This lesson plan and assessment takes you on a journey to discover if pollinators find your campus a hospitable home. Core compliant for Grades 3-5, but adaptable to all ages. Are you working with distance learners or in a non-traditional teaching environment? This lesson plan is perfect for you! All you need is a pencil and outdoor space, including sidewalks, local parks, greenways, libraries, and beyond!

Growing up in Maryland, Will Allen hated farming! After a career in professional basketball and working in a “white shirt job,” Will turned his attention to helping a Milwaukee community learn to grow their own food when he rediscovered a passion for working in the dirt. This book will inspire children and teachers to look at every pot or plot of dirt as a place to grow something.Grade Level: 3rd-5thLexile Level: AD630LGuided Reading Level: TGenre: Nonfiction

Want to know a secret? Flowers actually ‘talk’ to animals! This beautifully written and illustrated informational text is a delightful way to introduce the symbiotic relationship between plants and pollinators. Full of interesting facts and told from the perspective of a “prickly” cactus, this book will enlighten and entertain your audience.Grade Level: 2nd-5th Lexile Level: 570L Guided Reading Level: Q Genre: Informational Text

In this eight-week module, students learn about new or improved technologies that have been developed to meet societal needs and how those inventions have changed people’s lives. They conduct authentic research to build their own knowledge and teach others through writing. In Unit 1, students read the graphic novel Investigating the Scientific Method with Max Axiom, Super Scientist by Donald B. Lemke as well as several informational articles about inventions that have been developed to meet people’s needs. Students learn about and analyze structures and visual elements authors use to convey complex ideas. Then, they will write a short opinion paragraph about which of the inventions they learned about has been most important to people and why. In Unit 2, students will read The Boy Who Invented TV: The Story of Philo Farnsworth by Kathleen Krull, focusing on how the television was invented to meet societal needs.

Find the rest of the EngageNY ELA resources at https://archive.org/details/engageny-ela-archive .

This inquiry by Amy Johnson, Longview Public Schools, is based on the C3 Framework inquiry arc. The students will highlight the two primary sources then reflect. They will then do the Open Mind activity illustrating both points of view they learned from the primary sources, develop a three-event timeline and create a newspaper front page describing “What really happened March 5, 1770.”

This inquiry by Amy Johnson, Longview Public Schools, is based on the C3 Framework inquiry arc. Students will look at multiple points of view on an assigned Intolerable Act. After researching primary sources, student will create a newspaper using BEST evidence from their sources that answers the question, "Why would this event the colonists to revolt?"

In this engaging unit, students will design and plant a square-foot garden that will be their central tool. Through the growing season, they will explore nutrition content in their everyday lives and see how it relates to what they are growing.

In this project-based learning unit, students take responsibility for their learning through active, hands-on engagement, while the teacher acts as a facilitator.  Students will learn about ocean garbage patches, the cause, its impact, recycling, and solutions to reduce them. Students will share what they learned to help raise awareness of this environmental issue and promote recycling by creating posters for their school and writing scripts to be read during morning announcements. This project requires background knowledge and understanding of the water cycle and the importance of the ocean to the water cycle.  Students should know how to use email and some digital format for presentations.

After reading Playing for Change, students will have the opportunity to break into groups and do research about various subgroups and topics provided in the text. The intention is for this to be a jigsaw activity where groups can organize their information with the interactive notebook sheets provided, and then present or share with the class what they have learned. Teachers can use this for language arts or social studies assessments, if needed. 

In this 5th grade library lesson, students examine three images about year-round school and identify their initial emotional responses using a Likert scale, developed by Jennifer LaGarde and Darren Hudgins. They are then given the opportunity to read more about each image and discuss how that changes their response. In part 3, they write a paragraph about how the addition of information changes their emotional responses and whether or not they would share the image and why.Shared by the LPBrown Elementary Media Literacy Teacher Team:Brandi Appelgate, teacher-librarianCarolyn Balderston, instructional coachErin Bernier, 1st grade teacher Nina Woodhouse, 2nd grade teacherTony Perez, 5th grade teacherSean Shaughnessy, principal

This professional development course consists of a series of workshops focused on NGSS-aligned & local phenomenon-centered curriculum, developed by IslandWood with funding from the OSPI ClimeTime Grant. It is currently structured to be delivered online and for Upper Elementary (3-5) educators. A slide deck and accompanying handouts are available to complement the course outline.