Library Sparks
Bridge to Terabithia: Library Lessons
Foreshadowing, flashbacks, and imaginary places are the three topics of focus in this two-lesson packet written especially for the book, Bridge to Terabithia. Each lesson also comes with worksheets and activities to support student...
Curated OER
Descriptive Writing: Using Art to Inspire description
Write with the senses! Try using art to inspire writers to consider all of the senses. Here, the class is divided in half. Each group looks at one of two images, imagines the senses that would be engaged, and records answers to five...
University of British Columbia
The Outsiders: Identity, the Individual, and the Group
S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders is the anchor text in a unit that asks readers to reflect on their own identity, their place in their family, in groups with which they identify, and in school.
Curated OER
Relationships for Students in Middle School
Boundaries are important in relationships, no matter how close the relationship is. Middle schoolers explore the ideas of boundaries and personal space with two units about relationships. After discussing the boundaries in their own...
University of Manchester
Thanksgiving and Being Thankful
Students share with the class what they are thankful for. In this Thanksgiving lesson, students create place-mats for Thanksgiving. Students discuss ways we honor and celebrate Thanksgiving. They then make a list of things they are...
K12 Reader
Punctuating Appositives
Where do the commas go? Kids rewrite a series of sentences using commas to set off the appositives in each sentence.
Curated OER
It's Natural!
Here's a nicely designed learning exercise that will allow your young scientists to learn about common materials and products that come from nature. They also looks at synthesized products that come from a factory. This simple matching...
Via Sapientiae at DePaul University
The Great Depression of the 1930s
A 10-lesson unit takes young historians through a study of The Great Depression and life in the 1930s. The crash of the stock market, the Dust Bowl, unemployment, and mass migration west are all addressed through the analysis of primary...
PBS
Before We Travel, We Research
Context is key when it comes to historical research. Prior to field research, class members learn as much as they can about the site they are going to visit. Groups investigate and prepare presentations about the history of the site, the...
North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences
Weather Watch Activity Guide: Groundhog Day
Exactly what do groundhogs know about weather? Not as much as your science students will after completing these lessons and activities that cover everything from the earth's rotation and the creation of shadows, to cloud...
John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum
Red States/Blue States: Mapping the Presidential Election
Young historians investigate how voting patterns have changed by comparing the outcome of the 1960 election to the outcome of the recent election. A creative final assessment has participants making a news show wherein they provide...
Cornell University
Catapults
Ready, aim, fire! Launch to a new level of understanding as scholars build and test their own catapults. Learners explore lever design and how adjusting the fulcrum changes the outcome.
Federal Trade Commission
Ad Awareness
Movie theaters, shopping malls, television, the Internet ... no matter where people go, they are inundated with advertisements. Scholars discuss the topic of ad awareness using the first of four Admongo lessons about advertising. Pupils...
Curated OER
Tangerine: Cubing Strategy
Here's an activity that uses a reading comprehension strategy based on Bloom's taxonomy to focus readers' attention on key passages from Edward Bloor's Tangerine. Worthy of a place in your curriculum library.
Rainforest Alliance
Protecting the Critical Habitat of the Manatee and Loggerhead Turtle
Explore ocean habitats with a lesson that showcases the home of manatees and loggerhead turtles in Belize. Here, pupils compare and contrast the homes of ocean animals to those of humans, listen to an original short story about the...
Curated OER
Information from Posters
Budding journalists examine and evaluate an informative poster advertising a public meeting to discuss city park issues. They write a paragraph explaining what they found to be effective and ineffective about the poster, then imagine...
Curated OER
Most and Least Likely
Explore probability with beginners using these multiple-choice visuals. They determine what they are most likely to choose from a bag by examining the contents. Each bag has three types of similar objects with one more prevalent than the...
NPR
Female Olympians Lesson Plan
For every strong and determined female Olympian, there are millions of young girls watching and becoming inspired. Middle and high schoolers learn more about record-breaking and history-making Olympian women with a presentation from the...
Virginia Repertory Theatre
The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse
Accompany the story, Town Mouse Country Mouse by Jan Brett with an assortment of activities designed to reinforce concepts covering story structure, comprehension, grammar, and social studies. Here, scholars identify the difference...
Curated OER
Renaming Fraction
These improper fractions need to be renamed, and young mathematicians are guided through the process to simplify 36 of them here. They change each to a mixed number, sometimes simplifying further to get the fully reduced form. There are...
Southern Nevada Regional Professional Development Program
Close Reading in the Classroom
Close reading is key to the analysis and interpretation of literature. A close reading of the title and the epigraph of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” offers readers an opportunity to examine how even single words or names can...
Curated OER
Teaching Arithmetic and Math Concepts to Headstarters
Students discover early number concepts for numbers 1 through 5. For this number concepts lesson, students work in stations doing hands-on activities such as sorting colored blocks, stringing beads, and counting sticks. Students also...
Curated OER
Library Skills Review
Middle schoolers review library skills by rotating through teacher-created learning stations covering various topics. They discuss plagiarism, work on Almanac practice as a team, complete practice using indexes, and an abstracts handout...
Museum of Tolerance
Quilt Activity
After completing the first five lessons from the series, scholars assemble their quilt pieces to create a family history quilt. They then rate their experience of learning about their families by conducting interviews, creating family...