Cluster 1: Key Ideas and DetailsArchived

Students will play an interactive game depicting the interactions in a habitat and the problems that occur with exotic species introduction.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will become Florida panthers, white tailed deer, and motor vehicles in an active, tag-like game to simulate the disappearance of Everglades habitat.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson is an introduction to some of the basic principles of computer programming. Scratch is a block language that allows for programming without writing test code by using pre-made blocks that can be connected to create more complex functionality. This is the final lesson in the Phases of Matter Unit and will allow the students to showcase their understanding of states and properties of matter in a new medium.

Type: Lesson Plan

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. In this lesson, students will analyze an informational text that addresses how different types of precipitation are formed. The lesson plan includes a note-taking guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric. Options to extend the lesson are also included.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will observe a speaker and analyze a piece of informational text (an excerpt from Bill Clinton's 1993 Inaugural Address) to further develop their knowledge of summarizing, identifying central ideas and relevant details, and identifying claims and supporting reasons with evidence. Students will then play the role of the speaker and create their own writing on a topic they think would be important to kids, why they would be a good candidate for president, or how they might motivate other kids. At the lesson's end, students will present their speech to the class. A graphic organizer, student handouts, and rubrics are provided for the writing and speaking activities.

Type: Lesson Plan

Topic Overview:This 5th grade MEA asks students to work in teams to determine from which store they will buy beach equipment for a new beach rental business, after considering several criteria. After the students have created a proposal based on given data, a twist is added which may vary their results.

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

The students follow the engineering process to assist Worldwide Food Distribution Mission improve their food delivery device in order to deliver food to remote parts of the world.

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson consists of students reading a challenging text, "Civil Rights on a City Bus," about Rosa Parks. This text requires students to determine the claims made in the article by the author and the reasons and evidence used to support them. Students will also have a chance to use context clues to define vocabulary words within the text and answer text-dependent questions. Upon completion of the reading activities, students will write a short response that provides evidence to prove each claim made by the author.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will complete a close reading of "Animal Farm," a nonfiction article found online at National Geographic that describes the incredible work one man accomplished as he turned a cattle ranch in Costa Rica into a national wildlife refuge. The students will conduct three close readings of the article, each time for a different purpose. The students will create vocabulary charts and find evidence in the article to answer a set of text-dependent questions. Students will then write an informative essay where they explain how the work of Jack Ewing changed this land. Sample responses are provided along with a writing response rubric.

Type: Lesson Plan

This close reading lesson will engage students in discussions that involve how two authors in different genres describe the same event. These short texts, the poem "The Great Chicago Fire" and the informational text "Chicago," will require students to analyze text, make inferences based on text evidence, and defend their understandings through discussion and close reads. Students will use context clues to determine word meaning and unfamiliar phrasing in both texts. Students will participate in partner and small group work throughout the lesson. For the summative assessment, students will write an explanatory essay about the main ideas and key details of each text, as well as analyze the similarities in how each author describes the Chicago fire. 

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will be read the non-fiction article, "A Well-Kept Secret." The students will work to determine the meaning of selected vocabulary from the article and find evidence in the passage to answer a set of text-dependent questions. Students will also explain how the relevant details support the central ideas and summarize the article.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will learn all about bridges and become "engineers" as they read, comprehend, and infer text to determine the kinds of bridges that need to be built for a variety of scenarios.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will begin to learn about discrimination by analyzing how a narrator's or speaker's point of view can influence the way events are described in a story. Students will create a KWL chart, Venn diagram, and Character web, and then write an essay, all while working collaboratively to explore this important cultural issue.

Type: Lesson Plan

Inventive minds have persisted throughout history. Inventors have improved our lives with inventions created out of a desire to solve a problem or make the quality of peoples' lives better. Our president is concerned that we are not keeping up with other countries in the area of engineering and inventive thinking. Why is this? As students explore famous inventions from around the world throughout history, they will decide what the best inventions of all time are and support their opinion with strong reasons.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will have an opportunity to read a portion of President Kennedy's speech to Congress about Space Exploration. Using Text Dependent Questions, students will discuss the speech with partners as well as a class and finally write a text based expository essay.

Type: Lesson Plan

This MEA asks students to assist Ms. Joy Ride who is creating a virtual TV series about extreme roller coasters. They work together to determine which roller coaster is most extreme and should be featured in the first episode. Students are presented with research of five extreme roller coasters and they must use their math skills to convert units of measurements while learning about force and motion.

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

This Model Eliciting Activity (MEA) is written at a 5th grade level. The Wazzup Charter School MEA provides students with an engineering problem in which they must work as a team to design a procedure to select the best type of surface for a playground at a charter school.

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

This Engineering Design Challenge is intended to help fifth grade students apply the concepts of plant and animal life cycles and physical characteristics, as well as animal behaviors in a compare and contrast situation. It is not intended as an initial introduction to this benchmark.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will research causes leading up to the Revolutionary War and their specific effects. They will use various informational text resources to research a particular central event during this time period and place key points into a cause and effect graphic organizer. Working in small groups, they will compose a reader's theatre script depicting what they gathered in their research. They will rehearse and present their reader's theatre to their classmates.

