Students complete a short survey to establish their beliefs about technology. They compare their opinions to the ideas in a novel that depicts technology (such as 1984 or Fahrenheit 451).
Paying Attention to Technology: Exploring a Fictional Technology
Grades
|
Glogging About Natural Disasters
5 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
After researching various natural disasters, students share their findings with each other using glogs, or through poster presentations.
Grades
|
Writing Reports in Kindergarten? Yes!
K
Lesson Plan
| Unit
This lesson encourages young students to see themselves as writers with a message to convey. Three types of reports are provided to show what kindergartners and emergent writers can do.
Grades
|
Socratic Seminars
Grades
6 - 12
Strategy Guide
This strategy guide explains Socratic seminars and offers practical methods for applying the approach in your classroom to help students investigate multiple perspectives in a text.
Grades
|
Teaching with Zooming Slideshows through Prezi
Grades
6 - 12
Strategy Guide
Through Prezi, a web application, students create "zooming" presentations for various purposes, such as presenting research, defending an opinion, or sharing a digital story.
Grades
|
Bringing Lessons to Life with Animoto
Grades
5 - 12
Strategy Guide
Using Animoto, a free Web 2.0 tool, students can develop short digital videos that include music, photos, video clips, and text as well as share their creations electronically.
Grades
|
Speak to Me: Teaching with Voki
Grades
6 - 12
Strategy Guide
Through Voki, a Web 2.0 tool, students create customizable avatars for class presentations for various purposes, such as presenting biographical information, expressing an opinion, or reading a poem.
Grades
|
Technology and Copyright Law: A "Futurespective"
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Students research and report on instances of how copyright laws have adapted to encompass new technologies. They write articles predicting copyright issues that may arise with new and future technologies.
Grades
|
Critical Literacy in Action: Multimodal Texts on Global Warming
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Students will really warm up to this lesson about global warming as they study multimedia materials and use a variety of comprehension strategies.
Grades
|
Hoax or No Hoax? Strategies for Online Comprehension and Evaluation
9 - 12
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Are your students easily fooled? You'll find out in this lesson in which students carefully and critically examine hoax websites to determine their validity.
Grades
|
Fact or Fiction: Learning About Worms Using Diary of a Worm
K - 2
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Students often believe that fiction writers make everything up, seldom realizing how research worms its way into entertaining writing. In this lesson, students read Diary of a Worm to find out how fact merges with fiction.
Grades
|
Astronomy Poetry: Combining Poetry With the Content Areas
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Unit
Students' responses to this lesson will be out of this world after they've researched astronomy to write poetry and compile a poetry book.
Grades
|
Inspire Healthful Reading Using Unconventional Texts
K - 2
Lesson Plan
| Minilesson
This minilesson encourages children to seek out and appropriately react to nutrition labels and to make healthy food choices, integrating science, math, health, and literacy.
Grades
|
Rain, Ice, Steam: Using Reading to Support Inquiry About the Water Cycle
K - 2
Lesson Plan
| Unit
Water is always moving in a continuous cycle from liquid to solid to gas and back again. Students study this never-ending cycle through shared readings, center activities, and experiments.
Grades
|
Combining Read-Alouds With Economics in the Primary Grades
K - 2
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Students learn that what you read in books can really add up when they analyze literary texts for economic concepts.
Grades
|
The Big, Bad Wolf...Is This a Fact?
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Unit
Reading is revamped in this lesson in which students use a multimedia approach to study the books by Seymour Simon.
Grades
|
Digital Reflections: Expressing Understanding of Content Through Photography
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Unit
Striking images can leave lasting impressions on viewers. In this lesson, students make textselfworld connections to a nature- or science-related topic as they collaboratively design a multimedia presentation.
Grades
|
Black Beauty author Anna Sewell was born in 1820.
3 - 12
Calendar Activity
| Author & Text
Through Sewell's novel, students explore the cruelty to animals and extend the discussion to current events, eventually presenting the information.
Grades
|
On this day in 1907, Rachel Carson was born.
3 - 12
Calendar Activity
| Author & Text
Students learn about Rachel Carson, explore different environmental websites, and write a Diamante Poem about a particular habitat.
Grades
|
Jane Yolen was born in 1939.
1 - 5
Calendar Activity
| Author & Text
Students read one of Jane Yolen's books, retell the story in the form of a puppet show, research animals in the book, and document their findings with the Animal Study interactive tool.