Classroom Resources

In this interactive lesson, students explore the importance of setting in literature and apply their learning to the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Students are introduced to the three main components of the setting: time, place, and the social conditions in the story. Using these three components as a framework, students gain a deeper understanding of the setting in To Kill a Mockingbird by learning about the 1930s. This resource also includes embedded vocabulary practice. A final writing assignment asks the students to write an essay synthesizing their knowledge of the time period and the book. This lesson works for students who are already engaged in studying the novel and have read at least the first two chapters.

In this online book from the International Children's Digital Library, a young American Indian describes the natural surroundings and activities of the S'Klallam, or Clallam, people through the seasons of the year. The book includes a glossary of S'Klallam words.

Author—Ron Hirschi. Illustrator—Constance R. Bergum.

The four seasons each hold a different but essential role in the lives of the S'Klallam people of the Pacific Northwest. This book highlights the importance of each season and how it affects the ways the S'Klallam people live their lives.

See the supplemental assets for detailed teaching activities. These materials allow students the opportunity to actively engage with the text.

This series of videos from Shakespeare Uncovered explores how Shakespeare uses language in his works. This gallery includes examples from Hamlet, Henry V, Macbeth, Richard II, and The Tempest and features actors and scholars discussing and debating the meaning of Shakespeare’s words. The videos highlight the way in which different phrases can have varied meanings, and illustrate how Shakespeare’s words come to life when read aloud. The collection also includes a video segment that shows where Shakespeare gained inspiration for his writing and one that raises questions about what version of Hamlet contains Shakespeare’s original text.

Be sure to read the Discussion Questions, along with the other materials under the Support Materials for Use with Students section to fully teach the standard.

In this lesson, students explore verb tense through a short, fun video and activity. Shifts in verb tense are useful in helping readers understand actions occurring at different times. Verb tenses should stay consistent in every sentence. This resource provides students with the opportunity to practice identifying shifts in verb tenses. 

Practice how to show, not tell, with similes in this Story Pirates video from Camp TV. Get ready to get creative and use your imagination!

This resource will support students as they interpret similes.

This envisionment-building lesson plan may be used with any literary text to discuss and discover multiple interpretations of a text.

The resource also guides students as they make connections to the text.

Discover how math is required for quality construction when a Master Carpenter shares his experience and expertise. This video focuses on explaining slope as rise over run and shows how slope comes into play when building homes to take math out of the classroom and into real world problem solving. This resource is part of the Math at the Core: Middle School collection.

Students will solve problems using addition, subtraction, and multiplication of fractions in this interactive from WNET. In the accompanying classroom activity, students work in groups of two and watch a series of Cyberchase videos; answer associated discussion questions; and complete an activity that uses fraction knowledge, proportion, addition, and multiplication.

Solve a linear equation that has negative numbers and a variable. This video focuses on using inverse operations to solve for a variable.

This video was submitted through the Innovation Math Challenge, a contest open to professional and nonprofessional producers and is part of the Math at the Core: Middle School collection.

Solve an inequality that has negative numbers and a variable. This video focuses on using inverse operations to solve for a variable and the importance of flipping the inequality when multiplying or dividing by a negative number. This video was submitted through the Innovation Math Challenge, a contest open to professional and nonprofessional producers.

In this video lesson, students continue to explore systems where the equations are both of the form y=mx+b. They connect algebraic and graphical representations of systems, first by matching graphs to systems, then by drawing their own graphs from given systems. Additionally, students see how to see the number of solutions from both the graphical and algebraic representations. Then they examine other types of systems with different structures and use the structure of a system of equations to reason about its lack of solutions. When students look at the structure of a system before starting to solve it in order to develop a good approach to solving, they engage in MP7.

Grade 8, Episode 5: Unit 4, Lessons 13 & 14 | Illustrative Math

In this interactive lesson, students learn the basics of how stories are structured, gain vocabulary about storytelling elements, and explore how the arts, specifically drawing, can be a valuable way for students to tell stories. By the end of the lesson, each student will have written a story with a clear setting, conflict, and resolution. They will have reflected on the process of storytelling, and are given the (optional) opportunity to create a comic.

