Curated OER
Does My Vote Count? Teaching the Electoral College
Students comprehend the purpose, function, origin, and historical development of the electoral college. They evaluate issues of fairness and representation in the electoral process, both individually and through group discussion....
Curated OER
From Mashed to Riches
Students discuss the uses of a potato. In this food group lesson plan, students identify the five food groups and which one the potato belongs to. They create potato printing, compare different kinds of potatoes, grow a potato plant, and...
Road to Grammar
Language Expansion
Improve your pupils' language skills with these discussions and activities. There are four topics included here, and each is paired with discussion prompts (small group and whole class), student handouts, and teacher notes. After...
Prestwick House
The Poetry of Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan's selection as the 2016 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, the first songwriter ever to receive the honor, has focused the attention of a new generation on the work of the legendary artist. Class members analyze the...
EngageNY
Close Reading of Excerpts from My Librarian Is a Camel: How Do People Access Books Around the World?
Acquaint your class with informational text through a close reading. First, examine a couple of pages together, looking at text features and content. The whole class focuses on marking down a brief summary of each paragraph before...
FloridaHealth
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
Invite that hungry caterpillar to teach your class about nutrition! After brief instruction on fruit, the teacher reads The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle to the class. Kids hold up the fruit images at appropriate points in the...
Curated OER
Brief Encounters (Building Bridges)
Students experience what it is like to confront and deal with a culture highly different from their own. They gain skills in observing and describing behaviors and develop an understanding of how our cultural values influence the way we...
Curated OER
Outgroup Experiment Reveals Bias, Stereotyping
Exploring bias and stereotypes, students dress up as members of "outgroups" (groups of people who are often judged). Though the lesson specifies that it should be "respectful and not mock the outgroup in any way," this activity would be...
Curated OER
Get a Leg Up
Traveling through space is an amazing experience, but it definitely takes a toll on the body. After reading an article and watching a brief video, learners perform an experiment that simulates the effects of zero gravity on the human body.
Penguin Books
Teacher’s Guide: Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
A 10-page guide to John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men includes a brief plot summary, information about preparing readers for the language in the novel, pre-reading, during reading, and post-reading questions, essay prompts, and project...
Pulitzer Center
Peacebuilding: Taking Home Lessons Learned in Africa
Learners take a closer look at one journalist's work on UN Peacebuilding efforts in four African nations: Sierra Leone, Burundi, Central African Republic, and Guinea Bissau. They collaborate to define peacebuilding and discuss the...
Curated OER
The Poetry Archive
Listening to poems about feeling lonely and feeling like an outsider set the stage for a group activity that focuses on Stevie Smith's "Not Waving But Drowning." Groups examine the three stanzas of Smith's poem separately and identify in...
Brown University
Youth Activism and the Dakota Access Pipeline
Do young people have a role in social movements? Should they? The involvement of young people in the Dakota Access Pipeline is the focus of a resource that asks class members to examine letters written by native youths who oppose the...
Space Awareness
Investigating the Atmosphere - Air Takes Up Space
How do you know there is air? Can you see it, smell it, feel it? To begin the investigation, learners watch a video and discuss what they know about air and the atmosphere. Then, they participate in five different hands-on, inquiry-based...
Institute for Humane Education
Not So Fair and Balanced: Analyzing Bias in the Media
Life is not always fair. Who's heard that before? This same concept moves to a larger scale using prejudice and bias. Pupils discuss where prejudice attitudes derive and how they develop throughout life. Reading comprehension...
Generation Rx
My Generation Rx: Lead the Scene
Prescription drugs may start out with legitimate usage, but lately they are finding their way to high school and college party life. Have a discussion with the teenagers in your class on prescription drug abuse with a PowerPoint...
Film English
Coca-Cola Ad
Have your class members consider how their lifestyle choices may differ from those of their grandparents when they were younger. After brainstorming and discussing differences in lifestyle, pupils watch a Coca-Cola advertisement that...
Balanced Assessment
Red Dots, Blue Dots
Count the connections between dots. Young mathematicians come up with a method to determine the number of connections between pairs of dots. The assessment leads the class to determine the connections they can make when groups are...
Space Awareness
Greenhouse Effect
A greenhouse provides additional warmth and protection to the plants inside, but what if the greenhouse gets too hot? Pupils discuss and experiment with the difference between natural and anthropogenic greenhouse effect. They measure the...
Fluence Learning
Writing Informational Text: Community and School Gardens
Two informational texts feature community gardens of the past and present and how seeds grow. Scholars read, discuss what they have read, complete a timeline, define words, and compose a brief essay about the texts' main idea.
Curated OER
Find 1
Extend your class's ability to represent unit fractions on a number line with this challenging worksheet. Given two number lines, one labeled with zero and 1/4, the other with zero and 5/3, students must accurately locate the number one...
Purdue University
Email Etiquette for Students
What's the best way to discuss a problem or concern with a professor? Using a helpful PowerPoint, scholars learn how to use e-mail to communicate effectively with their instructors. They discover good and bad e-mail topics, appropriate...
Science Matters
Seed Adaptations for Dispersal
After a grand conversation about seeds, adaptation, and dispersal, scholars work collaboratively to examine seeds and record their findings on a four-column chart. Small groups share their observations and further discuss seed...
University of Pennsylvania
Using Comic Strips to Teach Multiple Perspectives
Scholars view comics from two different perspectives; one paints the Alfred Dreyfus as innocent, while the other portrays the exact opposite. They solve the mystery of what happened by analyzing the source, working in groups, and...