Lesson Plans

Students will use the free online coding program Scratch to learn the basics of coding and how to use blocks and animations to create a game. Students will create a game to find multiples of a given factor by making a character fly into the correct multiple of the given factor. The student will go through a series of coding steps to create a background, make a character fly, and create the factor and multiple game.

This lesson plan was created as a result of the Girls Engaged in Math and Science, GEMS Project.

The lesson will begin with students accessing their prior knowledge of weather and climates by completing a warm-up writing prompt. Students will then move to reading texts on the subjects of tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, and droughts to determine if and how climate affects these weather phenomena. In groups, students will create a half-poster that describes their findings in text and pictures. At the end of the lesson, students will view a graph to extend their learning about tornadoes and hint at a future lesson while also completing an "exit ticket" as a means of summative assessment. 

This unit was created as part of the ALEX Interdisciplinary Resource Development Summit.

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.

The lesson will begin by students performing a think-aloud as they consider the similarities of five words:  tornado, shelter, basement, underground, and safe room. Students will use a pros and cons graphic organizer as they read articles on three different types of tornado shelters: underground shelters, part of the house shelters, and prebuilt shelters. The students will find the advantages and disadvantages of each type of structure. At the end of the lesson, the teacher will create a table that lists all the shelters and the pros and cons of each. Students will then determine which shelter they feel is most efficient in an "exit slip" response. 

This unit was created as part of the ALEX Interdisciplinary Resource Development Summit.

This is a lesson presenting energy and work. It covers: types of energy, forms of energy, work, law of conservation of energy, and renewable and nonrenewable energy sources. In the activities section, one will find links to Internet sites that explore concepts of energy and work. Interactive labs are also included in this lesson. The lesson can serve as a student-led or teacher-led lesson. It gives a brief statement of facts; therefore, the teacher must provide expansions, if needed. The expansions could come from the Internet sites since many of them go into more detail about the concepts. The teacher will also be expected to supply some form of assessment for the lesson.

The students will gain a good understanding of the history of Expressionism painting and its use of color and paint application to establish an “emotional feel”. They will use this knowledge to create their own expressionistic oil painting.

This is an introductory lesson to a second grade weather unit. The students will be observing the weather each day for one week and recording their observations in a chart. The students will be integrating information from the Internet as well as what they learn in English by using adjectives in their descriptions. After the students have collected data for a week, in cooperative groups, they will predict the weather for the next week. The teacher will show the students guides or weather reports from past years for that particular week in order to guide them in the direction of an accurate prediction. The students will go to a technology lab to look up and record the weather from a teacher-selected web site.

In this lesson, students will understand that in order to grow healthy plants, soil, water, light, and air must be provided. Students will use math skills such as measurement and science process skills such as observation, comparing, and recording data.

This is a project to conclude the study of the Judicial Branch of our government. The students, working in pairs, will be assigned a landmark Supreme Court case to research in a computer lab setting. They will then construct a one-page newsletter on the case which will include a summary of the case, two pictures, a short biography on one of the justices on the Court at that time, and an editorial describing their reaction to the case.

Americans continue to adapt to different ethnic and cultural groups who move into their communities. It is vital that children become aware of and appreciate cultural diversities in people. People move to different areas for reasons such as religion, climate, employment, economics, and for a better way of life.