This cluster includes the following access points.
Vetted resources educators can use to teach the concepts and skills in this topic.
| Name |
Description |
| Newton's First Law of Motion Part 1 of 3: | This lesson plan is the first in a series of connected lessons on Sir Isaac Newton's Laws of Motion published on CPALMS. This lesson provides a brief background of Sir Isaac Newton and covers Newton's First Law of Motion. |
| Making It Rain: | 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. |
| Name That Organ!: | Can you name that organ with one clue? What about two? Students will get the opportunity to research organs and create clue cards with at least four clues that will help others Name That Organ! |
| A Better Understanding of “Civil Rights on a City Bus”: | 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. |
| Close Reading of the National Geographic article "Animal Farm": | 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. |
| Close Reading: The Great Chicago Fire: | 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. |
| Not Such a Secret: Summarizing, Central Idea, and Vocabulary: | 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. |
| The Three Main Sections of the Brain: | This lesson is an easy to follow guide to teaching students about the three main sections of the brain and some of their functions. |
| Newton's Third Law of Motion: | This lesson plan is the third in a series of connected lessons on Sir Isaac Newton's laws of motion published to CPALMS. This lesson plan teaches Newton's third law of motion. |
| Newton's Second Law of Motion Part 2 of 3: | This lesson plan is the second in a series of connected lessons on Sir Isaac Newton's laws of motion published to CPALMS. This lesson teaches Newton's second law of motion. |
| Inventions and Innovations MEA: | 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. |
| Making Connections!: | Lights, camera, action! Well, you would have action if the camera was on, and it can only turn on if it has a battery, and it can only work if the battery is charged. Put it all together, and you have a complete circuit! In this lesson, students will learn that a circuit can be connected in more than one way to make something work. The students will work to connect circuits and test different items to identify if they are conductors or insulators. |
| Space and President Kennedy: Using Close Reading and Text Dependent Questions: | 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. |
| Baseball Dilemma MEA: | In this open-ended problem, students will work in teams to determine a procedure for selecting a company from which to purchase baseball helmets. Students will make decisions based on a table that includes company, cost per helmet, material helmet are made of, framework, and comfort. Students will determine procedure for company selection with provided information, and write a letter to the client providing evidence for their decisions. 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. |
| All Sorts of Energy: | This lesson will explore six forms of energy including mechanical, heat, electrical, chemical, sound and nuclear. Through the 5E lesson plan model, students will become engaged in this hands-on lesson. This lesson will take place over 5 days, allowing students an introduction and summary as well as hands-on opportunities to explore the 6 forms of energy. |
| Sammy's Solar Fountains: | In this MEA students are presented with start-up business that needs to buy solar batteries for their business. Students will form engineering teams to review battery choices. Students will understand that solar energy is transferred into electrical energy. 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. |
| Wazzup Charter Schools Playground Dilemma MEA: | 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. |
| What’s New at the Zoo?—an Engineering Design Challenge: | 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. |
| Close Reading Exemplar: "The Making of a Scientist": | 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. |
| Informational Texts: Analyzing Relationships and Points of View Across Multiple Texts: | 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. |
| Making the Cut!: | 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. |
| Proverbs: From Understanding to Application—Using Proverbs to Create an Original Narrative: | In this lesson, students will identify and analyze common proverbs. They will create a definition and understanding of proverbs using vocabulary strategies for unknown words and phrases. Then using the literary text "The Story of Wang Li," students will identify the proverbs in the text, decipher them, and evaluate the appropriateness of them. The culminating activity will require students to use one of the proverbs from the literary text to create their own narrative in a present-day setting. |
| The Water Cycle - Back and Forth: | This lesson features a companion lesson entitled The Water Cycle - Back and Forth (part 2) published on CPALMS. In this first lesson, students create a model (drawing) after learning the parts of the water cycle. The drawing will be in their science notebooks and will be something they will build on in future lessons. At the end of the unit they will display larger finished models. Vocabulary words are defined and connected to a model of melting ice in a water bottle. |
| Tone: From Understanding to Application--Using Tone to Create an Original Memoir: | In this lesson, students will analyze the artist's tone in the painting "Washington Crossing the Delaware, December 1776." Using the same techniques of looking at the details, students will analyze the tone of the primary account and secondary account in the informational text "Washington Crosses the Delaware, 1776" to gain an understanding of how authors create tone in their writing. The culminating activity will require students to demonstrate an understanding of their study of point of view, tone, and information presented in "Washington Crosses the Delaware, 1776" by writing a historically accurate first-person memoir of the event in which the tone reflects their perspective of the event. |
| What It's Made Of: A Solute to Mixture or Solution: | In this lesson, students will explore samples to determine properties of components of mixtures. Over the course of the exploration, the teacher will guide the students to discover what sets a solution apart. Access points included. |
| Name |
Description |
| What Makes it Rain?: | 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. |
| Why Amazonian Butterflies Hover over Yellow-Spotted Turtles: | 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. |
| Sleet and Freezing Rain: What's the Difference?: | 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. |
| Your Amazing Brain: | 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. |
| Sea Horses and How They Use Their Heads: | 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. |
| Carniverous Plants Say 'Cheese': | 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. |
| A Matter of Mixing: | 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. |
| The Comet that Came in from the Cold: | 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? |
| The Water Cycle Adventure: | 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. |
| Water Cycle: | This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. This article discusses the steps in the water cycle. |
| Restoring a Sense of Touch: | 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. |
| The Bad Breath Defense: | 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. |
| Secrets of the World's Extreme Divers: | 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. |
Vetted resources students can use to learn the concepts and skills in this topic.
