Missouri Department of Elementary
My Conflict Shield
As an exercise in self-awareness and improvement, class members create a Conflict Shield listing 12 skills they believe are the most useful in conflict resolution. They then color the ones they have mastered while leaving uncolored those...
Transforming Education
Growth Mindset Toolkit
A nine-slide presentation provides educators with practical ways they can help young people develop a growth mindset, a key competency in social-emotional learning.
School Improvement in Maryland
Regulatory Agency
Five governmental regulatory agencies are tasked to respond to market failure. Groups investigate the roles of each of these agencies as well as the social, economic, and political impact of their actions.
Messenger Education
Can You Hear Me Now?—Communicating with Spacecraft
Radio signals transmitted to Pluto take five hours to reach their destination! In these two activities, young scientists explore data communication in space. In activity one, pupils learn how data is gathered and sent back to Earth....
NASA
Catch a Piece of the Sun
What does the sun mean to you? Learners have many different interests that may have connections to the sun. Whether its solar radiation, solar flares, or solar storms, there are connections to daily interests that may surprise your...
Syracuse University
Ancient World Writing System
Most twenty-first century pupils don't know how to interpret cuneiform. Examining images of cuneiform and papyrus writing and using a chart and Venn diagram, young historians extrapolate what life may have been like for people who lived...
Noyce Foundation
Parallelogram
Parallelograms are pairs of triangles all the way around. Pupils measure to determine the area and perimeter of a parallelogram. They then find the area of the tirangles formed by drawing a diagonal of the parallelogram and compare their...
Inside Mathematics
Patterns in Prague
Designers in Prague are not diagonally challenged. The mini-assessment provides a complex pattern made from blocks. Individuals use the pattern to find the area and perimeter of the design. To find the perimeter, they use the Pythagorean...
Noyce Foundation
Boxes
Teach your class to think outside the box. Scholars use the concept of equality to solve a problem in the assessment task. They determine how to use a scale to identify the one box out of a set of nine boxes that is heavier than the others.
EduGAINs
Coureurs de Bois, First Nation Peoples, and the Fur Trade
The interactions between the Coureurs de bois (runners of the woods) and the First Nation Peoples as they engaged in the fur trade are the focus on this Canadian history exercise. Kids select learning centers based on their learning...
Inside Mathematics
Suzi's Company
The mean might not always be the best representation of the average. The assessment task has individuals determine the measures of center for the salaries of a company. They determine which of the three would be the best representation...
Digital Forsyth
Civil Rights and Active Citizenship
As part of a study of the American Civil Rights movement, class members search the Internet to find important facts, people, events, and pictures that they use to create a timeline of events between 1955 and 1970.
Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment
Managing Influences and Making Decisions
Internal and external factors influence behavior and decision making. The third session in a 10-lesson series focusing on Social, Physical, Emotional, Cognitive and Spiritual (SPECS) health explores the impact of these factors...
Kenan Fellows
Electricity: Sources, Usage, Challenges, and the Future
What does the future of energy look like? Junior engineers collaborate to discover a solution to the global energy crisis during a very hands-on lesson. The unit focuses on learning through collaboration to develop a deep understanding...
American Museum of Natural History
Journey to the Bottom of the Sea
Properties of water make it essential for the life of marine species. Learners complete an online game to answer questions about the role water fulfills for organisms in ocean habitats. The game emphasizes the properties of water and how...
Inside Mathematics
Party
Thirty at the party won't cost any more than twenty-five. The assessment task provides a scenario for the cost of a party where the initial fee covers a given number of guests. The class determines the cost for specific numbers of guests...
Inside Mathematics
Scatter Diagram
It is positive that how one performs on the first test relates to their performance on the second test. The three-question assessment has class members read and analyze a scatter plot of test scores. They must determine whether...
Library of Congress
Industrial Revolution
Could you live without your phone? What about cars, steel, or clothing? Class groups collaborate to produce presentations that argue that either the telephone, the gramophone, the automobile, the textile industry, or the steel...
Autism Speaks
Improving Sleep for Children with Autism
Sometimes learners with autism have trouble getting into routines and schedules, especially when it comes to sleep. Quickly refer to a guide that provides tips, checklists, sample schedules, and visuals to help your child become a better...
Do2Learn
Starting a Conversation
What words are appropriate to begin a conversation with another person? Use an activity that helps class members decide appropriate ways to approach individuals with conversation.
BBSRC
Discovering DNA: The Recipe for Life
A pinch of adenine, a dash of thymine and ta-da, you have life! Well, it's not quite that simple, but through this series of activities and experiments young scientists learn about the structure of DNA and how it contains the recipe...
Shutterfly
Shutterfly Photo Story Lesson Plan
A reading of Peggy Parish's Amelia Bedelia launches a study of idioms. Groups then select several idioms, write the meaning of the expressions, draw or select images, and use GIMP or Photoshop to create an idiom book.
Mathematics Assessment Project
Middle School Mathematics Test 4
Raise expectations in your classroom and assess learners through the provided performance tasks. Class members must apply concepts learned throughout the year, providing a good measurement of how well they understand the...
Bowland
Fruit Pies
Scholars use formulas for the area of a circle and the area of a rectangle to determine the number of pies a baker can make from a particular area of dough. They must also take into account rolling the remaining dough into a new sheet.