Learning Activities

Students will wrap up their lessons on the Great Depression by working in collaborative groups to write the gist of an article on this topic. The students will take a short quiz provided by ducksters.com. The quiz will include information from the article as well as information they have learned throughout the lessons about the Great Depression, the Stock Market, and the negative effects they had on the general population. The students will create a Google Slides presentation about what they have learned as a summative activity.

This resource was created in partnership with Dothan City Schools.

This learning activity is an engaging group activity using the website WordArt.  The activity is best used after a lesson taught on the characteristics of a civilization.  In the activity, the students will be assigned a civilization and create a word cloud using words that describe specific features from each of the 7 characteristics of that civilization.  Then students will compare significant features of all four civilizations by comparing the common characteristics from their group's word clouds using a graphic organizer.

This activity was created as a result of the ALEX Resource Development Summit.

This government learning activity is an introduction to civics and government. The students will apply their learning of how a government makes rules and laws to create a classroom constitution that the students (citizens) will be able to vote on. 

This resource was created in partnership with Dothan City Schools.

This activity can be used in the middle of a lesson about the theme of racial prejudice and sexism as depicted in the short story “Desiree’s Baby” (1894) by Kate Chopin. Students will read and discuss the biography of Kate Chopin before they read the short story. Students will complete the Foreshadowing Graphic Organizer as they read the story for group discussion and a writing activity involving an alternate ending for the story.

This activity was created as a result of the ALEX Resource Development Summit.

Students will participate in a collaborative guessing game with another classroom from a "mystery place" somewhere on the globe through a video conference. This game helps students learn about geography, culture, and the similarities and differences of how children live all over the world. Students are to prepare questions ahead of time to help them pinpoint their location. These questions are not only focused on geography but culture as well. While honing their questioning and conversation skills each class takes turns answering questions about each other until their location has been pinpointed.

This activity was created as a result of the DLCS COS Resource Development Summit.

Students will create a map that depicts the centers of slave trade and Triangular Trade Routes. They will write captions on the map illustrations using grade-appropriate, general academic, and domain-specific words and phrases accurately, including those that signal contrasting ideas, additional information, and other logical relationships.  This activity will take place after students have learned about the places, people, and products involved in the Triangular Trade Route used during the trade of enslaved Africans to various locations in the Western Hemisphere.

This activity uses YouTube as its digital resource. "Longitude and Latitude Meaning Definition for Kids" is a video that explains the definitions of latitude and longitude. The students will also engage in a Quick Write about the video relating to our essential question, What do the geographical terms latitude and longitude mean? Afterward, the students will participate in a hands-on activity.

This activity results from the ALEX Resource Development Summit.

Students will utilize the digital tool Google Slides to create a presentation about a technological advancement made in the United States since World War II and share their findings with their classmates.

This activity results from the ALEX Resource Gap Project.

In this activity, students will work in small groups to view a photograph of a mural in Clotilda: The Exhibition which is on display at the Africatown Heritage House in Mobile. They will use the photograph to locate the name of their assigned person. The class will discover and discuss that the people they were assigned in a previous related learning activity were survivors of the slave trade and were on board the ship Clotilda. They will use what they have learned to complete the L portion of the KWL Chart they began in a preceding related learning activity, which will require them to identify Mobile as a site of the slave trade. 

In this learning activity, students will be introduced to the many jobs of Paul Revere and how he helped to contribute to the American Revolution.  The students will listen to a rap song about Paul Revere's famous midnight ride and will collaboratively complete a picture frame graphic organizer about Paul Revere to highlight his contributions to the American Revolution.

This alignment results from the ALEX Resource Development Summit.

Students will read, analyze, and annotate a secondary source, World War II POW Camps in Alabama. They will use the information to write one to two paragraph summaries (postcards) from German POW perspectives. The summaries will include information about the camps in Alabama, daily routines, prisoner treatment, educational and work opportunities, and how the cities and people of Alabama were affected by the camps.

This activity results from the ALEX Resource Gap Project.

