Students evaluate book reviews written by other children, discussing their components and effectiveness, and write reviews of favorite books to record on video or post online.
The internet is full of false information and ads. Sometimes it can be challenging to decipher the validity of content. It is important to learn how to critically evaluate online material for several reasons: you want to know what type of information is trustworthy online, you want to be an informed digital citizen, and you want to ensure that the information that you are using for a school assignment is factual. The purpose of “Two Truths and a Lie Online” is to teach you how to critically evaluate online resources so that you can be both an informed consumer and producer of digital content.
Overview of the field of Paleontology for teachers. The resource covers a definition, career, fossils, dinosaurs, laws about collecting fossils, dating fossils, evolution, extinction events, and taxonomic diversity.
This module is suitable for K-12 ELA / Literacy instructors, as well as teachers of history/social studies, science, and technical subjects.
The unit has two parts. In each, students dive into inquiry to answer the compelling questions:
1. Who are some of our closest tribal neighbors, and what have they been their lifeways since time immemorial?
2. Why do people explore, and how does this lead to expansion?
Part 1 is focused on the examination of the northwest and some of the original inhabitants. Through these questions students will learn about the culture of some of their closest tribal neighbors, the Spokane Indians. The final project for Part 1 is a cultural investigation display, in which students will show what they know about the culture of the Spokane Tribe.
In Part 2, Students will also learn about forces that brought change to the northwest: fur trade era and exploration. Students will ultimately learn about the Corps of Discovery and the Oregon Trail and know the impact each had on the west. Students will finish Part 2 with a timeline activity that will reflect choice and build upon student strengths according to their skill set.
Finally, a lesson on a Tribe of the Columbia Plateau is offered as an extension, but it is strongly recommended that students get to experience this lesson.
Note that the emphasis here is on the Spokane Tribe as one of our closest tribal neighbors. In no way is this an exhaustive study nor should the tribal cultures be generalized to other tribes of the region. We understand that each tribe in our region and North America was and continues to be unique in its culture, practices, lifeways, and traditions.
Summary
We have designed an interdisciplinary unit for eighth-grade students that will take approximately three weeks to complete. Over the course of this unit, students will examine the impact of Spanish imperialism on three Latin American nations (Mexico, Guatemala, and Chile) through studies of the history and cultures of those nations. This unit will combine elements of several different academic subjects (including Social Studies, English, Art, and Foreign Language) as students learn about not just the factual history of these countries, but also important aspects of the human experience within each nation. Alongside lessons on the legacy of Spanish colonialism in Latin America, students will interact with literature, artwork, and firsthand accounts of people from each country, allowing students to analyze the impact of history on culture and broaden their global awareness. It is our hope that this unit will also expand students’ consciousness by teaching them about the injustices that resulted from colonization as well as multiple perspectives of those involved.
As a summative assessment for this unit, students will choose one of the three Latin American nations they studied and design a creative project (either independently or collaboratively) that will showcase their learning about a significant aspect of that country’s history or culture. Students will have a list of options to choose from, all of which require them to use their creative talents to synthesize their learning and communicate it effectively through their chosen medium. These options include (but are not limited to) writing a fictional travel journal that incorporates the religion, politics, or culture of the region, designing a newspaper page set during the time of an important historical event, and writing and filming an imaginary interview with a significant cultural figure.
Four unit plans provide opportunities for in-depth explorations of important foundational climate concepts -- weather, water as a solid, liquid and gas, and the water cycle -- that are appropriate for K-2 and 3-5 learners. These unit plans incorporate many of the lessons highlighted in other articles in this issue of the online magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle. The magazine is structured around the essential principles of the climate sciences.
In 1853, the City of New York set aside hundreds of acres of swampland in the middle of Manhattan, with the idea that this uninhabitable space could serve a practical, public purpose. Today, we know that area as Central Park, one of the most widely visited and celebrated public spaces in the country. The then-unknown park designer who won the bid to design Central Park, Frederick Law Olmsted, would go on to inspire and revolutionize urban park design in the United States. The work of Olmsted and other early parks pioneers, building on older concepts like town squares, would spur the growth of urban parks large and small nationwide. Benefiting from new innovations in design, these parks serve as community centers and defining features of cities and towns across the country. Urban parks have continually adapted to meet the needs of the publics they serve, evolving, for example, from places to simply enjoy nature into recreation sites that offer activities and equipment. More than just sites for leisure, they also play a broader role in supporting community engagement by providing places for civic participation, enhancing quality of life and property values, and offering safe, healthy, and convenient recreation options. This exhibition was created as part of the DPLAs Public Library Partnerships Project by collaborators from the Minnesota Digital Library. Exhibition Coordinator: Carla Urban.
Engineers design and implement many creative techniques for managing stormwater at its sources in order to improve and restore the hydrology and water quality of developed sites to pre-development conditions. Through the two lessons in this unit, students are introduced to green infrastructure (GI) and low-impact development (LID) technologies, including green roofs and vegetative walls, bioretention or rain gardens, bioswales, planter boxes, permeable pavement, urban tree canopies, rainwater harvesting, downspout disconnection, green streets and alleys, and green parking. Student teams take on the role of stormwater engineers through five associated activities. They first model the water cycle, and then measure transpiration rates and compare native plant species. They investigate the differences in infiltration rates and storage capacities between several types of planting media before designing their own media mixes to meet design criteria. Then they design and test their own pervious pavement mix combinations. In the culminating activity, teams bring together all the concepts as well as many of the materials from the previous activities in order to create and install personal rain gardens. The unit prepares the students and teachers to take on the design and installation of bigger rain garden projects to manage stormwater at their school campuses, homes and communities.
