Learning Activities

This interactive website allows students to examine the process of how each protein is coded for in the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) which hold the “The Secret Code of Life”. Students are able to manipulate models to explore transcription to demonstrate how complementary nucleotides bind to ensure a correct copy. Next, students are able to manipulate and observe, step by step, the process of translation. Students are then able to observe the folding of proteins and experiment with a protein model simulation. Lastly, students are able to apply mutations to a simulated protein sequence to observe what happens to the protein.

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

In this learning activity, the students will work together taking turns to add small quantities encouraging counting on rather than recounting the set from one each time. It engages the students by using the number cubes to produce numbers and collect counters.  It will help students to count and organize numbers more efficiently.

This activity results from the ALEX Resource Development Summit.

In this activity, the students will do a presentation about an over-the-counter weight loss pill. They will explain how the drug will work and if the drug is safe and effective. Each group will have a given amount of time to do their presentation. A rubric, Rubric Weight Loss Pills, will be used to score their work.

This activity results from the ALEX Resource Development Summit.

Students will learn how to assemble a Hollywood flat. Students will learn the names of all pieces that comprise a flat, they will learn how to arrive at their measurements for all pieces, practice cutting the pieces, assemble all pieces together with predrills, impact drills, screws, and glue. At the end of the activity, students should understand all parts of the flat and also how to build it from the ground up.

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

Educreations is a digital white board where students can draw, narrate, and view different lessons. Students can create their own lessons or view ones that other people have made.

“The Story of Bottled Water” video tells the story of how Americans are influenced to purchase more than half a billion bottles of water every week when tap water is less expensive and sometimes healthier than bottled water. The environmental effects of plastic water bottles add up to billions of bottles in landfills each year. The nonrenewable materials needed to package the bottled water add up to a mountain of problems that have a negative impact on the environment. The website also includes “Act, Learn, and Share” links to lead students and teachers into getting involved. This link is a great entry event for environmental education with the potential to develop into a project-based learning topic integrating all subject areas. 

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

During this before activity, the students' prior knowledge will be assessed and activated by completing an ABC brainstorm of matter using the Alphabet Organizer tool. The digital tool allows the student to create an alphabet chart or book using words and pictures. The students can have voice and choice by choosing to create an alphabet chart with five words per letter or with a word, note, and picture for each letter. When the project is complete, the students can save their work, print their work, or share their work through an e-mail link. This web tool requires a computer with internet access and Adobe Flash Player.  

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

During this activity, the students will collaborate in groups of 4 to complete a List-Group-Label as a before strategy for a lesson on radioactivity to activate and assess students' prior knowledge.  The students will collaborate on a shared Google document to create a brainstorm of all the words and concepts they know that are associated with the word, radioactive. Then, they will group the words into categories and ultimately label each group of terms. This activity will give the teacher insight into student's thoughts and possible misconceptions about radiation before a lesson on radioactivity. 

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

This activity is an interactive online tool that allows students to explore and apply the order of operations to solve and evaluate algebraic expressions.

This activity was created at the ALEX Resource Development Summit.

In this learning activity, students will create a Voki as a creative, easy-to-use tool that will help motivate students, improve lesson comprehension, and student participation.  Students will use a Voki to define key mathematical terms ( factors, sum, terms, product, quotient, coefficients) needed to identify parts of an expression.

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

Students will use the Kahoot! response system to solve one-step equations and inequalities with one variable.

The teacher will be able to monitor the use of Kahoots as a type of formative assessment - through quizzing, collaboration, and presentation of content. Kahoot! initiates peer-led discussions, with students left on the edge of their seats.

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

In this activity, the students will be introduced to antonyms, synonyms, and homonyms using examples on index cards. Teaching students to read and write often involves teaching them about how language works in general. This lesson focuses on strategies you can use for teaching synonyms, antonyms, and homonyms. Giving students an understanding of the aforementioned phenomena leads to better comprehension, better spelling, and more expressive writing. 

This activity results from the ALEX Resource Development Summit.