This resource guides students as they create an original narrative. 

Students talk about what makes a good story, look at the oral tradition of storytelling, and compare and contrast stories from two different cultural traditions. In this lesson, students talk about what makes a good story, look at the oral tradition of storytelling, and watch two stories from Native Hawaiian and Alaska Native oral traditions.

Understanding and creating narratives is a fundamental literacy skill—it is also a universal human activity. When students work with written texts, recite or listen to stories, or present narratives through non-verbal means, such as art or dance, they are learning to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate their world. Teachers can build rewarding experiences for students that activate their natural love for and interest in stories. They can do this in a way that expands children's fluency and confidence with the language, as well as their respect for the rich diversity of narrative approaches and language use across cultures. As students experience narratives from different cultures, they gain perspectives on people and stories in worlds that may be unfamiliar. This will be valuable to students in many ways, for example by helping them bring a sense of perspective to their own culture and stories.

In this video lesson, students recognize that the difference between two numbers can be positive or negative, but the distance between two numbers is always positive. Using the geometry of the number line, they see that if you switch the order in which you subtract two numbers, the difference becomes its opposite. By observing the outcome of several examples, students conjecture that this is always true.

In this lesson, students will explore the themes of grief and loss in William Shakespeare's Hamlet using a video from Shakespeare Uncovered. (This lesson is best used during a reading of Hamlet.)

In this interactive lesson, students will try to find the numerical pattern to describe what happens when Dan runs stairs. This interactive lesson focuses on using what you know about pattern recognition and using data to write expressions in order for you to figure out the equation to model the situation given.

In this media collection, students explore the use of supernatural elements within William Shakespeare’s plays, focusing particularly on Macbeth, Hamlet, and The Tempest. Students examine supernatural beliefs during the 16th and 17th centuries, and they also identify how supernatural elements drive the plot of many of Shakespeare’s plays.

Be sure to read the Discussion Questions, along with the other materials under the Support Materials for Use with Students section to fully teach the standard.

In this video lesson, students work with graphs and tables that represent functions. They learn the conventions of graphing the independent variable (input) on the horizontal axis and the dependent variable (output) on the vertical axis and that each coordinate point represents an input-output pair of the function. By matching contexts and graphs and reading information about functions from graphs and tables, students become familiar with the different representations and draw connections between them.

Grade 8, Episode 8: Unit 5, Lesson 4 | Illustrative Math

Learn about tangent vectors in this video from NOVA Digital. In this hypothetical world, zombies always move straight toward humans. This means that the tangent vector of a zombie's path points at the intended target. However, when the human moves, the zombie's tangent vector points to where the human is at that instant, not to where the human is going. The zombie is not smart enough to move toward where the human will be. Therefore, the zombie takes a longer path, giving the human the chance to get away. If the human moves faster than the zombies in a circular path, multiple zombies will eventually converge on a smaller circular path that follows the human's path.

2018 Arkansas Teacher of the Year, Randi House, shows students how to look for clues in a text to support answers and gives students several examples of sentence starters they can use to introduce evidence from the text. Ms. House tells students a short story about Milly Hilly and then asks questions that require students to make inferences that must be supported by story details. The accompanying activity gives students an opportunity to practice making and supporting inferences with the short story “The Fisherman and His Wife.”

Text structures refer to the way authors organize information in a text. Recognizing the underlying structure of texts can help students focus attention on key concepts and relationships, anticipate what is to come, and monitor their comprehension as they read.

This informational material will provide students and teachers with background knowledge related to these structures:

• Narrative
• Chronological, process, or sequence
• Cause and effect
• Problem/solution
• Compare and contrast
• Definition or description

This document provides a definition, graphic organizer, transition words, and guiding questions for each type of text structure.

Investigate a situation where math plays an important role in art. This video focuses on the equation to calculate the correct weights and distances of the components necessary to balance a mobile. This video was submitted through the Innovation Math Challenge, a contest open to professional and nonprofessional producers.

Be sure to view the activity, The Art of Math - Activity (found under Support Materials for Teachers), to use with the video.

