This activity by Lauren Roberts guides students through the process of finding, vetting, summarizing, and citing a scientific article. Professor Roberts is from South Mountain Community College in Arizona's Maricopa Community College District.

This activity helps students learn to be open-minded and to participate in respectful discussion using evidence and reasoning. These are great life skills that any citizen of the world should have. They’re also scientific argumentation skills. The ability to change one’s mind based on evidence and reasoning, to see issues as complex, and to look at issues and claims from different perspectives are all scientific argumentation skills. Students also learn that absolute answers rarely exist. These skills and understandings are useful beyond science for anyone interested in figuring things out and in talking with others about issues, particularly with those who have different perspectives and opinions.

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A new instructional model, called Argument-Driven Inquiry (ADI), is introduced to elementary teachers in this article. The author shows how school librarians and classroom teachers can collaborate to help students construct and communicate evidence, or arguments. Evidence buckets, a collaborative activity, and related online resources are presented. The article appears in the free online magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle, which is structured around the seven essential principles of climate literacy.

Imagine entering a crime scene and being the one responsible for noticing and collecting every trace of evidence. The pressure is on: you know the analysis of your evidence must be scientifically sound to crack the case.You've seen the hit television crime drama, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation on CBS. Now, there's a forensic science exhibit related to the TV show, as well as a Web-based learning adventure.CSI: The Experience is a completely immersive exhibit that invites visitors to enter "crime" scenes where they identify and record evidence. It takes them inside "laboratories" for scientific testing and to "autopsy" rooms for pathology analysis. Then it returns them to the "office" to build their case, based on the scientific evidence. The exhibit brings to life real scientific principles and the most advanced scientific techniques used today by crime scene investigators and forensic scientists.From DNA and firearms analysis to forensic anthropology and toxicology, visitors will be immersed in hands-on science in an exciting multi-media environment with dazzling special effects direct from the CSI TV series. Cast members from the TV show welcome guests into the exhibit from a large video monitor, lead them through the experience, and praise them for a job well done at the end. The exhibit is geared toward adults and youth age 12 and above.

Become a detective to solve the case of the smelly backpack! Act out the clues and draw conclusions to solve the mystery.

When Detective Bentley cannot figure out why his backpack is smelly, he retraces the events in his day to find clues. Taking on the role of detectives, the viewers act out the events of Bentley’s day and use textual clues to solve the case.

Learning Objective:
Draw conclusions from the facts presented in text and support those assertions with textual evidence.

Students will be asked to identify claims, evidence in warrants in a non-fiction essay.

This is a scaffolded group/collaborative activity within a unit of study on persuasive writing. Students would have already learned what claims, reasons, and evidence are in a previous lesson before participating in this activity. As a group of 4-5 students work together, they will decide which resources would be best to survive a zombie apocalypse. They would then need to compose statements of claim and reasoning for those items and complete some research as well. There is an option to allow students to create posters to present to the class as their final assignment. 

Students will read the complex text on compost and use the outdoor space to verify or deny the content of the text in the real-world setting.

The 11th grade learning experience consists of 7 mostly month-long units aligned to the Common Core State Standards, with available course material for teachers and students easily accessible online. Over the course of the year there is a steady progression in text complexity levels, sophistication of writing tasks, speaking and listening activities, and increased opportunities for independent and collaborative work. Rubrics and student models accompany many writing assignments.Throughout the 11th grade year, in addition to the Common Read texts that the whole class reads together, students each select an Independent Reading book and engage with peers in group Book Talks. Students move from learning the class rituals and routines and genre features of argument writing in Unit 11.1 to learning about narrative and informational genres in Unit 11.2: The American Short Story. Teacher resources provide additional materials to support each unit.

In this short unit, students will spend three lessons exploring the importance of themes and main ideas in fiction and informational texts.  Now would be a good time to have them take an assessment of their reading and writing skills. They'll explore theme through O. Henry's classic short story  "The Gift of the Magi" and consider how this piece compares to the main idea in the article "The Proven Power of Giving, Not Getting."

 In this lesson, you will take the writing portion of the culminating assessment. You will continue to use the skills you have learned in the first three lessons of this unit.Today, students will take the writing portion of the culminating assessment.They will reflect on all the material they have read in this unit, and they will use their understanding of all the material presented to them to write an essay. You will evaluate their work in both reading comprehension and writing.Lesson PreparationRead the lesson and student content.Anticipate student difficulties and identify the differentiation options you will choose for working with your students.If you have students on an IEP or other accommodations, check to see whether they receive extended time or need an alternative test setting. Work with the professional supporting SWDs to make sure student needs are met.

In this lesson, students will read a famous short story by the author O. Henry and consider how gift giving affects both the giver and the receiver. They’ll learn about aphorisms and create their own bumper sticker.

Students will read the provided complex text about erosion and use the outdoor space to verify or deny the content of the text in the real-world setting.

Developed for students in advanced ESL/ELL classes as well as for native English speakers with low reading skills, this group lesson focuses on the formulation of inferences, and the relevant explicit details which support each inference. The initial presentation highlights the skill of making inferences in a real-world context, then transitions to the literary context. Students read selected chapters of The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros, a core text in many junior high and high school curricula across the United States. The students read out loud. Then, in groups they formulate inferences based on what they have read. Using sentence strips, they summarize the inference as well as cite the textual details which support each inference.

Students will practice authenticating online source material as well as strategies for determining the reliability of information. This lesson is part of a media unit curated at our Digital Citizenship website "Who Am I Online?"

This lesson on fingerprinting takes a unique approach to a standard topic in Forensic Science. While students will learn the basics of fingerprinting, how to lift a print and learn unique characteristics of fingerprints, they will become aware of the flaws of fingerprinting. By investigating the case of the Madrid Spain Bombing students will discover a match is not always accurate.