Molly's More or Less Quest is an interactive game that reads students a short word problem and asks the student to tell if the numbers are less than, greater than, or equal to that are given in the word problem. The numbers are visually displayed. When a student hovers over the word it also reads the word to them before clicking.

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

ABCya provides a fun and educational interactive game that teaches students to count by ones from another number other than 1. In this particular connect the dots, students are counting by ones from the number 21 to 40. The game provides scaffolding after wrong attempts and gives accuracy in a percentage when the dots have been connected.

In this activity, students will use a digital device to access the "Add to Ten" from ABCya, use input devices (mouse, touch screen, and/or keyboard), and Google Sheets in order to demonstrate finding the number that makes ten for any number from one to nine.

"Add to Ten" from ABCya provides a fun and educational interactive game that helps students demonstrate finding the number to make ten for any number given between one and nine. "Add to Ten" is very visual, provides feedback, and scaffolds instruction when students answer incorrectly. 

The Google Sheets template, "Count to 10 - Decomposing Numbers" will allow students to apply their skills of finding a number to make ten for any number given between one and nine. The Google Sheets template provides immediate feedback for students.

The application activities will allow students to demonstrate the mathematical skills as well as digital literacy skills of using input devices, locating letters and numbers on a keyboard, and using digital devices both independently and collaboratively.

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

In this activity, students will use "Fuzz Bugs - Counting, Sorting, & Comparing" from ABCya that provides a fun and educational interactive game that gives students the opportunity to sort, count, and compare the fuzz bugs. The interactive helps students learn to sort objects by colors, count the objects, then compare the different fuzz bugs.

After students interact with "Fuzz Bugs - Counting, Sorting, & Comparing" from ABCya, students will then collect and organize data about the number and attributes of the "Fuzz Bugs" collected in a Google Sheets template. The Google Sheets template will allow students to tally the number of "Fuzz Bugs" and the cells will turn the color to create a chart of the data collected. 

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

This Digital Breakout is a perfect way to enhance a unit of study with animal standards for grades 3-5. It can be used before or after a unit of study or a field trip to the Birmingham Zoo. Students will work creatively and collaboratively to solve academic puzzles to unlock an answer. Academic puzzles are centered around a variety of Course of Study standards that engage students through the Breakout process. This activity can be done as a whole group for students that are not familiar with the Digital Breakout process. This activity can be done in small groups in grades 2-5 with students that are familiar with the Digital Breakout process.  

This Learning Activity was created in partnership with the Birmingham Zoo. 

This activity is a digital breakout to enhance a unit with animal standards or for classes that have a field trip to the Birmingham Zoo. It can be used before or after the field trip or during the unit. It is an activity that will build collaborative and critical thinking. It can be used as a whole group activity for K-2 classrooms or for teachers/classrooms that are not familiar to digital breakouts. It can be an activity for small groups in K-5 rooms if students are familiar with digital breakouts. 

This Learning Activity was created in partnership with the Birmingham Zoo. 

This strategy guide will provide teachers with the background knowledge needed to implement the Jigsaw Cooperative Learning Technique in their classrooms. The digital tool explains the research basis of this technique, provides tips for integrating this strategy in the classroom, and offers links to related resources. 

This online game requires students to save seven members of a Royal Family from prison by using their order of operation skills to build stairways leading to their secret cells.

This learning activity was created as a result of the Girls Engaged in Math and Science University, GEMS-U Project.

This video explores the problem of overfishing, its impact on nearshore fishers, and one possible solution that can turn the tide of overfishing and protect near-shore fisheries for the future. It can be used as an introduction to a lesson on human impact on the environment or embedded within a lesson on the topic.

This learning activity was created as a result of the Girls Engaged in Math and Science University, GEMS-U Project.

This interactive mathematics resource explores the properties of triangles, quadrilaterals, and regular polygons and allows students to classify shapes based on their properties.

This interactive has an "explore it" tool that could be used to teach attributes of 2D shapes, and also a "use it" Shape Guess game that students can practice identifying and sorting shapes according to their attributes.

This learning activity was created as a result of the Girls Engaged in Math and Science University, GEMS-U Project.