Students analyze the concepts of identity, stereotyping, and discrimination by reading picture books; identify how these concepts are dealt with in each book; and discuss concrete actions to stop discrimination.
CRISPR-Cas9 is a gene-editing technology with potential to expand the agricultural industry and improve human health. However, this technology may have unforeseeable consequences and adverse effects for society. Statistical procedures are often used to study public perceptions of controversial technologies. In this unit plan, students will design and administer surveys to investigate how their peers feel about various applications of gene-editing technology. In the process, students will apply random sampling methods and learn how to minimize response bias. Once their surveys are completed, students will analyze the results using contingency tables, confidence intervals, and hypothesis tests. The ultimate goal of this unit will be to help students to create clear policies for regulating the use of CRISPR-Cas9 and defend these policies with their statistical findings.
Students are presented with a biomedical engineering challenge: Breast cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer-related death among women and the American Cancer Society says mammography is the best early-detection tool available. Despite this, many women choose not to have them; of all American women at or over age 40, only 54.9% have had a mammogram within the past year. One reason women skip annual mammograms is pain, with 90% reporting discomfort. Is there a way to detect the presence of tumors that is not as painful as mammography but more reliable and quantifiable than breast self-exams or clinical breast exams? This three lesson/three activity unit is designed for first-year accelerated or AP physics classes. It provide hands-on activities to teach the concepts of stress, strain and Hooke's law, which students apply to solve the challenge problem.
Working in small groups, students read and discuss Elie Wiesel's memoir "Night" and then take turns assuming the teacher role, as the class works with four different comprehension strategies.
In Lesson 1, students focus on the first stave of the novel as they identify the meanings of words and phrases that may be unfamiliar to them. This activity facilitates close examination of and immersion in the text and leads to an understanding of Scrooge before his ghostly experiences. In Lesson 2, students examine Scrooge’s experiences with the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future and discover how Dickens used both direct and indirect characterization to create a protagonist who is more than just a stereotype. In Lesson 3, students focus on stave 5 as they identify and articulate themes that permeate the story.
This 14 day Unit Plan integrates the Utah Core Standards for Language Arts and for Reading and Writing in History/Social Studies with the existing Utah Social Studies Standards. The students read, research, draw conclusions, and write beginning level argumentative essays comparing/contrasting major world religions. For a more thorough summary see the Background For Teachers section.
This unit focuses on the blending of vaccine focused content with basic biology content. The blending of content primarily concerns the human immune system. Allowing high school biology students to explore human vaccine technology through fundamental immune system knowledge and providing a tangible and relatable way to engage with these two complex topics to aid student understanding of how a vaccine works on the individual level. Prior to addressing the science behind how a vaccine leverages the immune system some vaccine focused content will provide a brief history of vaccines and explanation of vaccine types. Herd immunity will also be discussed within the unit. Herd immunity refers to the percentage of immune population threshold that is necessary to avoid an epidemic. Herd immunity is about understanding how vaccines work on a population level. It is relevant that students understand that vaccines are not just an individual health issue and are perhaps more importantly a community health issue. These topic areas will also allow the unit to explore the pressing and relevant vaccine related issue of barriers to vaccine adoption and public adoption of vaccine protocols. Finally, the likely future of vaccine technology, DNA vaccines, will be discussed. DNA vaccines offer much promise in eliminating some inherent vaccination issues such as transport, storage, ease of production, and safety.
A virtual landscape is a virtual reality environment designed to develop geologic mapping and field skills. They include natural landscapes where the geology can be mapped, and interactive 3D block models of topographic and geological maps. The worlds can be found at www.see.leeds.ac.uk/virtual-landscapes/.
This module describes the purpose of using graphs and other data visualization techniques and describes a simple three-step process that can be used to understand and extract information from graphs.
Vital Ice STEM Kit. The Natural Sciences Education & Outreach Center collaborates with CSU faculty, National Parks and citizen science programs to translate their current scientific research into unique STEM experiences for students in the form of Educational Kits that can be checked out. Each kit contains just about all of the materials needed (minus common things like water and paper towels) to explore some really interesting scientific research topics.The kits are available for teachers and informal educators in Colorado to check out for a duration of a week by submitting either a local pickup form or a delivery form available at the linked website. This kit is provided free for educational use. This Kit is available in Spanish. Global Surface Temperatures: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/283054052/
Volcano shape is strongly controlled by eruptive style, which in turn is controlled by magma composition and tectonic setting. This lab utilizes Google Earth, which takes students on a virtual field trip, in order to give them the opportunity to examine volcanoes from around the globe, and to interpret the tectonic settings in which they form. After completing this activity students will be able to describe and identify the common volcano types, and relate volcano types with associated volcanic hazards, tectonic setting, and geographic location.