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Playing Historical Detective: Great Grandmother's Dress and Other Clues to the Life and Times of Annie Steel
Students draw conclusions about an mystery person based on documents and artifacts provided. In this drawing conclusions lesson, students become detectives by reading and analyzing evidence provided. This lesson includes information on...
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Google Foundation May Invest in For-Profit Firms
Students explore the concept of philanthropy. In this philanthropy lesson, students read an article about Google and its philanthropic endeavors. Students discuss companies that they believe would benefit from a charitable investment...
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Migration - An African-American Adventure During WWI
Sixth graders explore the push/pull factors that influenced the South to North migration. In this African-American migration instructional activity, 6th graders read an article and answer comprehension questions. Students write a letter...
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Dishing the Dirt Part 1
Students create a soil center on their school grounds. They begin to write in their science journals. They participate in an experiment that helps the community begin their own gardens.
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Dishing the Dirt Part 2
Students explore the differences between specific soil characteristics. They participate in an experiment in which they discover soil texture. They write their observations in a journal.
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How Does it Affect Plants?
Students examine the effects of acid rain on plants. They observe the growth of seeds and the health of different plants for a month. They share their findings with the community.
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The Study of the Spanish-Speaking People of Texas: Daily Life
Young scholars analyze the different ways that photography helps historians understand the lives of people who lived in the past. They examine images from Russell Lee's photo essay and discuss how Texas' has changed from an agrarian to...
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Animal Habitats and Their Management
Students review components present for a quality animal habitat and then explore a goose pond to find out what animals reside there. They learn how wildlife managers work with the land so everything can co-exist together.
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Lewis and Clark: The Language of Discovery
Students replicate some of the trailblazing methods of Lewis and Clark on a fifteen-minute "writing journey" through the school or neighborhood.
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Animal Encounters
Students use their visualizing and interpreting skills to produce original writings and artwork.
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How Things Fly
Students observe photographs of selected twentieth-century aircraft at the National Air and Space Museum and note differences in the design of aircraft wings, fuselages, and engines.
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How Things Fly
Students, by drawing on their own experiences, discuss and examine the basic physics of flight. They participate in a variety of activities regarding flight.
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Stories of the Wrights' Flight
Students examine and compare primary and secondary source accounts of the Wright brothers' first flights on December 17, 1903.
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Money Talks
Students move from fact finding to interpretation as they examine paper money from the time of the American Revolution. In the final exercise, they use the issue dates of the bills to construct a chronology of political changes during...
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Pictures Telling Stories
Students see the importance of primary sources in the study of history, but also the limitations of relying only on primary sources of taking the money, as it were, at face value.
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The Rocky Shore
Students compare a realistic landscape painting with a photograph of the same place.
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Kitchen Cleaners
Students, in groups, select two cleaning agents that they feel solves their cleaning problem.
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Life on an Island: Early Settlers Off the Rock-Bound Coast of Maine
Students study the characteristics of life on the Cranberry Isles off the coast of Maine as they were settled. They examine images and maps to determine the location and lifestyle.
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Spy on a Spider
Students view slides or live specimens to name and describe the distinguishing features of groups of arthropods, especially spiders and insects. They complete worksheets, observe webs and then search for and record where spiders can be...
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Creatures from Planet X: Spiders
Students are given a description of some fascinating animals from "Planet X". They follow the descriptions given to illustrate one of these animals paying careful attention to introduced vocabulary such as 'appendages', 'receptors', and...
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Facts, Feats and Folklore: Spiders
Students review and discuss a variety of sayings, folklore and superstitions about spiders. They discuss this information and choose either an interesting fact or appealing foklore tradition to illustrate.
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Dishing the Dirt Part 3
Students collect and examine different soil samples. They test for specific types of soil elements and the pH level. They answer questions about optimum growing conditions as well.
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Letters from the Japanese American Internment
Students make deductions about life in an internment camp by reading and comparing letters written to Clara Breed. Along the way, they consider the advantages of looking at a historical event from the multiple points of view of...
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To Drink or not to Drink
Seventh graders discuss water quality, water availability and water resources and how water is used in the world around them. They view a video on water quality then test for pH, temperature and dissolved oxygen to indicate water quality.