Carnegie Library
Creative Writing: Middle School Lesson Plan
Enhance a unit on historical fiction with an engaging writing lesson. Learners bring the Industrial Era to life as they compose their own historical fiction pieces based on primary source images of Pittsburgh steel workers.
Statistics Education Web
Are Female Hurricanes Deadlier than Male Hurricanes?
The battle of the sexes? Scholars first examine data on hurricane-related deaths and create graphical displays. They then use the data and displays to consider whether hurricanes with female names result in more deaths than hurricanes...
American Statistical Association
Chunk it!
Chunking information helps you remember that information longer. A hands-on activity tests this theory by having learners collect and analyze their own data. Following their conclusions, they conduct randomization simulations to test...
American Statistical Association
Confidence in Salaries in Petroleum Engineering
Just how confident can we be with statistics calculated from a sample? Learners take this into account as they look at data from a sample of petroleum engineer salaries. They analyze the effect sample size has on a margin of error and...
American Statistical Association
More Confidence in Salaries in Petroleum Engineering
Making inferences isn't an exact science. Using data about salaries, learners investigate the accuracy of their inferences. Their analyses includes simulations and randomization tests as well as population means.
American Statistical Association
Don't Spill the Beans!
Become a bean counter. Pupils use a fun activity to design and execute an experiment to determine whether they can grab more beans with their dominant hand or non-dominant hand. They use the class data to create scatter plots and then...
American Statistical Association
How Long is 30 Seconds?
Is time on your side? Pupils come up with an experiment to test whether their classmates can guess how long it takes for 30 seconds to elapse. They divide the class data into two groups, create box-and-whisker plots, and analyze the...
American Statistical Association
How Tall and How Many?
Is there a relationship between height and the number of siblings? Classmates collect data on their heights and numbers of brothers and sisters. They apply statistical methods to determine if such a relationship exists.
American Statistical Association
An A-MAZE-ING Comparison
Teach your class how to use descriptive statistics through a hands-on data collection activity. Pupils collect their own data, calculate test statistics, and interpret the results in context. They compare male and female results, looking...
Statistics Education Web
When 95% Accurate Isn’t
Investigate the effect of false positives on probability calculation with an activity that asks scholars to collect simulated data generated by a calculator. To finish, participants analyze the probability of certain outcomes which lead...
Curated OER
Sun and Shadows
Why do shadows look different in the summer than in the winter? What causes day and night? How can a sundial be used to tell time? Answer these questions and more through two engaging lessons about light and shadows. Fourth and fifth...
Mark Twain Media
Understanding Informational Text Features
Everything you need to know about informational text features can be found in this resource. Recognizing these types of text features and how they are used in text allows readers to better understand information. Teachers can use this as...
Statistics Education Web
Consuming Cola
Caffeine affects your heart rate — or does it? Learners study experimental design while conducting their own experiment. They collect heart rate data after drinking a caffeinated beverage, create a box plot, and draw conclusions. They...
California Education Partners
Women
Alice Walker's poem "Women" provides ninth graders the opportunity to demonstrate their ability to identify how a writer's choice of syntax and diction contribute to the development of the theme of the work.
Penguin Books
Folklore and Fairytales: A Guide to Using Traditional Tales and Reimagined Classics
Every culture has its own stories to tell. An interesting educator's guide shares a large collection of fairytales and folktales, some from different cultures and some re-creations of classics. A summary and brief teaching ideas...
California Education Partners
Seeing Eye to Eye
A performance task challenges scholars to read an informational text then respond with an explanatory essay. The exam begins with an independent reading of Seeing Eye to Eye by Leslie Hall. A second reading follows with the completion of...
California Education Partners
Telescopes
An assessment challenges scholars to read an informative text then respond with an explanatory essay. The exam begins as participants read a text passage twice then take notes, making sure to jot down key details. Following the...
California Education Partners
We Are The Ship
An assessment sheds light on scholars' ability to read, gather evidence, and draft an original written composition. Learners read an informative text twice before taking notes and discussing their thoughts and textual evidence with a...
American Statistical Association
Scatter It! (Predict Billy’s Height)
How do doctors predict a child's future height? Scholars use one case study to determine the height of a child two years into the future. They graph the given data, determine the line of best fit, and use that to estimate the height in...
American Statistical Association
Chocolicious
To understand how biased data is misleading, learners analyze survey data and graphical representations. They use that information to design their own plans to collect information on consumer thoughts about Chocolicious cereal.
American Statistical Association
Colors Challenge!
Does writing the name of a color in a different colored ink affect one's ability to read it? Scholars design an experiment to answer this question. They collect the data, analyze the statistics, and draw a conclusion based on what they...
Statistics Education Web
Sampling in Archaeology
Compare different random sampling types using an archaeological setting. Scholars collect data from an archaeological plot using simple random samples, stratified random samples, systematic random samples, and cluster random samples....
Statistics Education Web
How High Can You Jump?
How high can your pupils jump? Learners design an experiment to answer this question. After collecting the data, they create box plots and scatter plots to analyze the data. To finish the instructional activity, they use the data to...
Statistics Education Web
Using Dice to Introduce Sampling Distributions
Investigate the meaning of a sample proportion using this hands-on activity. Scholars collect data and realize that the larger the sample size the more closely the data resembles a normal distribution. They compare the sample proportion...