LAFS.68.RST.1.2Archived Standard

Students will collect data to identify planet composition, average temperature, and the distance of some planets within the Milky Way Galaxy from the Sun. Students will complete two-way tables to make comparisons. Students will then analyze and interpret their data. Students will make inferences and justify their reasoning.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will analyze an informational text designed to support reading in the content area. The article introduces readers to a new threat to giant panda survival: horses. The article explains how both species are competing for the limited bamboo supply in the Wolong Nature Reserve. This lesson includes a note-taking guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will analyze an informational text intended to support reading in the content area. The article describes one common virus that takes a sneaky route to success. It doesn't kill its leafy hosts, instead, it makes infected plants smell more attractive to bees. This ensures the virus will have a new generation of the plants to host it in the future. This lesson includes a note-taking guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a rubric.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will analyze an article that explains how bees have made an evolutionary adaptation of shorter tongues due to their flower food source moving up a mountain as a result of climate change. This lesson is designed to support reading in the content area. This lesson includes two note-taking guides, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, and sample answer keys.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will analyze an informational text, maps, and data tables intended to support reading in the content area. The article, "Climate Change Could Stall Atlantic Ocean Current" explains how interactions between Earth's spheres can have a global impact on ocean currents, climate, and weather. This lesson includes a note-taking guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys and a writing rubric.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students read an interesting article about a fish with a see-through head to help them think about traits that are beneficial in a certain environment (adaptation). They also consider how improved observations lead to more sophisticated science ideas.

Type: Lesson Plan

Oil is a natural resource of vital importance to nations around the world. In this lesson, students will read a short informational text that outlines the benefits and burdens of responsible use of oil, including what needs to be considered when exploring and drilling, when using hydraulic fracturing, and when transporting oil. The article also briefly discusses actions the U.S. took after several major oil spills to help better protect the environment in the future. This lesson is designed to support reading in the content area. The lesson plan includes a note-taking guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, and sample answer keys.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson students will observe heated air rising.  Specifically students will focus on the properties of land and water in relationship to heat and retention of heat. From this information students will conclude that the uneven heating of the earth's surface will cause the air in the atmosphere above to move.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson is designed to be a fun and creative way to introduce math vocabulary (radius, diameter, and circumference) related to circles. Students will create a story board (comic strip) to retell the story using targeted vocabulary, and then demonstrate understanding of the relationships among radii, diameter, and circumference by completing the worksheet.

In my experience, lower performing students struggle to not confuse radius, diameter, and circumference. My learning objective in this lesson is to have them correctly remember the "parts" of a circle and that a diameter is comprised of 2 radii. I frequently refer back to the story in later lessons when they are having difficulty identifying radius or diameter.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students explore morphology (body shape) of fish and how they can indicate the fish"s lifestyle.

Type: Lesson Plan

This is a 7th grade lesson on energy transfer among producers and consumers, as well as how different levels of an ecosystem rely on each other to thrive and survive.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this Model Eliciting Activity, MEA, the purpose of this lesson is to provide students with the opportunity to solve real-world problems using addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of multi-digit decimals. They will write arguments to support claims with clear reasons and relevant evidence. Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions.

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 activity brings heat to life. It is based on transferring of heat through conduction, convection, radiation. It is a 4-day lesson with a PowerPoint, 2 labs, and a computer activity. Students have real word experiences with these and are now able to relate them to their daily lives.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will read an engaging reading passage about what the skeletal system does and has a little activity called "Jumbled Bones" that has the students make a small human skeleton for their notebooks. Students will then explore, in small groups, chicken bones with magnifying glasses. The students will look at the bones for evidence of structure and components and they will speculate about purpose the bone served based on its physical appearance. Next, they will watch a short video clip about how red blood cells are produced. The teacher will follow-up with a class discussion about "How the skeletal, respiratory and circulatory systems work together to maintain homeostasis" and students will write a summary explanation in their interactive notebooks. For further elaboration, students will watch a video clip "Bones Narrated" which is a guided tour of the skeleton and its functions, and do a virtual game called "Build a Skeleton" which allows students to drag bones to create a human skeleton. Lastly, students will be evaluated on their knowledge of the skeletal system and its functions by creating a poster to present and explain to the teacher.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will view a variety of videos that show how ocean currents can affect weather. Students will also summarize a text about ocean currents, winds and ice.

