Lesson Plans

Students will use the free online coding program Scratch to learn the basics of coding and how to use blocks and animations to create a game. Students will create a game to find multiples of a given factor by making a character fly into the correct multiple of the given factor. The student will go through a series of coding steps to create a background, make a character fly, and create the factor and multiple game.

This lesson plan was created as a result of the Girls Engaged in Math and Science, GEMS Project.

This lesson will focus on American symbols. Students will identify American symbols and explain how they represent the United States of America. Symbols include the Liberty Bell, Bald Eagle, Statue of Liberty, United States Flag, Washington Monument, and the Lincoln Memorial. Students will work in pairs and conduct research about American symbols and create a digital story about a symbol of their choosing.

This lesson was created as part of a collaboration between Alabama Technology in Motion and ALEX.

The lesson will begin with students accessing their prior knowledge of weather and climates by completing a warm-up writing prompt. Students will then move to reading texts on the subjects of tornadoes, hurricanes, blizzards, and droughts to determine if and how climate affects these weather phenomena. In groups, students will create a half-poster that describes their findings in text and pictures. At the end of the lesson, students will view a graph to extend their learning about tornadoes and hint at a future lesson while also completing an "exit ticket" as a means of summative assessment. 

This unit was created as part of the ALEX Interdisciplinary Resource Development Summit.

The lesson will begin with a brief review of the previous lesson from the unit, "Increasing Public Safety During Tornadoes," on how climates and geographic locations can affect weather patterns and produce natural disasters. Students will watch a short video during the before strategy to engage learners in the lesson on a particular natural disaster--tornadoes. Students will read various texts and charts in order to understand the causes and effects of tornadoes, putting the information in a T-chart to help organize their thoughts. Students will then discuss their findings with an elbow partner and then write a two-paragraph cause-and-effect essay which will serve as the summative assessment.

This unit was created as part of the ALEX Interdisciplinary Resource Development Summit.

The lesson will begin by students performing a think-aloud as they consider the similarities of five words:  tornado, shelter, basement, underground, and safe room. Students will use a pros and cons graphic organizer as they read articles on three different types of tornado shelters: underground shelters, part of the house shelters, and prebuilt shelters. The students will find the advantages and disadvantages of each type of structure. At the end of the lesson, the teacher will create a table that lists all the shelters and the pros and cons of each. Students will then determine which shelter they feel is most efficient in an "exit slip" response. 

This unit was created as part of the ALEX Interdisciplinary Resource Development Summit.

The students will go on an in-school scavenger hunt to get to know the many kinds of people that make up an elementary school community. They will work in small groups and use digital cameras to take pictures of the workers they find. By completing the scavenger hunt, the students will gain a better understanding of how we are all dependent on one another in a small community.

The students will use critical thinking skills and artistic abilities to "transform" an image into something completely different. The original images can be taken with a digital camera and printed out or cut from old magazines.

This is a group activity that allows students to use predictions to learn about the lifestyle of American colonists.

Students will construct a model of a dragon based on traits inherited from the parent dragons. This activity demonstrates the inheritance of dominant and recessive traits, codominance, and incomplete dominance. Students will use Punnett Squares to predict genotypic and phenotypic ratios of the dragon population in the class. This project could serve as a culminating activity for Genetics and the Inheritance of traits.  

This activity was adapted from Alabama Science in Motion.

This lesson results from a collaboration between the Alabama State Department of Education and ASTA.

This is a technology-based Biology lesson on the Biomes of the world. Students will work in groups and research their designated terrestrial biome. Students will research abiotic and biotic factors in their biome. Students will create a digital presentation of their biome using the preferred presentation platform. The presentation will summarize how the abiotic and biotic factors interact in their biome. Students will then use the collected data from the presentations to create food chains and food webs for their designated biomes. 

This lesson plan results from a collaboration between the Alabama State Department of Education and ASTA.

In cooperative/collaborative groups, students will compare and contrast a two-dimensional pattern and a three-dimensional shape. Students will use a net to label and then construct a rectangular prism. Students will find the surface area of a rectangular prism. As a final performance task, students will create a message box. 

Carlos the Centipede and his friend are holiday shopping for friends and family. Carlos will add, subtract, multiply, and divide decimals. Carlos will change percents to decimals to get all the great discounts during this season of the year.  In addition, he will calculate tax on his purchases. 

Waste disposal is a problem for the entire Earth and must be dealt with in a responsible manner to maintain biodiversity in ecosystems. After investigating the amount of waste they produce as an individual, family, class, school, community, and society, students investigate how items decompose in a landfill and develop arguments to support a solution to the problem. Students engage in argument to defend the effectiveness of a design solution on a proposed method of disposing of waste in their school and community. 

This lesson results from a collaboration between the Alabama State Department of Education and ASTA.

This hands-on, minds-on activity helps students use what they already know about customary measurement to help them add and subtract fractions with like and unlike denominators.

In this lesson, students will explore straight, right, acute, and obtuse angles. Students will go to the playground to search for angles. The students will use digital cameras to record their findings. They will use their findings to create a slideshow to present to the class.

This lesson is a hands-on, game-based lesson. It should be part of a larger unit of study on number sense, estimation, and/or place value. The lesson involves students in a game-based activity which gives them a concrete understanding of the relationship between number values, place value, and the accepted mathematical rule for rounding numbers.