Type: Lesson Plan

The goal of this two to three day exemplar is to give students the opportunity to use the reading and writing habits they've been practicing on a regular basis to absorb deep lessons from Richard Feynman's recollections of interactions with his father. By reading and rereading the passage closely, and focusing their reading through a series of questions and discussion about the text, students will identify how and why Feynman started to look at the world through the eyes of a scientist. When combined with writing about the passage, students will discover how much they can learn from a memoir.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will determine the main ideas in two informational texts about the work and dreams of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. The culminating activity will require students to show understanding of the information presented and the relationship between the two men's dreams by 1) selecting one of three pieces of art to best represent their civil rights dreams, and 2) writing an opinion piece explaining their choice.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson is an instructional routine for informational text in which teachers provide guided practice and students practice mapping details from multiple texts. Mapped details are used to analyze relationships and points of view from texts on the same topic.

Culminating activity options for this lesson include having students work in teams to create detailed geographical maps or write interactive dialogue to be performed for the class using props.

Type: Lesson Plan

The general manager (GM) of a National Football League (NFL) team has to decide which injured players to going to cut (remove) from the team and which players to keep. This is a very difficult decision for the GM to make. The GM cares about the players and this decision will end the football careers of those who are cut. This happens every season, so the GM wants a system that can be used to make this decision every year. Experts in the organs of the human body and their functions are needed to create this system.

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. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

Learn to quote accurately from a text when answering explicit questions and when supporting inferences from the text as you complete this interactive tutorial.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Students can practice answering reading comprehension questions with a text about online learning. With an account, students can save their work and send it to their teacher when complete.

Type: Student Center Activity

In this activity, students will use multiple reading strategies to answer questions and comprehend text.

Type: Student Center Activity

In this activity, students will summarize text using a graphic organizer.

Type: Student Center Activity

In this activity, students will answer questions about the author's purpose.

Type: Student Center Activity

In this activity, students will summarize text (narrative and expository) using a graphic organizer.

Type: Student Center Activity

This web resource provides students with support in understanding the importance of having rules (laws) in society, learning how they are addressed in the U.S Constitution, and gaining an understanding of the Bill of Rights.

Type: Teaching Idea

This resource is provided by , a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, and encourages students to look critically at advertisements.

These activities will help students:

• learn to conceptualize advertisements as texts that can and must be critically read.
• develop explicit strategies for reading and interpreting advertisements.
• recognize that advertisements are constructed messages.

Type: Teaching Idea

This resource is provided by , a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, and encourages students to look critically at advertisements.

These activities will help students:

• define the meaning, purpose and influence of advertising.
• think about advertising as something that can be read and interpreted, like other written and visual texts.
• activate and communicate prior knowledge about the role advertising plays in their daily lives.

Type: Teaching Idea

This informational text is intended to support reading in the content area. The text informs readers about how several types of precipitation are formed in the atmosphere, including rain, hail, freezing rain, and snow.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. The text details the intriguing relationship between turtles and butterflies in the Amazon rainforest: butterflies drink the turtles' tears to get their sodium fix! The article also explores how both organisms are affected by this relationship.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. The article and graphics explain the atmospheric conditions needed to form different types of precipitation: snow, freezing rain, and sleet.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. This National Geographic article describes the amazing attributes of the human brain, comparing its features to everyday objects like a light bulb or a computer.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. The article describes how the dwarf seahorse's head shape allows it to be a better predator.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. The article describes how, through high-speed video, scientists are able to see how bladderworts (carnivorous plants) trap small animals very quickly.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. This article describes properties of items as hyrdophobic or hyrdophilic and how they work.

Type: Text Resource

This resource is intended to support reading in the content area. The comet ISON, believed to originate from the frozen Oort cloud, has been studied in order to make predictions about its destiny – will it be destroyed by, or slung around, the sun?

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. The article walks the reader through the water cycle, from the point of view of a drop of water.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. This article discusses the steps in the water cycle.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. This text explores the possibility of creating a prosthesis (artificial limb) that can feel things.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. The article describes the ability of the hornworm caterpillar to defend itself against predators using its food source.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. The article discusses the study of a population's ability to adapt to the environment. The section of focus is on the cichlid population in Lake Victoria.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. "Secrets of the World's Extreme Divers" explores the reason sea mammals are able to hold their breath for long periods of time.

Type: Text Resource

This is a fifth grade book unit on The Story of Jackie Robinson: Bravest Man in Baseball by Margaret Davidson (Lexile 760). The unit features a series of lessons titled: Distinguish Between Biography and Autobiography; Author's Opinion; Retelling a Life; Events and Effects; Text Features. The resource also includes an 18-day pacing guide, student resource packet and answer keys, and a unit assessment and answer keys.

Type: Unit/Lesson Sequence

This is a fifth grade unit on the novel The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson. Several concepts are explored throughout this lesson, including plot, conflict, prediction, characters, theme, and relationships. The student packet and accompanying materials provide practice with these concepts.

Type: Unit/Lesson Sequence

This is a fifth grade unit on the novel Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli. Graphic organizers, charts, comprehension and vocabulary worksheets, and authentic collaborative activities are used to enhance interaction with the novel. Several concepts are pursued, including theme, conflict, relationships, plot, and characters.

Type: Unit/Lesson Sequence

In this novel unit, broken up into seven lessons, students will learn about the genre of realistic fiction, making predictions, identifying plot conflicts, analyzing character relationships, examining gender roles, determining themes, and tracking character changes through reading and discussing the novel Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson (Lexile 810).

Type: Unit/Lesson Sequence