Polar Trec
Who Will Melt First?
If the Greenland ice sheet melted, sea levels would rise by about 20 ft; if the Antarctic ice sheet melted, sea levels would rise by 200 ft. Scholars explore ice melting through the analysis of different ice samples, clean and dirty ice....
Workforce Solutions
Workplace Ethics
An activity that focuses on workplace ethical dilemmas asks groups how to respond to a series of scenarios. First, the class brainstorms a list of ethics that apply to employers, then a second one that applies to employees. Using their...
Illustrative Mathematics
Find the Angle
This a fun problem for young geometers to play with while gaining important insight into deductive reasoning. Some will find the answers very quickly, others might take a less direct path, but all will use their knowledge of the sum of...
Curated OER
Lesson Plan 13: Going Deeper Mini-Lesson
November is NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month! If your class is participating (or simply doing a narrative writing unit), this peer review lesson plan is part of a larger unit which can be easily found online. Once your writers...
Curated OER
Charity Fair
What is the probability of picking the same color ball out of three identical barrels? If you wanted to design a game that made money, how could you structure a game and what would you charge for each chance? How much should you pay a...
Balanced Assessment
Fit-Ness
Serve four towns with one bus route. Pupils develop a bus route that meets certain criteria to serve four towns. They determine which of the routes would best serve all of them. Individuals then hypothesize where a fifth town should be...
ProCon
Cuba Embargo
President John F. Kennedy bought 1,200 Cuban cigars the night before he enacted the Cuban trade embargo in 1962. Should the United States maintain the embargo? Using the website, pupils explore the topic to prepare for a class debate or...
Worksheet Web
Interrogatives and Auxiliary Verbs
Interrogatives—who, what, where, when, why, and how—are the focus of a grammar worksheet that reinforces writing questions and using auxiliary verbs.
Curated OER
20 Tickets
A great hands-on activity involving adding and subtracting, beginner mathematicians determine how many games can be played with 20 tickets. Instead of tickets, youngsters use 20 counters or linking cubes to represent the amount of...
Curated OER
School Uniforms: Debating the Issue and Creating an Advertisement
Fifth graders debate the issue of school uniforms. They research, finding supporting evidence supporting their stance. Using the Lincoln-Douglas form of debate, 5th graders discuss the positive and negative issues of the topic. They...
Shakespeare in American Life
Tom Hanks and Caliban: Survivor Superstars
Here’s a clever way to combine language arts and social studies. Shakespeare’s The Tempest is believed to have been inspired by the wreck of the Sea Venture on Bermuda in 1609. The class views a brief scene from Castaway in which Tom...
Curated OER
Argument of Policy
After investigating different policies within the school district, young reformers select a policy they would like to change. They then investigate the policy, and craft a letter in which they advocate a change to the policy. For guided...
Poetry Class
Writing a Monologue
The works of Carol Ann Duffy, Scottish poet and Britain's 2009 poet laureate, serve as a model for a writing activity that asks class members to select a character card, brainstorm lists of words, phrases, actions, and items associated...
Macmillan Education
People Management
Introduce your pupils to the invaluable life skill of team and project management. Through worksheets, discussion, and role-playing activities, learners practice using tactful language, explore various management styles, and...
NASA
Cosmic Times 2019
NASA is planning a journey to Mars, and current scholars could very well be a part of a future mission. During the unit, pupils research the advances in space exploration and knowledge about the universe. Then they work in groups to...
Curated OER
The 'Question of Palestine'
New York Times covers hot topics and current events, now you may use those articles to help young people become more aware. Kids read an article regarding the Israeli-Palestinian agreement and the prospect of Palestine joining the UN....
Curated OER
Studio Art Lessons Based on Latin American Arts
Study three of the basic principles of design: l) designs should create a rhythmic pattern made up of related shapes, 2) colors should be repeated so as to not force the eye to remain with a single part of the composition, and 3) a...
Curated OER
The Personal Letter: The Outsiders
After completing S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, eighth graders compose a personal letter to their teacher detailing what they liked about the novel and the activities assigned during the course of the unit. A clever way to get feedback,...
Curated OER
Modals and Their Meaning in Context
By focusing on an oil-related theme, learners answer questions using context clues. They assign meaning to each highlighted modal in an example sentence from a word bank of choices. (Examples of meaning choices include impossibility...
Advocates for Human Rights
Creating a Welcoming School and Community
The final activity in a unit study of immigration and human rights asks class members to design a project for their school that builds support for immigrant classmates. To prepare for this project, individuals use what they have learned...
Curated OER
You Be the Editor
Young editors work in teams to find all the errors in a text. They identify grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors. Use this activity to reinforce correct usage of prominent punctuation symbols, such as apostrophes and ellipses. You...
Curated OER
Imagining China through Words
When Europeans first came back with tales of China, they provided vivid written accounts and minimal visual imput. This resulted in art rendered mostly from descriptive language. Learners explore this phenomena by listening to...
Southern Nevada Regional Professional Development Program
A Mini lesson on Semicolons
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" serves as an exemplar for a mini-lesson on semicolons. Working alone or in small groups, class members first circle all the semicolons in the letter, and then consider how this...
ProCon
Gold Standard
If all the mined gold in the world was melted across a football field, it would rise 5.4 feet. That's just one interesting fact pupils learn when using the debate topics website to determine if the United States should return to a gold...