Students explore the idea of ńcrossing boundariesî through bilingual, spoken-word poetry, culminating in a poetry slam at school or in the community.

Through eight lessons, students are introduced to many facets of dams, including their basic components, the common types (all designed to resist strong forces), their primary benefits (electricity generation, water supply, flood control, irrigation, recreation), and their importance (historically, currently and globally). Through an introduction to kinetic and potential energy, students come to understand how dams generate electricity. They learn about the structure, function and purpose of locks, which involves an introduction to Pascal's law, water pressure and gravity. Other lessons introduce students to common environmental impacts of dams and the engineering approaches to address them. They learn about the life cycle of salmon and the many engineered dam structures that aid in their river passage, as they think of their own methods and devices that could help fish migrate past dams. Students learn how dams and reservoirs become part of the Earth's hydrologic cycle, focusing on the role of evaporation. To conclude, students learn that dams do not last forever; they require ongoing maintenance, occasionally fail or succumb to "old age," or are no longer needed, and are sometimes removed. Through associated hands-on activities, students track their personal water usage; use clay and plastic containers to model and test four types of dam structures; use paper cups and water to learn about water pressure and Pascal's Law; explore kinetic energy by creating their own experimental waterwheel from two-liter plastic bottles; collect and count a stream's insects to gauge its health; play an animated PowerPoint game to quiz their understanding of the salmon life cycle and fish ladders; run a weeklong experiment to measure water evaporation and graph their data; and research eight dams to find out and compare their original purposes, current status, reservoir capacity and lifespan. Woven throughout the unit is a continuing hypothetical scenario in which students act as consulting engineers with a Splash Engineering firm, assisting Thirsty County in designing a dam for Birdseye River.

Teaching multicultural literature is happily a big part of the modern conversation about English classes. However, a question that is less often asked is, what is the root of the need for it? Many Americans shuffle about their lives oblivious to the structural racism that permeates much of our society and culture. Those who choose “not to see color” or race are proliferating opportunities for a dominant culture to continue and even expand, thereby limiting opportunities for others. Through utilization of two important concepts – Critical Race Theory and Colorblind Racial Ideology – we can improve humanities instruction by scrutinizing the much bigger, and often ignored, picture of modern racism. Combining this with instruction on the art of Afrofuturism – specifically the work of Octavia Bulter, Sun Ra, and Jean Michel Basquiat among others – we can also fill a similar gap in the modern American imagination.

The U.S. Constitution Pathway delves into the Constitution's past and its lasting principles, highlighting their relevance to modern-day issues and events. Through the lens of history and social science, students engage in a critical exploration of how the values of freedom, justice, and equality play out in today's complex world. The pathway culminates in the Civic Action Project, which allows students to apply their learning and impact a public issue that matters to them. Access to these resources require a free educator login.

Students explore the genre of posters, review informational writing and visual design, and then design poster presentations to share in class or at a school-wide fair.

Using "The Grapes of Wrath" as a backdrop, students conduct research on issues that the novel addresses, publishing their findings in a multigenre museum exhibit.

Lights, camera, action, and a bit of mystery! In this lesson, students use mystery props in a skit bag to create and perform in short, impromptu skits.

Students compare the traits fact and fiction by using a Venn diagram to compare fiction and nonfiction books about Native Americans.

Geographic information systems (GIS), once used predominantly by experts in cartography and computer programming, have become pervasive in everyday business and consumer use. This unit explores GIS in general as a technology about which much more can be learned, and it also explores applications of that technology. Students experience GIS technology through the use of Google Earth on the environmental topic of plastics in the ocean in an area known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The use of this topic in GIS makes the unit multidisciplinary, incorporating the physics of ocean currents, the chemistry associated with pollutant degradation and chemical sorption to organic-rich plastics, and ecological impact to aquatic biota.

Striking images can leave lasting impressions on viewers. In this lesson, students make text-self-world connections to a nature- or science-related topic as they collaboratively design a multimedia presentation.

Digital Scholarship and Data Science Essentials for Library Professionals is an open and collaboratively curated training reference resource. It aims to make it easier for LIBER library professionals to gain a concise overview of the new technologies that underpin digital scholarship and data science practice in research libraries today, and find trusted training materials recommendations to start their professional learning journey.

