In this lesson children will be asked to make a graph, then listen to a story. After the story, they will do a similar graph and then compare the two graphs.
Our age-appropriate classroom lessons and activities for grades K-12 aim to deepen your students' understanding of September 11 and develop their critical thinking skills. The guide, written by Morningside Center executive director Tom Roderick, also includes recommended books and other teaching ideas.
Students write and perform a skit or monologue that brings awareness to a specific issue addressed in the text.
In the wake of the tragic school shooting in Newtown, CT, students learn about and discuss renewed calls for gun control and the National Rifle Association's history of successfully resisting such reforms.
Agree or Disagree? asks students to demonstrate their argumentative and comparative writing skills.
Are You Convinced? asks students to demonstrate their argumentative and evaluative writing skills.
Students produce original art (visual art, music, drama or poetry) that conveys an anti-bias or social justice message. Students then plan a public showcase of their work.
Beautiful Language asks students to demonstrate their narrative skills when writing to gain the understanding of others.
During this lesson, students will reflect on the ways they have experienced or participated in bias based on physical size and appearance—and will discuss how society’s expectations about body image and appearance affect people. Students build on their media literacy skills as they examine media images for messages that consciously and unconsciously affect attitudes and behaviors toward others. Finally, the class will explore ways to get beyond appearance as a dominant force in their social lives.Note: This lesson has been adapted with permission from the original created by GLSEN for its program, No Name-Calling Week.
The Berkeley Unified School District has pioneered garden education since the first school garden was planted at LeConte Elementary in 1983. This single garden inspired many others, and over the next twelve years it evolved into a multi-school Gardening and Cooking Program with annual support from a federal grant of $1.9 million from the California Nutrition Network. We lost this funding in 2013, along with many other nutrition and garden education programs, at which point we refocused from a nutrition-based program to one that supports teachers and students in the academic classroom.
This change encouraged us to develop a pilot curriculum in 2013–1014, with support from teachers, garden educators, and consultants from the Edible Schoolyard, Berkeley. Our team of experts gleaned from existing lessons and research to synthesize drafts to best fit our own school gardens. We rewrote the pilot lessons with input from our school communities and with incredible support from P. Rachel Levin, an English Language Coach, to develop academic and health targets accessible to all of our students.
The curriculum builds upon many years of educating our students in the garden and scales up content across grades and lessons for instructional scaffolding. It is designed as an interactive teaching tool to be co-taught with classroom teachers and garden instructors as leads. Each lesson connects directly to standards: Next Generation Science, Common Core State, Physical Education, and Environmental and Health Education. Our concise and easy-to-follow lessons are a packed 45 minutes for preschool through fifth grade. Flexibility is important to us, so some lessons include several activities that teachers can choose from to accommodate their lesson plans. Consistency is also important, so we follow themes and lesson structure found in the Curriculum Map.
Students identify and investigate a community problem and propose a solution. They then plan and implement action directed at solving the problem.
Break it Down asks students to demonstrate their explanatory and descriptive writing skills.
Students will analyze the emotions and personality conveyed in an 18th-century sculpture bust of a strong and confident African man and learn that such a portrayal is unique for its time. They will then create an original portrait bust of a strong person who has faced difficult situations.
Students choose a mode of expression—e.g., writing, art or storytelling—to share theme-related ideas and feelings with a “buddy” from outside the classroom.
Cause and Effect asks students to demonstrate their explanatory and informative writing skills.
Student readings examine the Boy Scouts of America's policy of excluding gays, as well as efforts by scouts themselves to challenge discrimination from both inside and outside the organization.
Students identify individuals in their own lives who embody heroism and think about the various roles people play in conflicts.
Environmentalists passionately opposed to a giant pipeline that would transport crude oil from the tar sands of Canada to the Gulf coast are going head-to-head with proponents of the project. Students explore the controversy surrounding the Keystone XL pipeline and the strategic questions it raises for environmentalists.
In this lesson, students will examine the cliques within their school community. They will also explore ways to integrate the student body and form relationships across, and in spite of, controlling cliques.
Students create visual artwork combining various images to convey diversity or social justice issues, concerns or themes related to the central text.