Instructional expert Jim Knight visits Michael Covarrubias to observe a lesson on context clues, discuss the classroom management techniques he is using already, and share some ideas to increase student engagement. Michael and Jim discuss emphasizing effort, getting students attention before asking questions, using response cards, and planning back-up activities.

Stories and poems that have a familiar structure can create a supportive context for learning about the writing process, building students' background knowledge, and scaffolding their creation of original stories. In this lesson for students in second or late first grade, teachers help students explore the concepts of beginning, middle, and ending by reading a variety of stories and charting the events on storyboards. As they retell the stories, students are encouraged to make use of sequencing words (first, so, then, next, after that, finally). A read-aloud of Once Upon a Golden Apple by Jean Little and Maggie De Vries introduces a discussion of the choices made by an author in constructing a plot. Starting with prewriting questions and a storyboard, students construct original stories, progressing from shared writing to guided writing; independent writing is also encouraged.

Secondary educators across Lebanon County, Pennsylvania developed lesson plans to integrate the Pennsylvania Career Education and Work Standards with the content they teach. This work was made possible through a partnership between the South Central PA Workforce Investment Board (SCPa Works) and Lancaster-Lebanon Intermediate Unit 13 (IU13) and was funded by a Teacher in the Workplace Grant Award from the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry. This lesson plan was developed by one of the talented educators who participated in this project during the 2018-2019 school year.

Students tell their life stories in this lesson about autobiographies based on family photographs.

In this project, you will explore a real-world problem, and then work through a series of steps to analyze that problem, research ways the problem could be solved, then propose a possible solution to that problem. Often, there are no specific right or wrong solutions, but sometimes one particular solution may be better than others. The key is making sure you fully understand the problem, have researched some possible solutions, and have proposed the solution that you can support with information / evidence.Begin by reading the problem statement in Step 1. Take the time to review all the information provided in the statement, including exploring the websites, videos and / or articles that are linked. Then work on steps 2 through 8 to complete this problem-based learning experience.

The importance of reading aloud to children is an established tenet of reading instruction. This lesson supports the language development and reading comprehension of kindergarten through second graders. Through the use of the text talk strategy, students explain, develop, and expand story ideas. This lesson is designed to help students learn how to gain meaning from words that are taken out of their original context.

In this lesson designed to enhance literacy skills, students learn that transitional fossils provide scientists with evidence to establish how major animal groups are related to one another.

This lesson will focus on creating timelines. Students will use important dates from their lives to create a personal 5 event timeline. Students will use rulers to measure equal spaces for their timelines. This lesson will require two 1 hour sessions. The first lesson will include the lesson introduction, work on timelines and time for formative assessments as students work. The second session will be used to complete timelines, share projects, and complete exit tickets. Sample of completed timeline: Video sample of completed timeline: https://goo.gl/1JwF0I This unit was created as part of the ALEX Interdisciplinary Resource Development Summit.

Every Friday, TingoEd releases a new vocabulary video to the world. In just two minutes, students will not only master a given word but be engaged by its use in multiple, entertaining contexts.

When students are assigned an argument paper of 7-9 pages for Composition II, they often struggle to gather enough research material to fill the required pages.  This lesson is intended to help them expand their topics in order to write a good research question as well as to gather the appropriate amount of information.

The lesson will begin with a brief review of the previous lesson on how climates and geographic locations can affect weather patterns and produce natural disasters. Students will watch a short video during the before strategy to engage learners in the lesson on a particular natural disaster--tornadoes. Students will read various texts and charts in order to understand the causes and effects of tornadoes, putting the information in a T-chart to help organize their thoughts. Students will then discuss their findings with an elbow partner and then write a two-paragraph cause and effect essay which will serve as the summative assessment. This unit was created as part of the ALEX Interdisciplinary Resource Development Summit.

Adult learners at Low Intermediate Basic Education level (grade grouping C/grades 4-5) are introduced to words that are frequently confused such as to, too, and two. Learners use three methods to identify which confusing word should be used in speaking or writing: define the word, create a visual image, and find a synonym that has the same meaning.

The students will use critical thinking skills and artistic abilities to "transform" an image into something completely different. The original images can be taken with a digital camera and printed out or cut from old magazines.

This list of children's books recommends nonfiction titles that supplement basic information found in lessons and activities of this themed issue of the online magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle. The books are grouped by topic -- water, weather and climate, and atmosphere. Each book is described by its content, reading level, and possible uses in the classroom. Covers are pictured. The online magazine is produced for elementary school teachers and is structured around the essential principles of climate sciences and climate literacy.

***This curriculum is provided by The Edible Schoolyard Project with full permission to share*** Understanding Organic: Connections to Action in the Garden Classroom is a garden and classroom-based curriculum for middle to high school students that explores the concepts and meanings of organic agriculture. The curriculum consists of a short preparatory unit, a sequence of ten core lessons, and twelve optional extension inquiries that can also be taught as standalone lessons. The ten core lessons utilize hands-on explorations of organic practices and feature textual analysis and open discussions to examine the complex meanings of organic. The final project workbook introduces students to a social action project in which students apply their knowledge and experiences to enact justice-oriented change related to organic. We recommend that you start by reading the curriculum overview linked below before reading individual lessons. 

This is an activity that includes student's own ideas and beliefs about the central ideas and important parts of the text. Students will also do a bit of writing to support their opinions. This activity gets at the heart of a text. I see this as introductory to deeper dives into theme. This lesson could be structured to be online or face to face. This is written as a class activity but an online discussion could easily be created after students had followed the protocol a few times and seen the discussion that results. This could easily work in many classrooms through high school.

In this article, teachers find two unit plans (grades K-2 and 3-5) that use resources featured in the science and literacy articles in the magazine. The unit plans are modeled after the five key steps in the learning cycle: engage, explore, explain, expand, and assess, or evaluate. The plans are aligned with the science content standards of the National Science Education Standards and the English language arts standards of the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association. The plans appear in the free, online magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle.

This seminar will help you understand how to use text features to reach a mastery level of understanding of an article, text, or other printed item. You will be looking at effective ways to gather information or data from text features, as well as the importance of their accuracy, which are to important “habits of mind.”  You will also have the opportunity to create, watch, and read materials that will deepen your understanding of text features, and how they improve comprehension for you the reader.StandardsCC.1.2.3.GUse information gained from text features to demonstrate understanding of a text.

Folk tales and fairy tales are of interest to and part of the language arts curriculum for young learners. This lesson supports the study of this genre and the study of irregular patterns and letter-sound relationships related to decoding and spelling. After reading the folk tale Jack and the Beanstalk, students discuss the word giant and its beginning sound. Students then create their own lists of words that begin with the same sound. Then, students are introduced to words with the soft g sound and create a new list of words with this beginning sound. As a culminating activity, students work individually or in groups to categorize animal names into groups according to their beginning g sound.