Students will use Google Drawings to create an infographic describing why an organism is classified as a living thing. 

This learning activity was created as a result of the Girls Engaged in Math and Science University, GEMS-U Project.

The digital tool demonstrates the properties of a wave and defines each of the following terms: frequency, amplitude, wavelength, crest, trough, energy, and Hertz. 

Students will sketch an ocean scene on a 4x6 note card that depicts a large wave moving toward a beach. Then, the students will label the parts of the wave and write the definitions to the terms on the back of the note card as they discuss the interactive digital tool.  

This learning activity was created as a result of the Girls Engaged in Math and Science University, GEMS-U Project.

ReadWorks Digital provides free reading resources on many different topics. In this learning activity, students will read about different bridges around the world to compare and contrast materials used. Students will then use one material to create three different bridges based off of the bridges they read about in the text. 

This learning activity was created as a result of the Girls Engaged in Math and Science University, GEMS-U Project.

This virtual manipulative can be used to help students visualize the multiplication of two fractions using an area model. This interactive manipulative can help improve students' spatial skills and build conceptual understanding of fraction multiplication. 

This learning activity was created as a result of the Girls Engaged in Math and Science University, GEMS-U Project.

ChatterPix Kids is a fun, kid friendly app for the iPad and iPhone that can be used to enhance a geometry lesson on angles. Students will choose an angle (right, straight, obtuse, or acute), draw the angle on the graph, color it.  Students will identify a real-world object with the same angle attributes, take a picture, and draw a line on the picture for a mouth. Then, students will record their voice giving the measurement of their angle and relate their angle to one real-world object identifying common attributes such as; angle size, side length, side relationships. In this activity, students can work collaboratively in pairs or alone.

This learning activity was created as a result of the Girls Engaged in Math and Science University, GEMS-U Project.

This activity is an excellent reinforcement activity for students to explore patterns using shapes, letters, and numbers. The activity can be used individually or in groups of 2 or 3 students. 

This learning activity was created as a result of the Girls Engaged in Math and Science University, GEMS-U Project.

This activity is an excellent video for introducing a unit on waves. This is a video of a rubber duck being placed in a container of water. The question, "Why doesn't the duck move across the container?" is posed at the start and end of the video. The purpose of this activity is to get the students excited about waves and thinking about the movement of waves.  This activity can be used whole group or small group as a center activity.

This learning activity was created as a result of the Girls Engaged in Math and Science University, GEMS-U Project.

Students will create, read, and listen to four-beat rhythm ostinato patterns using quarter notes, quarter rests, pairs of eighth notes, and four sixteenth notes at various tempos. As the students interact with the game, they will practice reading and composing four-beat rhythm patterns and experience the tempos largo, andante, allegro, and presto.

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

The activity introduces the steady beat of music by using locomotor and non-locomotor movements.

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

In this activity, students will explore music vocabulary by watching an age-appropriate video.  Students will sing two familiar songs using a fast tempo and then a slow tempo. They will choose which tempo works best for each song. Students will identify the tempo of various music clips using picture cards.

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

In this lesson, students will learn about the radio's impact on society in the 1920s. Students will plan, develop, and execute a radio broadcast that discusses a notable person of the time period using the digital tool Online Voice Recorder. Online Voice Recorder is a simple online tool that allows you to record your voice and save it as an MP3 file. 

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

Rhythm and melody are not the only elements in a successful music composition. The elements of tempo and dynamics contribute to the expressiveness of the work. In this activity, students will use dice to randomly select tempos and dynamic levels for melodies.  These melodies can be student-composed or pre-existing. First, tempo speeds and dynamic levels will be assigned to the six numbers on a typical six-side die. Next, the students will roll the die and practice their melody using the selected tempo and dynamic level. They will repeat this process several times and determine which tempo and dynamic level capture the expressive nature of their melody. Students will keep a written log of their attempts and produce musical performances.

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

Students will learn about Vincent Van Gogh and his style of painting. Students will use the see-think-wonder strategy to analyze the artwork. Students will create a sunflower painting using the pointillism style of Van Gogh. 

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