Elementary GLOBE: Honing in on Hummingbirds

In this activity, students will record a list of things they already know about hummingbirds and a list of things they would like to learn about hummingbirds. Then they will conduct research to find answers to their questions. Using their new knowledge, each student will make a hummingbird out of art supplies. Finally, using their hummingbirds as props, the students will play charades to test each other in their knowledge of the ruby-throated hummingbirds. The purpose of this activity is to provide students with information on ruby-throated hummingbirds, provide students with the opportunity to conduct research on hummingbirds in topic areas that interest them, and to provide students with opportunities to share their knowledge with other students. By completing this activity, students will gain knowledge about ruby-throated hummingbirds. They will also gain experience researching a topic of their choosing related to hummingbirds and communicating those results in several different formats.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Diagram/Illustration, Interactive, Lesson Plan, Textbook

Academic Vocabulary- A Brain-based Approach

Students will acquire new grade-level academic vocabulary by using images to make visual associations, which activiates student's long term memory. This lesson includes all of the information and materials that students need to create a vocabulary poster, share their poster with the class, practice a set of 14 vocabulary words, and take an assessment. 

Material Type: Lesson

Author: Daniel Myer

Text Talk: Julius, the Baby of the World

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.

Material Type: Lesson Plan

2nd Grade-Act. 06: Fractions

In this lesson students will explore the concept of fractions.

Material Type: Lesson Plan

Reading Strategies Using Nearpod

The students will examine and define each reading strategy to prepare for activities that will be completed in WIN this marking period.

Material Type: Assessment, Interactive, Lesson Plan

Author: Shannon Oliver

Advanced Phonics Activities

This page contains sequential and supplemental activities that help teachers teach students to read word families, compound words, contractions, double-letter words, silent-letter words, -ed words and 's words.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Benchmark Fraction Brownie Mix

Students will be introduced to addition, multiplication, and division of the benchmark fractions 1/2, 1/3, and 1/4 with a fun, hands-on experience. Students will layer the dry ingredients for a brownie recipe into a canning jar while having a rich discussion that aides visualizing operations with fractions. This shared experience can be referred to during future instruction.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan

Author: Connie Rivera

Geometry: Ice Hockey and Stephen Curry's Shooting Angle!

Consider using the information in these videos to gain student interest in geometry (4th and 5th grade) at the start of a lesson or unit. 

Material Type: Lesson Plan

Author: Doug Enders

6.NS.B.2 Lesson 2

This lesson introduces students to long division. Students see that in long division the meaning of each digit is intimately tied to its place value, and that it is an efficient way to find quotients. In the partial quotients method, all numbers and their meaning are fully and explicitly written out. For example, to find 657÷3 we write that there are at least 3 groups of 200, record a subtraction of 600, and show a difference of 57. In long division, instead of writing out all the digits, we rely on the position of any digit—of the quotient, of the number being subtracted, or of a difference—to convey its meaning, which simplifies the calculation.In addition to making sense of long division and using it to calculate quotients, students also analyze some place-value errors commonly made in long division (MP3).

Material Type: Lesson Plan

Author: Angela Vanderbloom

Graphing Lines

Explore the world of lines. Investigate the relationships between linear equations, slope, and graphs of lines. Challenge yourself in the line game!

Material Type: Simulation

Authors: Ariel Paul, Chris Malley, Karina Hensberry, Kathy Perkins, Patricia Loeblein

Maximizing Area: Gold Rush

This lesson unit is intended to help you assess how well students are able to: Interpret a situation and represent the variables mathematically; select appropriate mathematical methods to use; explore the effects on the area of a rectangle of systematically varying the dimensions whilst keeping the perimeter constant; interpret and evaluate the data generated and identify the optimum case; and communicate their reasoning clearly.

