Carolina K-12
Making First Vote Your Vote: Designing a Schoolwide Election
Encourage pupils to design an election plan for the entire school. They participate in a Board of Elections, create polling rules, discuss election controversies, write questions about the issues, run the election through an online...
Curated OER
Learning Unit: The Pythagorean Theorem
Middle and high schoolers research the life of Pythagoras and the Pythagorean theorem. They write a short biography of Pythagoras and learn to apply the theorem in their study of right triangles.
Curated OER
American Minority Groups
Explore the contributions individuals have made in the lives of American minority groups. Twelfth graders write a five-page expository piece providing a social history, examples of discrimination, and patterns of assimilation for an...
Curated OER
Heart of Darkness: List Group Label Strategy
Heart of Darkness can challenge even the best readers. Here's a pre-reading strategy that will engage class members and provide background and context for Conrad's study of racism, savagery and imperialism. Class members brainstorm,...
Alabama Department of Archives and History
Alabama's 1901 Constitution
"We, the People of the State of Alabama. . ." Did you know that the Alabama State Constitution has 357,157 words while the US Constitution has only 4,400? And that it has 798 amendments while the US Constitution has...
University of Chicago
Comparing Modern and Ancient Ideas of Ethnicity and Identity
Explore ethnicity and identity with a research and writing assignment. Class members conduct online research, looking in particular at images and carefully noting down their sources on notecards. They read about identity and compose...
Civil War Trust
Civil War Soldier: Experiencing the Battle of Franklin
Fighting a war over home soil makes a living nightmare even more real. Class members describe the experience of a Civil War soldier during the Battle of Franklin, poised right at a major turning point of the war, after researching the...
NASA
Development of a Model: Analyzing Elemental Abundance
How do scientists identify which elements originate from meteorites? Scholars learn about a sample of material found in a remote location, analyzing the sample to determine if it might be from Earth or not. They study elements, isotopes,...
Carolina K-12
African Americans in the United States Congress During Reconstruction
The Civil Rights Act of 1866, which granted citizenship to all males in the U.S., resulted in the first African Americans to be elected to Congress. Class members research 11 of these men, the challenges they faced, and craft...
NASA
Discovering the Milky Way
What do you call a tiny collection of galaxies? A puny-verse! Young scholars graph data gathered by scientists studying Cepheids. They attempt to identify a relationship between the variables through standard and logarithmical...
PBS
Using Primary Sources: Wide Open Town
A picture speaks a thousand words, no matter how old! Scholars use political cartoons from the era of Prohibition and the Temperance Movement to analyze what, a primary document (in this case, a bootlegger's notebook) is telling them...
Curated OER
Lesson 1: The Importance of Rules in Our Country and in Our Classroom
Explore the importance of rules in a community with the engaging first lesson of this series on the US government. To begin, children play a paper clip game that requires them to make up their own rules as they go, after which the...
British Council
The Christmas Truce
Imagine calling a truce in the middle of a war, singing Christmas carols with the enemy, exchanging gifts, and playing a game of football. Such a thing actually happened. Class members listen the stories of soldiers who experienced...
Maine Content Literacy Project
Introduction to Ernest Hemingway
What is a white elephant, and what does it have to do with Ernest Hemingway? Study "Hills Like White Elephants" in-depth by following the procedures outlined in this lesson, the fifth in a series of fourteen. Learners start the day with...
Caucus 101
Linkage Institutions: Interest Groups: Option A
How are elections really run and won? Learn about special interest groups, super PACs, and lobbyists with an engaging lesson plan about the caucus process. Young voters research specific interest groups and analyze their part in previous...
Curated OER
River Animals
Here is a wordsearch that has learners find words like river otter, mink, striped bass, and dogfish. Accurate and colorful pictures of the words appear on the page. This would be ideal for early-elementary youngsters who are studying any...
Curated OER
Reading the Dna Code: Making Protein
Young scholars study DNA decoding and protein synthesis. They use the amino acid table to translate DNA, break DNA strands into three nucleotide codes, and translate nucleotides into amino acid protein codes. They research the importance...
Center for Civic Education
In the Shadows, Agents of Change
Most of your learners have probably heard of Martin Luther King, Jr., or Cesar Chavez, but could they also recognize the names of Betty Friedan or Dolores Huerta? Give your learners the opportunity to discover the many accomplishments of...
Classroom Law Project
What is a class hearing and youth summit and what do they have to do with the presidential election?
After researching the presidential election process, class members develop questions and interview voters about their choice of candidate and the issues that concern them.
Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature Trust
The Lost World
Fans of Sherlock Holmes may be surprised to learn that in addition to stories of the famous deductionist, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is also the creator of Professor Challenger. An irascible, unpredictable scientist, Challenger was featured...
EngageNY
Interpreting and Connecting Information: Creating a Cascading Consequence Chart Using Frightful’s Mountain
Decisions, decisions. Scholars take a close look at making decisions by discussing the character Sam in chapters one through eight of Frightful’s Mountain. Partners discuss whether Sam should interact with Frightful and then...
Curated OER
Following the Great Wall of China
Young scholars conduct research on the history of the Great Wall of China. They explore websites, complete various interactive activities, read a history of the Great Wall, write an essay, and take an online quiz.
Curated OER
Living Organisms All Around Us
Sixth graders study organisms that exist in the world and what they are made up of. They participate in a nature walk, a presentation, a drawing of an animal and plant cell, draw a ecosystem, and fill out a Punnett square.
Curated OER
Ozark Karst: A Fragile Landform
Young geologists become familiar with the Karst Topography in the Ozark Mountains. They study how human activity has affected the cave ecosystem. They conduct a simulation in which a large development is proposed in the area, and they...