A family of elephants rescues a baby elephant kidnapped by a rival elephant family in this video segment from Nature.
Classroom activities that encourage students to move. Example activities relate to primary source analysis and the space race. "A spectrum is displayed around the room with labels that include 1) Highly Disagree 2) Disagree 3) On the Fence 4) Agree 5) Highly Agree. Content-based comments or questions are posed to students, who then stand next to the label they agree with related to each question. Content-based statements and questions include: The government should invest more money in the space program; The space program brought great benefits to the U.S. despite the cost; The U.S. is lagging behind the world in the areas of math, science, and innovation; Which president had the greatest impact on the space program?"
Students link together the literature and the history of the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. Questions guide students as they study visual documents. Students also read the teacher's choice of two widely anthologized short stories and an excerpt from a best-selling novel of the period. Two exercises will raise student awareness of the impact that visual images have on their lives: one that is based on internet advertising and a second that results in a student-produced scrapbook.
This lesson begins with students viewing a Colbert Report program about his Super PAC. Then students read and discuss a profile of Colbert's political satire. A second reading examines some of the responses to it, positive and negative, and encourages students to discuss their own views. Readings include embedded links to Colbert's Super PAC ads. A homework assignment asks students to read Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal," view additional clips of Stephen Colbert's program, and then compare and contrast these forms of satire.
This is a self-service online workshop for teachers who use primary documents to help students see the impact and ongoing relevance of the Constitution. It requires little advance preparation and provides everything needed, including a vocabulary list, document analysis worksheets, and historical documents -- John Marshall's Supreme Court nomination (1801), proclamation to New Orleans (1803), Lincoln's telegram to Grant (1864), Johnson oath photo (1963), and more.
This textbook follows California Language Arts Standards for grades 9-12 to provide a generalized understanding of composition and to serve as a supplementary aid to high school English teachers.
ABC Match is a game that has students practice letter-recognition fluency while honing their memories. Students match initial letters with pictures, playing either with a timer or without.
Student readings review the origins of the AK-47, the 10-year federal ban on assault weapons, President Obama's views on guns, and the NRA's political clout. Discussion questions and an inquiry-oriented plan for "constructive controversy" follow.
What's in the Bag? invites primary students to play with vocabulary common to their environment.
This unit provides Common-Core aligned lessons based for Math 3, English 10, and Biology (NGSS Standards). The subjects are linked by a text on climate change, and they hit the standards of argumentation for English, comparing functions in Math 3, and human effects on environment in Biology.
Doodle Splash combines the process of drawing with analytical thinking by pairing online drawing with writing prompts that encourage students to make connections between their visual designs and the text.
The Comparison and Contrast Guide outlines the characteristics of the genre and provides direct instruction on the methods of organizing, gathering ideas, and writing comparison and contrast essays.
In the Body System Amusement Parks project, students team up to create amusement parks based on the various systems and organs within the human body. With the power of abstraction, each attraction represents the cardiovascular system, the muscular system, the digestive system, etc. Teams create both 3D scale models and presentations to an unnamed wealthy investment firm looking to build a new park in the students’ very own town. This activity was heavily inspired by a post from Danielle Dace.
This is an ongoing series of lessons to teach the 26 letters of the alphabet through functional skills that can be used on a daily/weekly basis building on and transferring to other educational task. These lessons incorporate coloring, marking, painting, cutting, pasting, creating, listening and following directions.
The focus of this lesson is to provide an opportunity for children to develop oral language skills and to record their oral language to share with others.
This project provides a model for engaging students in an investigation of authentic materials from the past. The students will be provided with four primary sources and questions to guide their investigation. A wealth of other primary resources can be accessed on the websites listed in the reference section.
As one of literature's most iconic figures, both Shakespeare's plays and poetry provide an interesting glimpse into a variety of essential themes. In this lesson, students will examine how Shakespeare used the sonnet tradition to enhance his stagecraft by performing a scene from his play Romeo and Juliet.
This seventh grade annotated inquiry provides students with an opportunity to explore how words affect public opinion through an examination of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Students will investigate historical sources related to the novel and reactions in the North and South in order to address the compelling question, “Can words lead to war?” This query takes advantage of the mixed messages students often receive about the power of words. Students’ understanding about how words can make a difference is often grounded in discussions of words used to bully, instead of the power of words to encourage reform. This is an ANNOTATED inquiry with additional information on the questions, tasks, and sources within.
The documents included in this lesson come from The North Carolina Experience collection of Documenting the American South and specifically focus on African Americans and race relations in the early 20th century. The lesson juxtaposes accounts that relate to both the positive improvements of black society and arguments against advancement. Combined, these primary sources and the accompanying lesson plan could be used as a Document Based Question (DBQ) in an advanced US history or African American history course.
The interactive Printing Press is designed to assist students in creating newspapers, brochures, and flyers.