Type: Lesson Plan

This MEA requires students to formulate a comparison-based solution to a problem involving choosing the best day care center in the neighborhood for the residents of Dream Living Housing Community. Students are provided the context of the problem, a request letter from a client asking them to provide a recommendation, and data relevant to the situation. Students utilize the data to create a defensible model solution to present to the client.

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

In this lesson students will investigate pedigrees and culminate in an activity where students create their own or imaginary pedigree.

Type: Lesson Plan

This activity gets the students involved in a controversial issue the world is facing. It gets them engaged in reading a higher level article several times over. Students will annotate the text and cite factual evidence directly from the text. In two days, they will have group discussions, watch a short video and read an article all while learning about global warming.

Type: Lesson Plan

Beginning genetics lesson for 7th grade students.

Type: Lesson Plan

Click "View Site" to open a full-screen version.

By the end of this module, teachers should be able to:

• Name the key instructional shifts in English Language Arts and Literacy
• Label the College and Career Readiness, also known as CCR, anchor standards for Reading
• Use the language of the Reading Standards for Literacy in Science and Technical Subjects to identify what students should know and be able to do
• Arrange and sequence the Reading Standards for Literacy in Science and Technical Subjects
• Distinguish the changes in rigor as a Reading standard progresses from one grade band to the next

This is Module 1 of 4 in the series, "Literacy across the Content Areas: Reading and Writing to Build Content Knowledge."

Type: Professional Development

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. Prey species exhibit a variety of behaviors to avoid getting eaten by predators. For example, some animals may run away, find shelter, or move to a safer area if they sense predators are near. This article describes the responses of two prey species in detail: tree frog tadpoles that hatch early when predators are close by, and elk that avoid eating in dangerous areas when wolves are present. Their responses to fear can affect not only the prey species, but the entire food web.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. This article describes an exciting series of experiments aimed at determining whether complex life could exist in the extremely harsh Antarctic environment of Lake Vostok. Researchers found some evidence of complex life from DNA analysis, but confirming such extraordinary findings would require substantial additional data and repeated confirmation. The text offers a great overview of the complex nature of the scientific process and what it takes to truly confirm an experimental finding.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. Gorilla Glass on your phone? Magnetic fluid shocks in your car? With applications here on Earth, "smart" materials like these are being studied in the microgravity of space. The programmed rearrangement of particles on a molecular level enhances materials in new high-tech products.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. The text describes the science behind baseball by analyzing an actual pitch that took place in a Royals vs. Tigers game. The text describes how Newton's First Law affects the pitch and then describes how energy is transferred from ball to bat. Finally, the text explains how scientists use several methods to analyze the physics of a pitch.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. This is a clearly organized high-interest informative text explaining how astronauts use the bathroom, sleep and eat in zero gravity. The web version has a video, library of photos, and many other related sites that students can independently investigate.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text is intended to support reading in the content area. This news article describes an astronomer's theory that a particularly strong series of tides contributed to an abundance of icebergs and may have resulted in the sinking of the Titanic. It is complete with the evidence behind the theory and a contrary opinion from another astronomer.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. This is a fabulous article that shows the role and relationship among predators and consumers while also incorporating the process of photosynthesis.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. The news article thoroughly describes a transitional primate fossil and includes artist illustrations of the animal in its environment, sidebar information describing the Messel Pit, life for animals in a maar, and how the fossil was named. The article also includes a pop-up glossary of potential problematic vocabulary.

Type: Text Resource

Click "View Site" to open a full-screen version. This tutorial is designed to help secondary science teachers learn how to integrate literacy skills within their science curriculum. This tutorial will demonstrate a series of steps that teachers can teach students to help them determine the central ideas of a science text. The focus on literacy across content areas is designed to help students independently build knowledge in different disciplines through reading and writing.

Type: Tutorial