In this activity, students will organize research about their assigned European Explorer (see Early European Explorers: Part One!). Students will use the guided research paper to direct their research into key topics and ideas about an Early European Explorer. 

This resource was created in partnership with Dothan City Schools.

This activity should be used at the beginning of a lesson about the long-standing racial prejudice issues in America as depicted in short stories like Kate Chopin’s “Desiree’s Baby” (1894). The teacher can use the Poll Everywhere site to create a question like “What 'appropriate' word comes to mind when you compare racial prejudice of modern-day America to the America of 125 years ago?” You can use the responses to the question to create a “Word Picture” on the Poll Everywhere website so that students can see all responses on the board. This will segue to viewing a YouTube video entitled "Too White to Be Black Too Black to be White" (5:36 min.). 

This activity was created as a result of the ALEX Resource Development Summit.

In this activity, students will be introduced to actual historical people who were forced from their homes in Africa, as a part of the slave trade, and brought to Alabama on the ship Clotilda. Students will read a brief informational text and use the content to complete a K-W-L chart, mark the birth and death place of each enslaved person, and formulate questions about the course of the enslaved person’s life.  Students will not be made aware of the enslaved status or the means they traveled to the United States during this activity, but they will begin to recognize, with guidance from the teacher, that Mobile, Alabama, along with other sites, was a center of the slave trade and is home to a port that was a stop on the Triangular Trade routes.

The students, working in partners, will use a Google Slides template to create a virtual museum on topics related to Classical Greece that identifies cultural contributions of Classical Greece. The students will self-generate questions and research the answers to the questions. The students will evaluate their peers and provide feedback on the virtual museums. The students will use the peer evaluation and feedback to make improvements to their museums. The students will share their virtual museums with the class.

This activity was created as a result of the ALEX Resource Development Summit.

Students will explore what life was like in the trenches on the Western Front for World War I soldiers in this interactive online activity. They will have to make choices about how they will handle different situations they are presented with. They have to make a series of decisions as they learn about the hardships these soldiers faced. Certain choices will lead to survival, others will not. They will see types of food, entertainment, and conditions of this horrific war as they navigate through the interactive site.

This activity was created as a result of the DLCS COS Resource Development Summit.

Students will view a photograph of the historic marker placed in Mobile to commemorate the arrival of five ships containing enslaved Africans to that location. They will read the information on the marker to understand why it was placed and to gather details about the ships, such as their names, arrival dates, places of origin, number of captives on board, and number of deaths that occurred during the Middle Passage. Students will utilize this information to recognize Mobile as a center of the slave trade. They will collaborate locally to add the dates and a summary of the information to an online digital timeline.

This learning activity introduces students to the Legislative Branch of the Government. The students will use Ducksters.com to locate the Legislative Branch of Government article and read or listen to it with a partner. After this activity, students will be able to recognize the basic principles established in the Legislative Branch of Government. In closing, students will design a poster with a minimum of 3 facts about the Legislative Branch of Government.  

This activity results from the ALEX Resource Development Summit.

Students will watch a video on the history of the quilters of Gee's Bend, Alabama. After watching the video and discussing the lifestyle of the citizens of Gee's Bend, the students will create a classroom quilt that reflects their personalities and lifestyles. The class will have to use factor pairs to decide the best way to assemble the quilt. 

This activity was created as a result of the Arts COS Resource Development Summit.

This learning activity is an introduction to civics and government. The students will learn how rules and laws protect citizens in the local and state communities. The students will learn the responsibilities of citizens. 

This resource was created in partnership with Dothan City Schools.

In this learning activity, each student will be assigned a state, research their state, and create a video presentation about the settlement patterns of their assigned state using Adobe Spark.  Their video presentation should include reasons to live in that state and persuade others to move into their state.  This activity will give the students an opportunity to learn about other locations in the United States through peer presentations.

This activity was created as a result of the ALEX Resource Development Summit.

In this activity, students will begin to explore the primary reasons and causes for the Civil War. Students will begin to identify the differences between the Northern and Southern states, which ended with the Union and the Confederate States of America. Students will also comprehend why the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 led to the succession of Alabama and other Southern states. 

