Assign leveled books for informational writing.  The students will read an assigned biographical text in Epic Books.  In SeeSaw, the students would respond to questions about biographical research.  The students will use technology for research and response.

New York City in the 1860s was a mess: crowded, disgusting, filled with garbage. You see, way back in 1860, there were no subways, just cobblestone streets. That is, until Alfred Ely Beach had the idea for a fan-powered train that would travel underground. On February 26, 1870, after fifty-eight days of drilling and painting and plastering, Beach unveiled his masterpiece—and throngs of visitors took turns swooshing down the track. The resource includes a lesson plan/book card, a design challenge, and copy of a design thinking journal that provide guidance on using the book to inspire students' curiosity for design thinking. Maker Challenge: Think about the way most people in your community travel. Invent a new way of traveling around your community that takes into account the following: helpful to the community, economical to those who use it, convenient for users. What would your new travel system look like? Sketch a new design, and then create a physical prototype of the new design to scale. Keep in mind: Where the system travels, how it is powered, why it is helpful to the community, and any features that make it special.

A document is included in the resources folder that lists the complete standards-alignment for this book activity.

The self-study guide, produced by IES Regional Educational Laboratory Southeast, is a tool to help district and school-based practitioners conduct self-studies for planning and implementing early literacy interventions for students in grades K-2. This guide is designed to promote reflection about current strengths and challenges in planning for the implementation of early literacy interventions, spark conversations among staff, and identify areas for improvement. This self-study guide provides a template for data collection and guiding questions for discussion.

Go inside Cathy Doyle's second-grade classroom to observe how her students use semantic gradients to talk about the nuanced differences in the meaning of related words. This video introduces the strategy and describes how semantic gradients help kids become stronger readers and more descriptive writers.

This video is part of the Learn and Grow with WHRO TV series. Watch Alystra Barefoot teach about character traits.

Students listen to a story and brainstorm character traits. After teacher modeling, students practice identifying character traits in their journals.

In this activity, students read short stories and create presentations in multiple media to share in a Short Story Fair. At the fair, students explore and respond to the displays.

In this lesson students will prepare a "Show and Teach" for their classmates to follow.

In this project, students write tributes to teachers who have made a profound difference in their lives then publish their work in a class collection.

Benjamin Franklin was sixteen years old and working as an apprentice in the Boston print shop of his older brother James when, in April 1722, he began writing a series of essays to be published in the New-England Courant under the pseudonym of “Silence Dogood.” In his Autobiography, Benjamin remembered slipping these essays, written in disguised handwriting, under the door of the Courant, which James was publishing; he assumed (probably correctly) that James would refuse to print an essay from him if he simply asked or submitted it under his own name. James published the essays, which became very popular among the newspaper’s readers. Benjamin kept his authorship of the series a secret, even from his brother, until after he finished writing them in October 1722, at which point James printed an advertisement asking for “Silence Dogood” to come forth. Benjamin confessed that he was the author, which seems to have annoyed his older brother. It was not too long after that that Benjamin left his brother’s shop–breaking his apprenticeship–and moved to Philadelphia.

Edwards originally gave this as a sermon in July 1741, and it was printed later that year. This text is derived from from The Selected Sermons of Jonathan Edwards, ed H. Norman Gardiner (New York: Macmillan, 1904) digitized by Project Gutenberg.

This infographic highlights 6 common myths and misconceptions about dyslexia, followed by the realities we have come to understand about them through scientific research.

Slavery in the Caribbean is a 2009 WebQuest developed by Jennifa Mohammed in fulfillment of technology course at the University of the Virgin Islands. Working in groups of three, students are required to research general information on slavery in three Caribbean islands chosen from a provided list. Each group is required to create a PowerPoint presentation to inform classmates on the group's findings. Presentation of the PowerPoint must be from the viewpoint of a slave in that particular island during slavery. Students will discuss comparisons between slavery in the various islands.

In this lesson designed to enhance literacy skills, students learn how animals' physical characteristics, such as jaw structure, are directly related to the function they perform when the animal interacts with its environment.

Students will explore social issues that plague our society and the world to find an issue they are passionate about or are interested in learning more about.Through a process of questioning, students will develop research questions that they will seek the answers to by conducting research of a variety of sources both in print and digital.Students will create a blog site to share their research findings and write 8 blog posts, each focusing on answering a different question or aspect of their social issue, using evidence from credible sources. Their blogs will be published and shared with an authentic audience.

Learn prepositions (on, under, next to, over and around) by singing a mariachi song with Sofia and Mr. Parrot!

Viewers sing and dance along with Sofia as she learns prepositions demonstrated by Mr. Parrot being on the sombrero, under the sombrero, next to the sombrero, over the sombrero, and around the sombrero.

Learning Objective:
Understand and use the following parts of speech in the context of reading, writing, and speaking (with adult assistance): prepositions and simple prepositional phrases appropriately when speaking or writing (e.g., in, on, under, over).

¡Aprende las preposiciones (sobre, debajo, al lado, arriba y alrededor) mientras cantas rancheras con Sofía y Sr. Perico!

Los espectadores cantan y bailan junto con Sofía mientras aprenden las preposiciones demostradas po Sr. Perico: sobre el sombrero, debajo del sombrero, al lado del sombrero, arriba del sombrero y alrededor del sombrero.

Objetivo de Aprendizaje:
Entender y usar las siguientes partes del habla en el contexto de leer, escribir y hablar (con ayuda de un adulto): preposiciones y frases preposicionales simples de manera apropiada al hablar o escribir (por ejemplo: en, sobre, debajo, arriba).

In this lesson designed to enhance literacy skills, students study a disease outbreak and the investigation that followed to understand the role that public health workers play in protecting the communities they serve.

The Spectator is the most famous work of journalism of the eighteenth century in English. It set the pattern for a kind of essay writing that persists to the present day. Comparatively short but thorough essays on topics of interest to middle-class readers (politics, fashion, the arts), written in a clear and straightforward style without partisanship or professional jargon: this is a mode that is still standard in print and online journalism. A collaboration between Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, The Spectator has in our time been credited with being essential to the formation of what the sociologist Jürgen Habermas has influentially dubbed “the bourgeois public sphere.” Habermas describes the bourgeois public sphere as being made up of private individuals coming together to constitute a public, in this case a public that was not affiliated with the government or the church, but an independent body that could discuss important issues on its own. Gathered together in coffee houses, over tea tables, or simply in their studies, readers of The Spectator were among the first to have a print publication that became a common frame of reference for middle-class English-speaking people; it set an agenda and a way of thinking about society and the arts that seemed derived, not from the aristocracy or the church, but from the shared world of the readers themselves.

This document presents the difference between Standards and Curriculum. This is helpful for educators to be able to distinguish between both concepts.