This is a College- and Career-Ready Standards showcase lesson plan.

This lesson presents a hands-on partner activity to introduce second graders to making rectangular arrays. Students will use number dice to roll numbers and then build the coordinating array. An equation will be written to show the sum of the equal addends.

This is a College- and Career-Ready Standards showcase lesson plan.

Students will delve into discussion and writing about plot development, including generating their own reflections, original ideas, and influences on how events interact and shape character, mood, tone, and conflict.

This is a College- and Career-Ready Standards showcase lesson plan.

This lesson will allow students to become familiar with ratios. In this investigative lesson, students will compare ratios and determine equivalent ratios. This is an introductory lesson to be used as part of a unit. 

This is a College- and Career-Ready Standards showcase lesson plan.

This lesson allows students to investigate the slope criteria and characteristics of parallel lines using graphing calculators and school staircases.  Students will also use equations and graphs.  Students will work cooperatively to develop and justify ideas/conjectures.

This is a College- and Career-Ready Standards showcase lesson plan.

This lesson is part of a larger unit dealing with Early American Literature. In this lesson, students will become familiar with the figurative devices and strategies used by 17th Century Puritan poets when creating closed or fixed form poetry. 

This is a College- and Career-Ready Standards showcase lesson plan.

Children often do not understand spiders because spiders look scary. In this lesson, students will graph spider preferences and record observations of spiders in a natural habitat. Students will research spider information using the Internet. Students will illustrate a vivarium for a spider habitat, including  five environmental characteristics. 

This is a College- and Career-Ready Standards showcase lesson plan.

Students will learn to make inferences based on evidence and prior knowledge about their teacher (by looking at objects), classmates (by viewing drawings or PowerPoint), and a reading passage.

This is a College- and Career-Ready Standards showcase lesson plan.

Using the plot development toolkit, students will identify and explain plot development of a class text, including generating their own reflections, original ideas, and discussion regarding how events interact and shape character, mood, tone, and conflict.

This is a College- and Career-Ready Standards showcase lesson plan.

This lesson will allow students to become familiar with the concept of unit rate. Through an open investigation students will develop methods to find unit rate with a table, equivalent ratios, or an equation. This is a lesson to be used as part of a unit with "Painter Problems" and "How Big Should It Be?"

This is a College- and Career-Ready Standards showcase lesson plan.

Students will participate in a Socratic Seminar to discuss the idea of non- conformity as a relative theme in the novel Stargirl. Students will refer to text annotations and class discussions (completed TPFASTT optional) to make contributions to the student-led discussion.  

This is a College- and Career-Ready Standards showcase lesson plan.

This lesson will allow students to become familiar with the concept of equivalent ratios and similar objects. Through an open investigation, students will develop methods to find equivalent ratios. This is a lesson to be used as part of a unit with Painter Problems and How Far Can You Leap found in ALEX.

This is a College- and Career-Ready Standards showcase lesson plan.

Students will conduct survey-based research and compile data that compares the responses that the knights from The Wife of Bath's Tale received to the response of persons in modern day society.   

This is a College- and Career-Ready Standards showcase lesson plan.

This lesson will help students identify the moral of the story The Empty Pot by Demi. During this lesson, students will have an opportunity to discuss and write about the character trait honesty. Students will share about a time when they demonstrated this character trait.

This is a College- and Career-Ready Standards showcase lesson plan.

Students will learn nouns by using an interactive sorting game. Students will compete with each other by putting noun cards down on the floor categorized by person, place, animal, or thing. Students will have to read and sort the cards. The student with no noun cards first, wins!

This is a College- and Career-Ready Standards showcase lesson plan.

Students will gain more conceptual understanding of comparing 3-digit numbers. They will build numbers using base ten blocks and a hundreds chart and work with a partner to decide which number is greater. They will be making decisions about which place value to put the digits in to construct the greatest number.

This is a College- and Career-Ready Standards showcase lesson plan.

This lesson allows students to become familiar with a number line. Students can explore a number line and develop knowledge of numerical concepts. While it covers a 6th grade standard, this lesson can be used as part of a 7th or 8th grade lesson on integers.

This is a College- and Career-Ready Standards showcase lesson plan.

If you grab a bunch of jump ropes and tell your kids you're going outside, you can trick them into thinking they are getting recess. Instead, you can surprise them with a math lesson about how to identify the points on the coordinate plane! 

This is a College- and Career-Ready Standards showcase lesson plan.

Students will research various colleges of their choosing in order to best prepare for post-secondary endeavors. The research will be conducted using a handout with specific questions for students to answer about each college. Students will present findings in a brochure or slideshow presentation. 

This is a College- and Career-Ready Standards showcase lesson plan.

Students will be motivated to learn how to build new linear functions from existing linear functions.  Students will bring pictures of themselves and their parents from home to personally involve them in the lesson.  Students will learn to use the patterns inherent in functions to quickly and accurately graph linear functions.  This lesson will only deal with vertical shifts and the steepness of the line.  Horizontal shifts will be dealt with in future lessons. In addtion, in future lessons  students will transfer this knowledge to also graph exponential, quadratic, and absolute value functions.

This is a College- and Career-Ready Standards showcase lesson plan.