Exploratorium
Measuring and Mapping the Playground
The school playground is a great place to learn about math. Pupils measure the dimensions of a playground using baby steps and individual strides. They use their measurements to create a scale drawing of the playground by applying an...
Teaching Tolerance
Buddy Share
Here's a project that gives academics the chance to share their opinions on social justice with storytelling, creative writing, or art. Scholars choose what they want to create and are assigned buddies to support their efforts. To...
Teaching Tolerance
Community Puzzle Mural
Every piece of the puzzle is important. A lesson gives individuals the opportunity to create artwork that spreads a message of inclusion and tolerance. Class members work in teams to create pieces of the mural that form a larger picture....
Media Smarts
Looking at Food Advertising
Tony The Tiger, The HoneyComb Kid, The Nestle Quick Bunny. As part of a study of the methods advertisers use to sell foods and how this advertising effects their food choices, kids create their own spokescharacter and/or jingle for one...
National Gallery of Canada
My Upside-Down World!
M.C. Escher is famous for creating optical illusions. Examine this effect in several of his works and discuss the techniques involved. Inspired by the discussion, learners create an imaginary 3-D world inside of a box using various...
National Gallery of Canada
Who Are You?
What can a self-portrait reveal about an artist? Discuss various self-portraits before tasking your pupils with creating their own. Learners research artists, develop an idea of their own individuality, and create photo collages with...
National Security Agency
Classifying Triangles
Building on young mathematicians' prior knowledge of three-sided shapes, this activity series explores the defining characteristics of different types of triangles. Starting with a shared reading of the children's book The Greedy...
Scholastic
Owl Moon Teaching Plan
Capture the engagement of young readers with this collection of activities based on Jane Yolen's book, Owl Moon. Following a shared reading of this children's story, the class explores the geography of the American Northeast, creates...
Novelinks
The Color of Water: Word Square Instructions
Immaculate, accumulation, dissipation. Vocabulary drawn from chapter 16 of James McBride's memoir, The Color of Water, can prove to be challenge for readers. To help kids understand the meaning of these words and what they add to the...
K12 Reader
Adventures with Alliteration! - Adjectives
Have hearty humor with a handy, helpful handout! Kids work on their alliteration skills with a figurative language worksheet that focuses on alliterative adjectives and phrases. After kids add nouns to ten adjectives, they create five...
Novelinks
Wildwood Dancing: Vocabulary Squares
As part of a study of Juliet Marillier's Wildwood Dancing, class members create vocabulary squares for words drawn from the story.
Code.org
Good and Bad Data Visualizations
Good versus bad data. Pairs rate online collections of data representations from good to bad and then suggest ways to improve the visualizations. The class then creates a list of best practices and common errors in data representations...
Code.org
Practice PT - Design a Digital Scene
The final performance task for the unit requires class members to utilize what they have learned to create a personal digital scene. Groups work together to develop a scene and then, using top-down design, break the scene into manageable...
Curated OER
A Model Solar System
If Earth is modeled by a grapefruit, what planet could be represented by a golf ball? This activity uses everyday and not-so-everyday objects to create a model of the Solar System.
Energy for Keeps
Going for a Spin: Making a Model Steam Turbine
Discover the effectiveness of wind, water, and steam as energy sources. The hands-on activity has young scientists create a turbine from common materials. After constructing the turbines, they use wind, water, and steam to turn them and...
Scholastic
Lesson Four: The Earth, Layers of Earth
Get your hands dirty with a set of earth science activities! Class members delve into a hard-boiled egg to find the similarities to the earth's layers, create a papier-mâché model of the earth, craft a simulation of the earth's...
Space Awareness
History of the Universe
Your pupils may believe that you and their parents are the oldest things in the universe, but surprise! There are elements of the universe that are even older. Elementary scientists create a class timeline to demonstrate the expansive...
PACER Center
The Peer Advocacy Guide
Teasing, mocking, and disrespect can be the hallmarks in the life of those with disabilities. Disrupt the cycle of abuse with a toolkit designed to turn peers into advocates for all those who are bullied. Everything needed to create a...
NOAA
Mapping the Deep-Ocean Floor
How do you create a map of the ocean floor without getting wet? Middle school oceanographers discover the process of bathymetric mapping in the third installment in a five-part series of lessons designed for seventh and eighth graders....
PBS
WWII: Detained
Imagine being forced against your will behind barbed wire for doing nothing but being yourself. Scholars investigate the impact Japanese-American internment camps had during World War II. Through video and archival evidence, they create...
Ohio Center For Law-Related Education
Four Activities: Thurgood Marshall and the Nomination and Confirmation of Federal Judges
The process of nominating and confirming federal judges can sound like a lot of bureaucratic hoops, but a resource breaks down the steps of the Supreme Court nominations in a simpler manner. Learners participate in four activities that...
Teach Engineering
May the Force Be With You: Lift
Get the class up and going with a lesson that discusses how airplane wings provide lift. Pupils use their knowledge of Bernoulli's Principle to develop an explanation of how it creates lift on airplane wings.
J. Paul Getty Trust
O Greek Shape! O Fair Pose!
Everything old is new again. The Los Angeles J. Paul Getty Museum presents a lesson plan on how Greek black-figure painting influenced eighteenth century Neoclassical artists. After looking at a series of examples, class members create...
J. Paul Getty Trust
Shaping Ideas: Symbolism in Sculpture—Lesson 2
Young artists create a series of sketches of ideas for a sculpture, and using the criteria develop in the previous class, critique their sketches. They then choose one of their ideas and create their work of art.