This resource was created in partnership with Dothan City Schools. 

The students will conduct research about an individual who served in the Vietnam War from their hometown or a city in Alabama. Using this information, the students will construct a memorial to their serviceman in Google Drawings. This activity will allow this time period to become relevant to students by asking them to research those geographically close to them. This activity serves as a beginning engagement tool to hook students in either the reading of The Things They Carried or a historic look at The Vietnam War.  

This activity is a result of the ALEX Resource Development Summit.

Students will make artistic choices in movement and vocalizations to connect and share the essential vocabulary in describing the beginning of civilization in the Indus River Valley as a "flashmob" for other students within their school. Through this method, teachers will front load tier three vocabulary instruction to support literacy in reading informational text. 

This activity was created as a result of the Arts COS Resource Development Summit.

Students will read and view two types of informational texts that address the Triangular Trade. They will take notes to recognize centers of the slave trade and the establishment of the Triangular Trade routes. Students will also analyze the two texts by comparing them for effectiveness.

After an extensive study of physical maps, the students will locate and create physical and political features on a map of Alabama. The Digital Tool will be used to research and aid in the creation of the features found in Alabama.

This activity results from the ALEX Resource Development Summit.

This activity will allow students to explore and examine the efficiency of Henry Ford's assembly line in a way that is hands-on and interactive. Students will be competing against one another to see if it is more efficient to create paper airplanes individually or by using the assembly line method. 

Students will utilize the text of Senate Resolution 315 to pose a question as a class.  They will view a news story about the Africatown Heritage House Museum and use the video to answer the question in a class discussion. The class will formulate additional questions about the news story and conduct an internet search to locate the information to answer those questions using digital sources.

In this learning activity, students will visit a website to gather information about the contributions of ordinary citizens including Nathan Hale, Daniel Taylor, and James Armistead during the American Revolution. These ordinary citizens were part of a unique group called The Culper Spy Ring, who supported the American Revolution by sending secret messages to George Washington about the British Army's plans. After reading about these men and women who risked their lives during the American Revolution, the students will make "invisible ink" and send their own "revolutionary warnings" to each other.

This alignment is a result of the ALEX Resource Development Summit.

Students will watch the video clip to gain an understanding of what happens to our trash. Students will learn about recycling and decomposing and the types of materials associated with each. Students will write or draw the process of recycling to show what they have learned.

This activity was created as a result of the GAP Resource Development Summit.

In this activity, students will use their research materials to organize their information on a European ship. Each section of the ship is designed for different information on their Explorer. Ships can be displayed for students to learn from one another's research. 

This resource was created in partnership with Dothan City Schools. 

In this learning activity, students will identify the origins, development, influence, key tenets, and cultural contributions of an early world religion (Judaism, Greek and Roman gods, Hinduism, Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam) in an online storyboard. They will use StoryboardThat to develop a comic strip detailing the early religion and its cultural contributions.

This activity was created as a result of the ALEX  Resource Development Summit.

The teacher will share an article about the Pueblo Indians that includes the geography, economic, cultural, belief systems, and community organization of this tribe. After recognizing the elements of this tribe in the article, students will read a similar article on a tribe of their choosing. They will present information about this tribe in a slide show.

This learning activity was created as a result of the ALEX - Alabama Virtual Library (AVL) Resource Development Summit.

This learning activity should be used to introduce the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  The students will explore the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by reading and viewing pictures on the website https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/explore/history/martin-luther-king-jr/. The students will use a T-Chart to compare and contrast cultural differences during The Civil Rights movement.

This activity was created as a result of the ALEX Resource Development Summit.

This mini-Breakout game introduces students to primary sources and World War I in an engaging and fun manner! Students use hints and solve clues to unlock the box and rescue primary source analysis documents that help them reveal details about the impact of World War I on Alabamians such as Curtis McCall. The main primary source utilized in the game/introductory activity is a draft registration card from World War I. 

This activity results from the ALEX Resource Gap Project.