Physics Classroom
A Critical Lab
Physics lab groups finagle with laser lights to determine the critical angle of refraction for both water and Lucite. Because there are no detailed steps or an answer key for this enlightening exercise, an inexperienced physics...
Curated OER
Exploring Arizona's Biotic Communities Lesson 2: Biotic Communities Vocabulary
Part of a unit on Arizona's biotic communities, this lesson focuses on the vocabulary to be used. Terms include biodiversity, topography, desert, hybridization, niche, and more! Youngsters will define these words from contextual...
Curated OER
What Could Be Better Than This?
Students read the book What Could Be Better Than This and complete a word search, poems, and write an adventure. In this What Could Be Better Than This lesson plan, students read about an even that changes someone's life.
Curated OER
Answering Literal Comprehension Questions
Practice using the Turn the Question Around (TQA) method to answer reading comprehension questions based on short narrative paragraphs. Instructions and materials are included for direct, guided, and independent instruction. Responses...
Curated OER
Art Around the World
The non-fiction book Art Around the World by Heather Leonard serves as inspiration for learning how art reflects cultures and values. New vocabulary and background knowledge are fleshed out before reading the story. Afterward, the class...
Achieve3000
Discriminating Phonemes 2
Some sounds sound very similar! Help your class learn how to distinguish between various sounds by following the steps outlined in this plan. The plan includes a warm-up, a teacher-led portion, and details for guided and independent...
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Songwriting Skill - Choosing a Tone: Jordan Pruitt - “One Love”
"Tone means attitude." Or so says this resource that uses Jordan Pruitt's "One Love" to model for songwriters how to develop an attitude in their lyrics. Class members engage in a number of exercises designed to give them direct and...
Curated OER
Phoneme Substitution (With Letters)
Get pre-readers comfortable with phoneme substitution using these helpful letter cards, which are printable in three different sizes depending on your classroom needs. Once scholars understand some letter sounds, they can begin...
Deliberating in a Democracy
Youth Curfews
Don't stay out too late! Scholars analyze the need for youth curfews in a democratic society. They examine primary documents, case studies, and short video clips to form their opinions and take a position on the issue. Holding a class...
Baruch College Writing Center
Summarizing, Paraphrasing, and Quoting Workshop
What's the difference between summarizing and paraphrasing? Show class members how to find the main ideas from informational text and condense it, restate it, or quote it directly with a series of educational activities based...
Channel Islands Film
Arlington Springs Man: Lesson Plan 1
Learning to craft quality questions is a skill that can be taught. Class members use the Question Formulation Technique to learn how to create and refine both closed-ended and open-ended questions. They then view West of the West's...
Advocates for Human Rights
Undocumented Immigrants
Stay or go? As part of a study of immigration and human rights, class members listen to the stories of several immigrants and must decide if the story was their own if they would stay in the United States as an undocumented...
Curated OER
Budget Busters
Use this economic activity to focus on writing summaries of informational text. First, middle schoolers define common economic terms used to describe news about the economy. They closely read news about the federal budget deficit and...
Redefining Progress
Have and Have-Not
Is there a correlation between a country's wealth and the extent of its ecological footprint? What exactly constitutes an ecological footprint, and how does one country stack up against the rest? This is a unique instructional activity...
West Contra Costa Unified School District
Evaluating Functions Graphically and Algebraically
High schoolers evaluate functions graphically and algebraically. After completing that step, they write a statement describing the input and output.
Curated OER
Water in the Atmosphere
A slide show serves as the backdrop for a lesson on the moisture in Earth's atmosphere. Through it, mini meteorologists learn about the attributes of the atmosphere and actually use data-collecting weather tools to make observations and...
University of Colorado
The Jovian Basketball Hoop
Can you listen to Jupiter on a simple radio? Turns out the answer is yes! The resource instructs scholars to build a simple radio to pick up the radio waves created when the charged particles from the sun hit Jupiter's magnetic...
EngageNY
Launching the Performance Task: Planning the Two-Voice Poem
Two voices, one poem. Scholars learn about and write a two-voice poem using graphic organizers, model poems, and guides. They practice reading poems with a partner and discuss how a poem of this type could help compare Salva and Nya...
EngageNY
Deepening Your Research: The Effect of Advertising on Gender Roles
Let's get back on the road! Scholars continue using their research roadmaps to explore the role of gender while reading Cover Girl Culture. The teacher guides readers through the text as they underline specific sentences. Learners...
EngageNY
Individual Research
Class members choose an ad they want to analyze for their performance task. They then read specific text based on the ad they chose. The instructor guides learners through a Model Research Synthesis document in which they try to...
EngageNY
Why Did Douglass Write the Narrative?
Readers take another look at Narrative of the Life of Frederick
Douglass to determine the purpose of the text. They use Frederick Douglass’s Purpose: Text and Questions handout and a close reading guide to direct their thinking. To...
EngageNY
End of Unit Assessment: Poetry Analysis
Learners finish the end-of-unit assessment by completing a poetry analysis of We Wear the
Mask. Scholars may use their Poet’s Toolbox reference sheets and How to Read a Poem anchor
charts to guide them through the assessment.
Curated OER
Take Me to Your Reader
Students observe and demonstrate a variety of strategies for reading with expression. They listen to the teacher read different sentences with and without expression and discuss the differences. Next, in pairs they take turns reading...
Curated OER
Express Yourself!
Students read aloud with expression through practice by monitoring their changes in volume, speed, and pitch of their voices. They use cross checking, if they come to a word they are unfamiliar with, they read the rest of the sentence....