Learn about Greek gods, heroes, and creatures through digital storytelling produced by students who have learned research techniques.

Students learn about memory by doing a memory-writing exercise, studying the brain to understand how it affects memory, reading Li-Young Lee's poem "Mnemonic," and creating projects to demonstrate their understanding.

In this unit of study students learn about diversity of life by focusing on bats. They will learn about their habitat, structures and functions, and behaviors. This unit integrates nine STEM attributes and was developed as part of the South Metro-Salem STEM Partnership's Teacher Leadership Team. Any instructional materials are included within this unit of study.

Students will learn the potential costs and benefits of social media, digital consumption, and our relationship with technology as a society in the three-week lesson. This inquiry based unit of study will answer the following questions:

Essential Question: How can we use science fiction’s ability to predict the future to help humanity?

Supportive Questions 1: What predictions of future development has science fiction accurately made in the past? This can include technology, privacy, medicine, social justice, political, environmental, education, and economic.

Supportive Question 2: What predictions for future development in contemporary science fiction are positive for the future of humanity? What factors need to begin in your lifetime to make these predictions reality?

Supportive Question 3: What predictions for future development in contemporary science fiction are negative for the future of humanity? What factors need to begin in your lifetime to stop these negative outcomes?

At a time when the country was in deep conflict over slavery, the Supreme Court decided that Dred Scott was not a “citizen of the state” so it had no jurisdiction in the matter, but the majority opinion also stated that Dred Scott was not a free man. This resource includes teacher materials, guides, and activities for teaching about this Supreme Court case.

As part of their ELA coursework, students are reading an autobiography to study author's craft.  In particular, students are exploring how authors use dialogue, transitional phrases/clauses, and sensory details to tell a personal story. The unit will culminate with students writing their own memoirs. The bulk of the unit takes place in the ELA classroom. In the ESL support block, students will receive support with reading an autobiography of their choice, noting examples of author's craft in the autobiography, and integrating this craft into their own writing.

In this first lesson of the unit, students choose from two memoirs 15 on the Road to Freedom and the Big Lie. Students participate in a F2F mini-lesson in how dialogue can develop characters in an autobiography. Students then transition to technology for a book introduction with historical context and a chapter 1 book preview (guided reading). Students in 15 on the Road to Freedom then continue to receive support via Ed Puzzle for identifying dialogue and documenting in a graphic organizer, while students in The Big Lie meet with the teacher for the support. While students in The Big Lie transition to continue completing the graphic organizer independently, students in the 15 on the Road to Freedom meet with the teacher F2F to discuss their completed graphic organizers. Students then return to their autobiographies (written on google docs and organized in google classroom) to include additional dialogue in their stories and peer-review a partnerÅ› story. Students then participate in a full group F2F wrap up/reflection where they share out examples of dialogue their partner included in their writing as a result of the lesson.

Online Lesson for Books: Historical Context/Chapter 1 Intro/Graphic Organizer Support

15 on the Road to Freedom: Book Introduction, Chapter 1 Preview, and Support with Graphic Organizer Task
The Big Lie: Book Introduction, Chapter 1 Preview (Note that support with graphic organizer is given F2F for this group)

Graphic Organizers

I can identify how authors use dialogue to develop characters
I can identify precise language authors use to introduce dialogue
I can identify how authors use sensory details to develop experiences
I can identify how authors use transitional words, phrases, and clauses to convey sequence shifts

Assignment Sheet

ELA Autobiography Assignment Sheet (Created by Julia Koli, Connie Ray, and Elliot Willis-Begley at Scarlett Middle School, Ann Arbor MI)

F2F Mini-Lesson #1

Mini-Lesson on Character Development Through Dialogue

Please email daughertye@aaps.k12.mi.us if you would like me to send you the additional resources I created for the remaining mini-lessons and book chapters!

In this lesson, students explore ekphrasis--writing inspired by art. Students find pieces of art that inspire them and compose a booklet of poems about the pieces they have chosen.

How can an image inspire a poem? This lesson plan guides students to write a ten line poem inspired by a work of art.

This unit is designed to provide students with an introduction to the electoral processes of the American political system. Students will develop a strong foundation that will inform them of their choices and encourage civic involvement. The Elections and Voting unit guides students to a deep understanding of concepts and processes across the political spectrum through simulations, presentations, vocabulary-building activities, and a mock election.