California Department of Education
Learning About Myself
Let the journey begin! Fifth graders take their first steps down the road of self-discovery during the first of five career and college readiness lesson plans. After taking an interests inventory, groups create a graphic representation...
Curated OER
Maus: After Reading Strategy Instructional Routine
Class members create literary mandalas for two characters from Maus, Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel about his father’s experiences with the Holocaust. After finding quotes that reveal three good traits and three bad traits of each...
Curated OER
Fact or Fantasy?
Are we alone in the universe? This brief informational text on extraterrestrial theory has been split into seven sections to help scholars practice note taking. They read the statements, underlining key words. Then, using the graphic...
Curated OER
Introduce Vocabulary: Happy Birthday, Martin Luther King (Marzollo)
Looking for a vocabulary lesson plan relevant to MLK Day? Try this reading comprehension idea designed around Jean Marzollo's biography Happy Birthday, Martin Luther King. Go over new terms (freedom, justice,...
Portland Public Schools
Teaching Tone to Teenagers
Tone is a tough topic to teach to teenagers. But never, fear, help is here in the form of a unit plan that takes advantage of their interest in music to set the stage for a series of activities that lead them to understand how setting,...
Annenberg Foundation
America's History in the Making: Classroom Applications Four
The final installment of a 22-part American history series examines the many faces that make up the country's story. From Henry Ford to Tulio Serrano, scholars use biographical evidence and Internet research to uncover the people behind...
PBS
Passion for Pixels
Picture this: a fun activity for pupils to discover pixels. After learning about digital signals and pixels, scholars act as senders and receivers of an image. The sender indicates zero or one to tell whether each square in a grid is...
Curated OER
Tour + Workshop = DESIGN: Presenting Information
Students develop a business card to market them. In this developing a business card to market them lesson, students design a business card to represent them. Students create a logo or graphic design that is professional and...
Curated OER
Artist's Storyboard
In this storyboard worksheet, students fill in squares on a blank storyboard: how I picture the main character, how I see the setting, problem, solution, 3 important events and ending. Worksheet is a generic graphic organizer.
Curated OER
The Artist as Entrepreneur: Getting Down to Business: What's My Market?
Students create a marketing plan for their artwork by analyzing their potential customers. They consider the type of art they wish to produce, the price range for the art and the type of competition that they face then develop a low...
Curated OER
Writing About Art: Subjective vs. Objective
Explore objective and subjective writing in this interdisciplinary lesson, which brings language arts and visual art together. Middle and high school students examine the sculpture Head with Horns by Paul Gauguin. They then analyze the...
Curated OER
Compare and Contrast Poems vs. Lyrics
Combine your pupils' love of music with their growing knowledge of poetry! First, have them bring in their favorite songs for a discussion on word choice and literary devices. Then, use a Venn Diagram to compare and contrast the...
DK Publishing
Fewer Candies
Focus on the key word fewer with young counters as they draw familiar sets of objects. For each, they examine an original set (i.e. candies in a jar) and draw a set with fewer. There are nice, clear graphics and kids will enjoy the...
La Jolla High School
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck: Character Sketches
Cover character development and indirect characterization in Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck with a graphic organizer. Class members search through the text and fill out a box for each character. The activity provides some notes for...
Curated OER
Water: A Source of Life and Culture
Students explore water as a feature of culture. For this visual arts lesson, students consider the necessity of water in every culture. Students select water symbols and use their artistic skills to create water symbol silhouettes.
Curated OER
Using the Internet - Art and Design
An interesting resource that might work best in an upper level art course, this handout provides a list of nine websites where young artists can read and study about all forms of art. These online resources range from a dictionary of...
Curated OER
Painting Analysis Worksheet
In this visual arts worksheet, students select paintings to analyze. Students then respond to 3 short answer questions and complete a graphic organizer based on their evaluation of the art.
Curated OER
Re-Presenting Race in the Digital Age
Teen-aged scientists analyze a graphic organizer of how trash is removed from New York City and then answer standard questions about a graph and a diagram. Resources are mentioned, but there are no links to these resources, so you will...
Curated OER
Mexico Field Trip
Explore how the library or Internet resources function as textual information. Young writers research a chosen topic then read and comprehend the collected information. They structure the information with texts and graphics for a...
Curated OER
Weather Cut and Paste
A charming learning exercise for your young artists, they color and cut out four pictures of different types of weather and then paste them next to a picture of a child who is dressed for that type of weather. This learning exercise...
Curated OER
Stereotype Characters Activity
Here is a lesson designed for middle schoolers which helps them recognize stereotypes one way or another against a particular group of people. They also determine what may have motivated the author to use a stereotype in the first place....
Curated OER
Snap! Crackle! Box!
Learners develop a new cereal and design a box for it. In this art and design lesson, students complete a year-end cumulative activity in which the use all of their artistic skills to develop a new cereal. They use their marketing skills...
Curated OER
Antonio: 25 Years of Creative Collaboration
Students examine the works of two fashion illustrators. They use the internet to research the artists and share their information with the class. They create their own original work.
Curated OER
Maya Lin - Artist, Architect, Environmentalist
Sixth graders explore the life of Maya Lin and analyze the impact of her architectural philosophy on her work. They trace the history of the Vietnam Memorial from its conception by Maya Lin, to the present day. A time line is created of...