The literary quick takes are weekly discussions and in-class activities that I use to frame the text for the students. This is mostly formative and graded based on engagement.

In this activity students read three letters written by African-American soldiers during the Civil War to determine why black soldiers felt compelled to join the Union Army.

The activity asks students to make observations about what occurs when two effervescent antacid tablets are placed into a beaker of water. The Students work together in groups. There are three parts to the activity. In the first part, the tablets are dropped into tap water and student groups (2-4 students) must complete a series of question sheets (one per group) that guide them through thinking about the event. In the second part, a presentation on chemical equilibrium for the carbonate system is given. The starting point is the answers received in the first part. Basic chemical reactions for the carbonate system are presented including equilibrium expressions for each reaction and discussion about open and closed systems. At the end of class, a handout is given to the students. In the third part, three beakers (acidic, neutral and basic solutions, but not indicated) are placed together and two tablets are placed into each beaker. Students are split into two groups (8-12 students) and are asked to describe why the reactions are different. Discussion follows collection of student responses in each part. Once the chemical reactions and equilibrium expressions are presented, they are involved and referenced in all discussions.

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In this activity, students are introduced to locating and reading peer-reviewed scientific journal articles. It helps ease students into the process of locating, reading, and using journal publications. This activity can be done entirely in class or a combination of in-class with homework assigned. It is a helpful way to lead students toward searching for and using the peer-reviewed literature in their own research.

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This exercise uses a suite of well logs (aka electric logs) to interpret lithology within a stratigraphic section and to determine fluid content within borehole rocks.

This activity is an activity where students build a motor, learn motor operation and theory, interpret their understanding through troubleshooting, and develop a new, experimental question related to the motor. One follow-up activity would be coupling their motor to a fan blade or other axle to convert electrical energy to magnetic energy into mechanical motion for real world application.

In this activity, students read a series of primary source documents, including the 1872 print "American Progress," that depict the social, political and cultural conflicts between settlers and Native Americans during the 19th century. Then, working in small groups, students will consider the events from the perspective of Native Americans, and create an illustration to counter George A. Crofutt's famous print of "American Progress" moving across the Great Plains.

 In this lab, students will share their daily/weekly schedule with each other in groups. Then, they will have to make schedules for each other and share them with the group. Students will practice talking about time and location of their daily activities. 

In this jigsaw activity, students of intermediate-level French will divide into five groups to become experts on each of the five biodiversity questions featured on the Curiosphere website. They will proceed to explain their assigned aspect of the issue to a small group of students.

This unit engages students in a variety of activities that analyze and reflect on the role of social media in our everyday lives. This includes options for collaborative group work, reading nonfiction articles, a design challenge and presentations to communicate ideas. The unit also includes a formal writing assessment option that aligns with the Common Core State Writing Standards. Activities can be adapted or combined in a variety of ways to support student reflection and analysis. These lessons were piloted in 9th grade English classes but are suitable or a range of secondary students. 

In this activity students read short excerpts of documents that show how the expectations of women, African Americans, and working white men were raised by the rhetoric of liberty during the American Revolution. Students write petitions to the Continental Congress from one of the three group's perspectives, explaining how their group responded to the Revolution and outlining how their group should be treated under the new Constitution. This activity includes multiple learning supports that can help ESL/ELL students, special education students, or low readers.

This activity introduces students to the interdisciplinary field of geoarchaeology through a case study of the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 CE. It combines short lectures with questions requiring analyses of a variety of data sets relating to volcanic hazards. It requires no background in geoscience or archaeology and is aimed at students from both the physical sciences and the humanities, from high school through freshman year.

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In this activity, students use facts and make inferences to create narratives about the journey of the slave ship Brookes. Students work in groups to create narratives from one of three different perspectives: Captain, Sailor, or Captive.

In this activity, students read cards about various civil rights protests and events during the 1940s. For each event, students match the issue (voting rights, fair employment, fair housing, or segregation in public places) at stake, identify the key people involved and what region of the country it took place in. After students have completed all the cards, an optional writing task asks students to synthesize the historical content by writing a letter to a relative serving overseas describing the efforts of civil rights activists in the 1940s. There is some assembly of materials required for this activity. This activity has optional Smartboard elements but can be completed without a Smartboard.

Students characterize how climate change impacts natural hazards and pose research-based solutions to the county Emergency Management Agency. Presentations require the use of local data, created figures, and reliable sources. This activity builds from an assignment which has students identify and describe projected local climate trends using the USGS National Climate Change Viewer followed by Unit 1 and 2 of the Map Your Hazards InTeGrate Module.

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In this activity, students look at census records from antebellum Five Points and compare them to depictions of the neighborhood and its residents. Students will evaluate whether observers described Five Points as a neighborhood or slum. The activity includes a Smartboard file, but can be completed without this technology.

This activity features differentiation and scaffolding to help students understand the new social freedoms and new threats to the families of freedmen during Reconstruction. Students work in heterogeneous skill-level groups to analyze several primary sources and prepare to write a paragraph about freedmen's new social freedoms. The activity in the lesson is framed for several consecutive 45-minute lessons, but could be adapted to meet the teacher's needs. The activity features documents from HERB that have been edited for different skill levels; the edited documents are including in the attached PDF "New Liberties and New Threats Worksheet." New York City high school teachers Arthur Everett and Samantha Schoeller created this activity.

In this activity students research roles as either Irish immigrants or African-American residents in the midst of the New York City Draft Riots that took place in July 1863. Students gather evidence from primary sources to develop their characters, based on actual census records, and then enact a role play debating whether to stay in the city or flee (if they are African American) and whether to participate in the riots or protect their black neighbors (if they are Irish immigrants).

In this activity students write original corridos(a type of Mexican folk song) based on the oral histories of braceros. Before writing their own corridos, students learn about the formulas and themes of corridosand analyze a World War II-era corrido. This lesson works best if students have basic background information on the bracero program.

In Part 1 of this unit, students will develop protocols for the collection of sensory data to address a guiding question. The data collected will consist of scents or sounds. The advantage of using sensory data is that students are equipped with the analytical equipment (ears and nose) and are familiar with its use. However, students may not have taken the time to consider the variety of perceptions that occur within a group of people who are sharing a sensory experience and the impact that variation can have when attempting to collect objective data to help characterize environmental problems.
Protocols are necessary to ensure consistency of data between collection points and between data collectors, and to link data collected to a research question. Protocols also serve as a record of the methodology used by an investigator that may be subject to scrutiny by subsequent data users or by anyone reading or using a report containing the data. Data collection in all scientific fields may be collected using protocols common within the field or developed by an investigator for use in a specific study.
Because sensory data is inherently qualitative and subjective, students will need to develop methods of quantification that ensure as much objectivity as possible. Likewise, scientists collecting field data may need to develop unique protocols that ensure that field data is collected in as objective a manner as possible.
Ideally, the unit will span two class sessions to allow for the gradual development of a data collection protocol and field plan.

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