This cluster includes the following access points.
Vetted resources educators can use to teach the concepts and skills in this topic.
| Name |
Description |
| Creating an Original Experiment!: | This lesson should take place once a student is familiar with the scientific method and has previously participated in various science experiments. In this lesson, the students will work in small groups to design and carry out an experiment using common classroom materials. |
| Motivating Students to Write for an Authentic Audience: | In this lesson, students will brainstorm survival tips for future fourth graders and incorporate these tips into a "how-to" essay. Students will use an online tool for creating an outline, and a graphic organizer and proofreading checklist are also included to help students edit their writing. A rubric is provided in this resource. |
| A Skateboard Riding Dog! - Exploring the Difference Between Learned and Inherited Animal Behaviors: | This is a 5E lesson which allows students to explore the differences between learned and inherited behaviors in animals. The lesson includes engaging videos of animals doing incredible things. |
| Celebrity Floor Plan Frenzy: | Students will help an architect find the area of each room in a celebrity home and then determine the best location to build the home based on qualitative data about the locations.
Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. MEAs resemble engineering problems and encourage students to create solutions in the form of mathematical and scientific models. Students work in teams to apply their knowledge of science and mathematics to solve an open-ended problem, while considering constraints and tradeoffs. Students integrate their ELA skills into MEAs as they are asked to clearly document their thought process. MEAs follow a problem-based, student centered approach to learning, where students are encouraged to grapple with the problem while the teacher acts as a facilitator. To learn more about MEA’s visit: https://www.cpalms.org/cpalms/mea.aspx |
| Cooking Up Chemistry: | Students will explore through fiction/nonfiction texts and hands-on activities that materials can be altered to change some of their properties. In an extension lesson, students can also explore how other forms of energy (besides electricity) can be used to cook food. |
| Strategically Structured (Text Structures): | This lesson presents students with three types of text structures (description, sequence, and problem/solution). Students are able to identify clue words that categorize each text structure and create their own graphic organizers and pieces of writing for each text structure. |
| Crazy about Corn: | In this lesson, students will use ears of corn to write a descriptive paragraph using adjectives to improve their writing. |
| Cinderella, Cinderella: | This lesson will help students review the story elements of fairy tales, using the original version of Cinderella. In subsequent lessons they will be using this information to compare and contrast different multicultural versions of Cinderella. |
| Improving Writing with Strong Adjectives: | For this lesson, students will be able to improve their writing skills by generating ideas through brainstorming and group discussion, particularly as it relates to using more descriptive details. |
| Classify and Categorize: Writing a Research Report: | This is the third lesson in a fourth grade unit on classification and categorization. Students will use an outline to create a research report. The additional lessons in the unit are attached as related resources. |
| Discovering Florida's Past with A Land Remembered (Lesson 1 of 2): | Explore the adventures of the MacIvey family with A Land Remembered Student Edition, Volume 1. Tag along as the family overcomes tragedy in the Florida wilderness while learning to use evidence in the text to support thinking. In this lesson students will learn about what life was like for pioneers in Florida. Students will relate to the characters by writing journal entries from a character's perspective. |
| I'm SENSING Some Improved Writing: | In this lesson, students will use their senses to include imagery into their writing. Students will describe an object using their five senses and then write a paragraph about the object. Students will work closely with a partner to improve their writing, providing feedback that enhances the imagery used in their writing. |
