US Institute of Peace
Perspectives on Peace
Is peace simply the absence of war, or is there more to the story? Young social scientists define peace in the second installment of a 15-part series. Groups work together to explore cultural concepts of peace and the peacemaking process...
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Four Corners Debate
Should the student population wear uniforms to school? Pupils express whether they strongly agree, agree, disagree, or strongly disagree with a controversial statement, moving to a designated corner of the room to indicate their stance....
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This Is America! Flag Collage
In a visual essay of their thoughts about "What America Means to Me," kids of any age can create a collage about their country. Originally intended to be created physically, learners could share their projects online by using an...
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Direct Effect
Discover the damage that was caused by the terrorist attacks on September 11th with your class. They will learn about the events of that day and the litigation process for damages incurred that day. Their research will cover the various...
NASA
Newton Car
If a car gets heavier, it goes farther? By running an activity several times, teams experience Newton's Second Law of Motion. The teams vary the amount of weight they catapult off a wooden block car and record the distance the...
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Summarization Is The Key To Success
Fourth graders exercise the strategies of silent reading and summarization to acquire new and important information from a text. They silently read and summarize page eighty-two in their "A History of Alabama" books. A review of...
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Are School Trips Too Risky?
Learners analyze and chart what risks are involved on school field trips. Students devise a study trip to take and dissect at the end of their findings. Learners scale the conditions of what a risk is and we can manage them in the future.
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Holiday Wreath Ornament
Students make a holiday wreath ornament. In this holiday wreath ornament instructional activity, students follow directions to make a holiday ornament using glue and cereal. They glue a picture of themselves in the center and add a bow.
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Famous African-American Fabric Paintings
Students examine famous African-Americans. For this African-Americans lesson, students research and give an oral report on a famous African-American.
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Food Insecurity
Explore food insecurity and resource scarcity with your class. They discuss the sharing of scarce resources, how to be good caretakers of these resources, and how choices impact the entire world.
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Getting In Is Half the Battle
Students read and discuss "Defending Affirmative Action With Social Science," examining the admissions policies in public universities and colleges. They write persuasive essays either for or against the admissions policies in their state.
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Making Lewis and Clark's Journals Come Alive
Students are presented daily excerpts from Lewis and Clark's experiences. The dates and activities are tracked on a classroom map.
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Art On Trial (A Mock-Court Activity)
Students engage in a mock trial to decide if a work of prospective public art is "art" and accepted for a city park. They broaden their definitions of what "art" is. Students distinguish between opinion and informed judgment of art works.
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Oobleck/Slime War
Students compare slime recipes. In this properties of matter lesson, students make Oobleck and glurch and compare the properties of each and examine the solid and liquid properties of them.
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Skates
Students gain understanding of structure, characteristics, and basic needs of living things and their role in world, identify parts of skate, observe details of skate's body and skate egg case, and identify unique characteristics of skates.
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Tell Me All About It!!
Learners discuss the importance of comprehension and the use of summarization. Through guided practice, they follow five steps in finding and highlighting important information, while deleting information that is not needed. Using the...
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Give Me the Facts!
Students study how to summarize a reading passage to improve their comprehension. They read a non-fiction passage and use five steps to summarize it while working in groups of three. Next, as class, they decide which group provided the...
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A Web of History -- Summarization
Students listen to a reading selection about explorers in Alabama called "Spanish Explorations and Settlements." They listen for main ideas of the reading selection. As a whole group, the students create a word web using the important...
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After 7 years, capsule of comet dust heads to Earth
Students examine an article on a space capsule and explore NASA. In this space exploration lesson students brainstorm the pros and cons of space exploration, then rehearse a sketch and present it to the class.
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Rocking Chair
Students recognize the short vowel e in written and spoken language. Through matching activities, they discriminate the short vowel /e/ from other vowel phonemes. Students associate the /e/ with its letter representation and identify the...
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Tick Tock Goes The Clock
Students practice letter recognition in written language and sounds for /t/ in both the upper and lower case forms. They utilize a chart with "Today Teddy talked to ten people at two o'clock," on it while making the sounds that are...
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The Bill of Rights Today
Students examine the Bill of Rights, They read the Bill of Rights and clarify the meaning of the material using different reading strategies. In groups, students brainstorm to compare and evaluate their conclusions with those of others.
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What's the Point
Students practice the strategy of summarization to be able to understand and comprehend the text. They study how to get rid of unnecessary or repeated information and find the most important items or events and then write a statement...