Material Type: Assessment, Lesson Plan

10 Things You Can Do with ArcGIS Online and Story Maps

Several new content pieces invite you to do hands-on work with web GIS technology: [1] 10 Things you can do with ArcGIS Online in education. These include: (1) Use web mapping applications. (2) Make your own map. (3) Get a school, club, or university organizational account in ArcGIS Online. (4) Use and modify existing curricular resources. (5) Explore the Living Atlas of the World. (6) Modify and ask questions of maps. (7) Conduct spatial analysis on mapped data. (8) Add multimedia to maps. (9) Explore your world in 3D, and (10) Map and analyze field-collected data. [2] Introduction and Advanced Work with Story Maps: Slides and hands-on exercises. These include how to build a story map from a web map, and how to build map tours, map journals, swipe, series, and other types of story maps. [3] Teaching with Web Apps. Set of resources and activities. These include examining Pacific typhoons in 3D, demographics of Zip Codes, creating viewsheds and buffers, and much more. [4] Spatial Analysis in Human Geography. These include the 1854 cholera epidemic in London (activity), a Boulder County hazards analysis (map), and an examination of the Human Development Index around the world (map). I created this content for the Esri mapping lab for the 2017 National Conference on Geography Education, but it can also be used to support your own professional development or for your own instruction.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Data Set

Author: Joseph J. Kerski

Field Day Scarcity

This task allows students to relate addition and subtraction problems to money in a context that introduces the concept of scarcity.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Author: Illustrative Mathematics

Start-Stop Counting

This counting activity allows students to practice counting in sequence.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Author: Illustrative Mathematics

Best Practices in Accessible Online Design

Accessibility is frequently the last thing course and website developers want to think about when creating an online content. There is extra time involved up front, but it can help prevent problems down the line. I think most of us in higher education care about all students and want to help them to our best ability. There are also laws protecting the rights of individuals with disabilities to have access to programs and services that institutions of higher education offer. Section 504 of The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 says that public institutions receiving federal funds, this includes student financial aid, need to ensure that people with disabilities can participate in programs & activities and have the same benefits that people without disabilities have. It requires academic adjustments and accommodation to ensure full participation. Section 508 is an amendment that requires electronic information and technology, such as websites and online courses be accessible. The American with Disabilities Act of 1990 expands the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 to private as well as public institutions of higher education. The newest is The 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010. It requires modern communications to be accessible to people with disabilities. This includes VOIP services, electronic messaging, video conferencing, video communications and mobile browsers.

Material Type: Textbook

Author: Heather Caprette

Permissions Guide For Educators

This guide provides a primer on copyright and use permissions. It is intended to support teachers, librarians, curriculum experts and others in identifying the terms of use for digital resources, so that the resources may be appropriately (and legally) used as part of lessons and instruction. The guide also helps educators and curriculum experts in approaching the task of securing permission to use copyrighted materials in their classrooms, collections, libraries or elsewhere in new ways and with fewer restrictions than fair use potentially offers. The guide was created as part of ISKME's Primary Source Project, and is the result of collaboration with copyright holders, intellectual property experts, and educators.

Material Type: Reading

Author: Admin

Open Education Resources PD

This resource is designed to provide instructors with an outline for a 1 hour professional development session aimed at introducing teachers to OER commons.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Authors: Melissa Bream, Amande Sodl, Jennifer Newcome, Shannon Oliver

Reading Like a Historian, Unit 1: Introduction

The Reading Like a Historian curriculum turns students into historical investigators. Students may find this change jarring after a steady diet of reading a textbook and answering questions. The three lessons in the Introduction--Lunchroom Fight, Evaluating Sources, and Snapshot Autobiography--help students recognize skills of historical inquiry they already practice everyday, such as reconciling conflicting claims and evaluating the reliability of narrative accounts. The challenge is to apply these skills while reading. Reading Like a Historian classroom posters remind students what questions they should be asking as they read historical documents.

Material Type: Lesson

Circle of Stories

Welcome to the CIRCLE OF STORIES lesson plans. These lessons will allow students to examine the complex and rich oral tradition of Native American storytelling, create their own stories to share, explore indigenous and Native American cultures and the issues which face them today, and research and explore their own cultural heritage by recording their unique family stories and heritage. These lessons are directed toward grades 6 through 12, for use in the following subject areas: language arts, theater, history, social studies, multicultural studies, technology, and life science.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan, Reading

Author: Betsy Norris

Active and Passive Transport: Red Rover Send Particles Over

Students compare and contrast passive and active transport by playing a game to model this phenomenon. Movement through cell membranes is also modeled, as well as the structure and movement typical of the fluid mosaic model of the cell membrane. Concentration gradient, sizes, shapes and polarity of molecules determine the method of movement through cell membranes. This activity is associated with the Test your Mettle phase of the legacy cycle.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Author: Melinda M. Higgins