Become a detective and solve "The Case of the Missing Theme"!

When Carmen is given a class assignment to find a story's theme, she is stumped! Detective J. answers her call for help by showing her the difference between a theme and a topic. Carmen learns from Detective J. to find a theme by acting out the story's clues!

This resource teaches students how to identify the theme of a story. The resource uses a fable to model how to identify themes. 

Do you speak Elvish? How about Klingon? Learn about the history of constructed language in literature in this video from It’s Lit! Tolkien is widely regarded as the most influential author of the fantasy genre… period. But one of the less-discussed aspects of his work is the way Tolkien used constructed language in his writing. Nowadays authors are constantly making up words and languages for the worlds they build, but Tolkien was unique in that he constructed languages first, and then created worlds so his fictional languages would have somewhere to live. Support materials include discussion questions, a “construct your own language” activity, and resources on how to learn Elvish.

Students will examine sentence structure and context to create a language. Students will also examine how Tolkien's cultural perspective influenced the languages he created.

This video lesson introduces distributive property. Students recall the use of rectangle diagrams to represent the distributive property and work with equations involving the distributive property with both addition and subtraction.

The purpose of this video lesson is to apply the distributive property to situations where one of the quantities is represented by a variable, as in 2 (x + 3) = 2x + 2 • 3. Students use rectangle diagrams to represent these situations, reinforcing the idea that the work with expressions is an extension of the work with numbers. They see that the distributive property can arise out of writing areas of rectangles in two different ways, emphasizing equivalent expressions as two different ways of writing the same quantity.

In this activity, students will practice reading analog and digital clocks and practice using a.m. and p.m. when writing time. Included are simple teacher-led activities and hands-on exercises for students.

In this activity from The Electric Company, students will review counting by tens and hundreds, discuss ways to group by tens and hundreds and match bundles of tens and hundreds with the corresponding number. Included are simple teacher-led activities and hands-on exercises for students.

In this activity from The Electric Company, students will practice reading three-digit numbers and compare two- and three-digit numbers using greater than, less than, and equal signs. Included are simple teacher-led activities for students.

In this activity from The Electric Company, students will use standard tools to measure objects and measure to show how much longer one object is than another. Included are simple teacher-led activities and hands-on exercises for students.

In this activity The Electric Company, students will review counting by fives, tens, and hundreds and discuss how 100 is a bundle of ten tens. Included are simple teacher-led activities and hands-on exercises for students.

This video is designed for parents and learners to sit down and watch together. As you watch this updated version of The Emperor’s New Clothes, take note of the character's personalities, how these characters interact, and how they are similar or different from one another.

After the video, check out the additional activities below for the classroom and for the home, and watch the “Guided Viewing” version for parents to get additional tips for helping their child understand the English Language Arts concepts in the video.

Designed to meet Grade 5 English Language Arts Standards: Reading Literature: Compare and contrast two or more characters, settings, or events in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (e.g., how characters interact).

You can access the text by using the following link: https://aptv.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/shortstory_grade5/fairy_tales/

Students examine the importance of setting in this excerpt about the moors, from MASTERPIECE’s 2002 version of The Hound of the Baskervilles. The legend of the hound that haunts the mysterious landscape of Dartmoor captured Arthur Conan Doyle’s imagination. As students study the setting, they are also introduced to the cunning villain of the story, Stapleton, and what happens when the civilized Sherlock Holmes must solve a mystery set against such a wild and turbulent backdrop.

This media gallery from Shakespeare Uncovered will help your students understand the many plots in A Midsummer Night's Dream, how they move the play forward, and how they are intertwined. Videos, text-dependent questions, and graphic organizers will highlight what students need to know about the play's Athenian court as well as its lovers, fairies, and rude "mechanicals."

In this video lesson, students encounter the quadratic formula and learn that it can be used to solve any quadratic equation. They use the formula and verify that it produces the same solutions as those found using other methods, but can be much more practical for certain equations.

Using the quadratic formula to solve equations requires students to attend carefully to the parameters in the given equations (MP6) and to apply different properties of operations flexibly as they reason symbolically (MP2).