In this lesson designed to enhance literacy skills, students learn about the unique environment of southern Florida's Everglades and gain insights into the interrelatedness of living things, nonliving things, and climate.

Students read literary and informational texts about knowledge and intelligence to understand what happens when humans try to manipulate the minds of others and how our understanding of intelligence has evolved over time. Students express their understanding of these ideas by exploring how authors draw on traditional stories and develop characters and themes to teach us about ourselves and others.

This one-pager provides a way for your child to monitor his or her reading accuracy, rate, expression, and punctuation.

In this lesson designed to enhance literacy skills, students learn how the forces of gravity and air resistance affect the motion of falling objects.

Formative assessment can be a powerful day-to-day tool for teachers and students. This article discusses formative assessment as an approach to teaching and learning that uses feedback as its centerpiece in a supportive classroom context. Formative assessment is a practice that empowers teachers and students to give their best to enable learning.

Our K-5 Language Arts Curriculum addresses three dimensions of student achievement: mastery of knowledge and skills, character, and high-quality student work. This document focuses on the character dimension, also referred to as social-emotional learning. Part 1 explains what EL Education means by character and how the K-5 Language Arts Curriculum promotes habits of character. Part 2 provides practical guidance about how teachers can set up the classroom environment, structures, and culture that will help this learning succeed.

The Fractured Fairy Tale tool encourages students to create their own fractured fairy tales.

This unit asks students to consider the permissible restrictions schools can place on students’ freedom of speech, as they learn about the (fictional, but realistic) case of Davis v. Ann Arbor School Board. Students will either conduct a mock negotiation in which they will try to resolve a First Amendment-related conflict between a student and his public high school, or a mock argument in which they will argue for one side in front of a panel of student judges.

This Unit contains 9 lessons:
Lesson 1: Are schools permitted to limit students’ First Amendment freedom of speech?
Lesson 2: Under what circumstances may a school punish student speech?
Lesson 3: How does the law apply to our case?
Lesson 4: What are the key elements of negotiation?
Lesson 5: How can parties use negotiation to achieve the best solution?
Lesson 6: Is negotiation an effective tool in the legal process?
Lesson 7: What is a mock argument?
Lesson 8: How do I prepare for a mock argument?
Lesson 9: How do attorneys conduct oral arguments to advocate for their clients?

Students gather factual information about frogs and toads to create nonfiction and fiction stories. Drawing is used for prewriting.

Students bring the print-rich environment of the community into the classroom through the use of environmental print, enabling emergent readers to delight in the realization that they are indeed readers.

After the Great Depression struck, Ford especially wanted to support ailing farmers. For two years, Ford and his team researched ways to use farmers’ crops in his Ford Motor Company. They discovered that the soybean was the perfect answer. Soon, Ford’s cars contained many soybean plastic parts, and Ford incorporated soybeans into every part of his life. He ate soybeans, he wore clothes made of soybean fabric, and he wanted to drive soybeans, too. 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 people in your community and the challenges they face. List three challenges that affect their daily life. Consider something you use every day and brainstorm how it could be repurposed or modified to address this problem.

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

GIST is a strategy to help students write brief, accurate, and complete summaries of material they read. In this lesson students work together summarizing larger and larger portions of text, but keeping their summaries at 25 words or fewer. Students will be able to summarize portions of informational or literary text. Students will be able to work in small groups to think critically about and discuss text.

Colorful mosaics, playful flowing forms, imaginative facades—Barcelona shines with the buildings of Antoni Gaudí. How did the son of a Catalan blacksmith become a world-famous architect? The first years of Gaudí's life were challenging. Because of an illness, young Gaudí couldn’t attend school and was often alone. Many of his days were spent out in nature, which he would later call his great teacher. Even during his training as an architect in Barcelona, his teachers were puzzled, wondering: is he a “genius or a fool?” Many considered his unusual ideas eccentric, sometimes even crazy. But Gaudí was simply ahead of his time. His buildings are now a UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) World Heritage Site.

Through most of U.S. history, women had limited access to educational programs and extracurricular activities. Most women were excluded from elite academic institutions, and those schools that accepted female applicants required them to have higher test scores and grades than their male counterparts. In the 1960s and 1970s, civil rights activists advocated for federal enforcement of equal opportunities for male and female students. In response, Congress enacted Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. This unit asks students to consider the scope and application of Title IX through the examination of statutory text, federal regulations, enforcement policies, and court decisions. Students are guided to confront questions about how the provisions of Title IX ensure nondiscrimination on the basis of gender, and to think about what sex equality means across different contexts.

This unit contains 5 lessons:
Lesson 1: Conceptualizing Equality and Non-Discrimination
Lesson 2: Analyzing Title IX and Athletics
Lesson 3: Applying Title IX Beyond Sports
Lesson 4: Applying Title IX
Lesson 5: Reshaping Title IX

Students present and receive feedback about their Genius Hour plans using a gallery walk-style approach.

Students read "The Jolly Postman", in which a postman delivers letters to storybook characters. They explore different types of mail and categorize letters from the book and their own mail. Children find favorite words, phrases, and sentences from familiar stories. Working together, they combine their words and phrases to create a poem. The poem is then shared as performance poetry.

This lesson plan asks students to analyze two primary sources, in the form of letters, that address the issues relating to religious freedom for the newly formed United States and its relation to the nature of citizenship and equality in a religiously diverse society. Students will also analyze the 1st. Amendment and develop an argument regarding 1st amendment issues today.

Teachers and students come to school bringing a wide range of backgrounds, languages, abilities, and temperaments. Get things off to the best start by asking them to respect their differences and make the most of their similarities. By sharing information on their lives and dreams, students and teachers can build community in the classroom that will support literacy instruction throughout the school year.

Students build classroom community as they get to know each other and their teacher better by sharing what they like to do outside school.