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University of North Carolina

Essay Exams

For Students 9th - Higher Ed Standards
For decades, the sight of blue books has struck fear in the hearts of collegians. Those books usually signal an essay exam, the topic of one of the handouts in a larger series on specific writing assignments. Using the handout, writers...
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Lesson Plan
Mascil Project

Parachute Food Drop

For Teachers 6th - 12th Standards
Drop a perfect project into your lesson plans. Groups use different building materials to create models of parachutes for food drops. After testing out their prototypes, they make improvements to their designs.
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Lesson Plan
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Population Connection

The Carbon Crunch

For Teachers 9th - Higher Ed Standards
Carbon is in the air; should we care? Teach the class why it is important to pay attention to carbon levels and how the world population and various countries across the globe affect the carbon levels in the atmosphere. High schoolers...
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Lesson Plan
Serendip

DNA Structure, Function and Replication

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
Before a cell replicates, its DNA must replicate. Take advantage of a hands-on guided lesson to teach budding scientists how this happens. Using a set of nucleotide cards, learners become the DNA and work to create matching strands...
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Lesson Plan
Serendip

DNA

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
Get up close and personal with DNA! A two-part hands-on activity has learners extract DNA from a small organism and then their own cheek cells. Scholars then explore DNA replication using questions to guide their analyses.
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Lesson Plan
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Serendip

Food, the Carbon Cycle and Global Warming

For Teachers 6th - 12th Standards
As the world population increases, demands on the carbon cycle also increase. A well-designed instructional activity first explores the greenhouse effect and its impact on global warming. Further sections have pupils study the effect of...
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Assessment
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California Education Partners

Window Washers

For Students 3rd Standards
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...
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Unit Plan
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Florida Department of Health

Safe and Happy: Safety for All at School and Online Unit

For Teachers 9th - 12th
Bystander or upstander and advocate? Three lessons have high schoolers investigating data about bullying and school safety. Participants then learn how to take a stand against bullying and use what they have learned to create a PSA to...
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Lesson Plan
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National Endowment for the Humanities

Sources of Discord, 1945-1946

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
From Allies to enemies within a year. Scholars research the falling out between the United States and the Soviet Union from 1945-1946 in the first lesson of a three-part series. Using primary source materials, group work, and interactive...
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Lesson Plan
NASA

Let's Investigate Mars

For Teachers 3rd - 7th Standards
Take your science class on a hypothetical field trip to Mars with an engaging astronomy lesson. After first learning about NASA's Mars rover missions, young scientists plan their own scientific investigations of Earth's nearest neighbor.
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Lesson Plan
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National Endowment for the Humanities

The Rise and Fall of Joseph McCarthy

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
"I have here in my hand . . ." The war against Communism and Joseph McCarthy’s place in it are the focus of a series of lessons examining postwar America from 1945-1954. Joseph McCarthy takes center stage in this, the final lesson of the...
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Lesson Plan
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NASA

Newton Car

For Teachers 7th - 11th Standards
If a car gets heavier, it goes farther? By running an activity several times, teams experience Newton's Second Law of Motion. The teams vary the amount of weight they catapult off a wooden block car and record the distance the car...
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Lesson Plan
Facing History and Ourselves

Kristallnacht: Decision-Making in Times of Injustice

For Teachers 6th - 12th Standards
Have you ever been singled out in a crowd before? Pupils investigate and analyze the events of the Holocaust. They dive into the life of a middle school student, as well as the diary entries of those in Kristallnacht during World War II. 
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Word Square: Ender's Game

For Teachers 5th - 9th
Ansible. Hegemony. Candor. Readers of Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game create word squares for vocabulary words drawn from this award-winning science fiction novel.
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Phineas Gage: Four Corners Discussion Strategy

For Teachers 6th - 8th Standards
How far do your pupils think we should go in the name of science? Class members respond to questions relating to chapter three of Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science and then participate in a four corners...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Phineas Gage: Personal Phrenology Chart During Reading Activity

For Teachers 6th - 8th Standards
Phrenology, the belief that parts of your brain control certain aspects of your personality, is described in Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science. While we now know much more about the brain, learners use this idea...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Phineas Gage: Questioning Strategy

For Teachers 6th - 8th Standards
Focus on chapter two of Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science with a questioning activity. After teaching and modeling several types of questions, learners work with partners and then independently to answer and...
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Lesson Plan
Bantam Books

The Tempest: Fishbowl Discussion Strategy

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
Readers learn together with a group discussion activity. As they read William Shakespeare's The Tempest, high schoolers prepare for a fishbowl discussion in which three or four learners sit in the middle of a large circle and have a...
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Lesson Plan
Novelinks

Touching Spirit Bear: Question Answer Response Strategy

For Teachers 6th - 8th Standards
What types of questions help readers learn the most? Sixth, seventh, and eighth graders learn how to ask four types of questions from the Question Answer Response (QAR) reading strategy to help grow their comprehension of Touching Spirit...
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Lesson Plan
Novelinks

Where the Red Fern Grows: Graphic Organizer, Story Map

For Teachers 4th - 6th Standards
How do you grow a goal from a dream to reality? You make a plan! After reading chapters two and three of Where the Red Fern Grows, learners map how Billy earns his dogs by completing an organizer in pairs and then discussing answers in...
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Lesson Plan
Novelinks

Words By Heart: Anticipation Guide

For Teachers 6th - 8th Standards
The anticipation guide for Words by Heart is the first of a series of six, contains lesson plans for the activity as well as a handout to be completed individually, in pairs, or as a class. It sparks interest for the text and activates...
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Lesson Plan
National Endowment for the Humanities

Animal Farm: Allegory and the Art of Persuasion

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
Introduce your class members to allegory and propaganda with a series of activities designed to accompany a study of George Orwell's Animal Farm. Readers examine the text as an allegory, consider the parallels to collective farms and the...
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Activity
Curated OER

Express Yourself Lesson Seed 5

For Teachers 6th Standards
Building on the previous activity in this series of lesson seeds, this plan focuses on the use of dialect in Theodore Taylor's novel, The Cay. Class members examine specific lines of text, use their reading journals to respond to the...
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Lesson Plan
Personal Genetics Education Project

Introduction to Personal Genetics

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
Adolescents have the opportunity to consider how they feel about the possibilities presented by the current availability of genetic sequencing. After some instruction, they participate in a four-corners activity in which you read a...