using three different percentages of colors.
Curated OER
Coast-to-Coast Book Design-Part 1: What is a book?
In this first of four lessons on book design, students are introduced to the vocabulary of book design through the use of bookwalks and a non-linear PowerPoint presentation in game-show (Jeopardy!) format.
Science Friday
Make a Model of a Home Made From Shipping Containers
Build a scale model of a home built out of shipping containers. A hands-on activity has scholars watch a video about a home built from shipping containers and then design their own home. They build scale models of their designed homes...
Poets.org
Ghosts and Spirits
Connect poetry to a naturally kid-friendly topic: ghosts! Draw on your class's prior knowledge of the paranormal to help them access the classic poem "Haunted House" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. After a fun warm-up activity describing...
Curated OER
Pascal's Triangle
Learners explore the concept of Pascal's Triangle. In this Pascal's Triangle lesson, students use an applet called 'Coloring Multiples' to explore Pascal's Triangle. Learners develop patterns starting with various numbers in Pascal's...