Spark Notes
Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder: Study Guide - Mini Essays
Jump online (to Sparknotes), and check out the study questions listed for Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World. Provide a list of the questions to your high schoolers, and get them in groups to discuss their answers. Potential answers are...
Curated OER
Television News
Different media sources portray news in a variety of ways. In groups of three, learners look at different news sources, bringing in all the findings the next day. Three handouts help scholars compare sources, define specific terms used...
Curated OER
Time Travel Advertisement
What makes an effective advertisement? Read the advertisement for the Time Machine 3000, and discuss the format and heading with your class. A short series of questions help middle schoolers analyze this advertisement before they write...
EngageNY
Main Ideas in Informational Text: Analyzing a Firsthand Human Rights Account for Connections to Specific Articles of the UDHR
Lesson 10 in a series of human rights lessons focuses on the skills of finding evidence and summarizing. Your young readers work to compare the two texts they have read in this unit: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights...
Novelinks
The Little Prince: Response to Art Exercise
Depending on your perspective, solitude can be lovely or very, very lonely. Kids take a look at the simple landscape illustrated in Antoine de Saint Éxupery's The Little Prince, and write a short journal entry about their...
Code.org
Encoding Numbers in the Real World
Ah, the numerous number of numbers. Individuals research different ways of encoding numbers. After conducting their initial research, they find classmates who have researched a different article and the pair share information. The...
Columbus City Schools
Transformation: Energy in Disguise
Energy transformations happen everywhere, every second of the day. The energy transformation common to most scholars is potential and kinetic energy. The three-week lesson covers multiple types of energy transformations through...
Nosapo
What Is in a Sentence, Paragraph, and Story?
Language arts is made up of many parts. Learners review the parts of a sentence, as well as how to make a simple sentence into a complex sentence, before examining full paragraphs and identifying the topic, body, and concluding sentence...
EngageNY
Launching the Performance Task: The1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire
Picture that! Pupils view photographs of the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, discussing what they know and wonder about each image. Then, scholars watch a short video about the historic event and complete a KWL...
PBS
Season Seeking
It's a time of change. A hands-on activity engages young scientists in a lesson highlighting the change of seasons. They brainstorm indicators of season changes in nature and then look for them. Next, they record observations in a field...
Curated OER
How to Explore Religious Teachings Without Prejudice
Setting goals plays a major role in becoming a self motivated learner. Students will read and discuss a story, set personal goals, and analyze a sacred prayer. This lesson includes: teacher evaluation, goal worksheet, prayers, story, and...
Curated OER
Chinese Folktales: An Illustrating Activity
In need of a really good lesson that incorporates literature, art, and cultural themes? After hearing a traditional Chinese folktale and discussing cultural themes and symbolism, learners create original illustrations for the story. This...
Curated OER
The Gay '80s, '90s and '00s
After reading and discussing a news article from the New York Times regarding gay and lesbian issues of the last thirty years, students engage in several activities to explore current events. They create a timeline, either electronically...
Curated OER
British Army Recruitment
Read and discuss the vocabulary related to a news article about a new recruitment campaign for the British army. High schoolers read the article, define key vocabulary terms, identify suffixes from the article, and complete a variety of...
EngageNY
Building Background Knowledge: Learning About the Historical and Geographical Setting of Esperanza Rising (Chapter 1: “Aguascalientes, Mexico, 1924”)
Set up your class to read Esperanza Rising, by Pam Muñoz Ryan, through a class read-aloud and exploration of the setting. The detailed instructional activity outlines each step. First, class members read over the first few pages and...
EngageNY
Gathering Evidence and Drafting a Two-Voice Poem (Chapter 13: "Los Duraznos/Peaches")
Begin class with a short comprehension quiz and review and then move into a new genre: two-voice poems. The activity provides information about this type of poetry as well as a video example made by eighth graders that you can show your...
Hawaiʻi State Department of Education
Picture Poetry
What a fun idea! The class discusses, and then writes free-verse poems using sensory detail. They get into small collaborative writing teams to compose their poems. Next, they pantomime the actions from the poem while their teammates...
Curated OER
The Finer Things in Life
Momoyama and Edo are periods in Japanese history that can be defined culturally and artistically. Learners explore and discuss how the samurai used sword guards and grip enhancers. Pupils read the story "The Inch-High Samurai," examine...
It's About Time
Concentrating on Collisions
How important is momentum? Pupils investigate and apply the definition of momentum as they conduct analyses during a series of one-dimensional collisions. They infer the relative masses of two objects by carefully staging and predicting...
EngageNY
Real-World Positive and Negative Numbers and Zero
Class members investigate how positive and negative numbers are useful in the real world. Individuals first read a short passage and identify terms indicating positive and negative numbers. They consider situations involving positive...
BBC
Lug and the Giant Stork - Capital Letters
Capital letters are the star of the show in a wonderful language arts lesson. After a teacher-led demonstration and discussion on capital letters, groups of pupils get together and work on the computer to fix the flashing letters that...
Curated OER
On the Road with Marco Polo: From Hormuz to Venice
Students study the route from Hormuz to Constantinople that was traveled by the Polos. They explain the importance of Constantinople in medieval time and discuss its location, and outer wall structure.
Curated OER
The Greenhouse Effect
In this Earth Science worksheet, students read about the Greenhouse Effect and the difference between natural and amplified warming. Following, they answer ten short answer questions related to what they read about global climate issues.
Curated OER
Reading: Personality-Type Questionnaire
While this activity is a personality questionnaire, it could be used for a variety of purposes. High school students might use this activity as a way to spur discussion about individual traits. The 20-question activity contains scenarios...