Lesson Plans

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.

Students will use number bonds and counters as a strategy for finding the missing addend. Students will become aware of the relationship between addition and subtraction. They will also use counting as it is related to addition and subtraction.

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

What makes you jump? When someone scares you? When you are fuming mad? When you are excited about scoring a goal? In this lesson, students will explore all the reasons that make us jump. The students will write a poem about a time they jumped and make a simple collage of themselves jumping. 

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

In collaborative groups of four, students will act out a dinner party where four dinner guests will attend. The students must act out the different ways to arrange four dinner guests. 

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

This lesson allows students to investigate the slope criteria and characteristics of perpendicular lines using graphing calculators and rectangle/square tiles.  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.

In this lesson students will review the use of understood "you" in writing and create their own creative nonfiction essay using understood "you" as the narrative technique.

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

Students will review the meanings of connotation and denotation. Students will apply knowledge of connotation and denotation to "My Papa's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke.

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

Students will explore two different interpretations of the Conquest of Mexico by the Spanish, one in art and the other in literature. The perspectives of the same events as seen by the Spanish and the Aztecs will be explored. Students will highlight portions of both pieces of art to gain perspective of both sides.

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

Students will read two different western versions of the story Cinderella. They will engage in activities where they will compare and contrast different versions of the story.  Students will participate in listening, speaking, and writing activities that require them to reflect on the stories.

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

This lesson is created to have students compare themselves to Michael Phelps and the features that make him such a good swimmer. Students will measure their height and arm span and graph them on a coordinate graph. Students will then compare their height and arm span to their classmates' to see who might be the best swimmer in the class!

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

This lesson allows students to investigate functions and their inverses by hand and using graphing calculators.  Students will also use equations and graphs.  Students will collaborate to develop and justify ideas/conjectures about functions and inverses.

Students will throw addition problems or answers (on paper) across the classroom and find the matching problem or answer! Students will use mental math to compute the matching answer. Students will quietly walk around the classroom to find the person with the matching paper. Let’s throw math around!

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

Listening to narrative text offers students a chance to go beyond decoding and word meaning. Listening as the teacher reads a story gives students an opportunity to appreciate, and draw significance, and meaning as well as informal practice using story elements. Listening to read-alouds gives the teacher the opportunity to model "close" reading skills as well as model thinking.

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

Students will research the ten day weather forecast. They will document the high's for ten days as well as the low's for ten days. Once students document this information, they will find the mean, median, mode, and range of the data collected.

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

In this lesson, students will discover the impact Ruby Bridges made in history when she became the first black child to attend a white school. Your students will be sure to fall in love with the story Ruby has to tell and how this child's courage changed life in the United States. 

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

Students will learn what an adjective is and how to categorize adjectives using an interactive sorting game. Students will compete with each other by categorizing adjectives by color, shape, size, and kind. Students will have to read and sort the adjective word cards. The student with no adjective word cards first, wins! Furthermore, students will use magazine photographs to describe nouns and write sentences.

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

In this lesson, students will listen as the teacher reads Something Good by Robert Munsch. In the story, the characters make choices about the foods they should purchase at the grocery store and learn a lesson about needs and wants. As a whole class, students classify needs and wants from the story.  Then students will use local grocery store sales papers and create their own grocery list with needs and wants.

Students are drawn in by a classic story of guilt or innocence as they discover the Western town of Moon Dance, Montana, home of Al, a young man who begins to doubt the innocence of his mentor and father figure. Could Mr. Baumer be guilty of murder? Students are introduced to all the elements of a short story and forget that they are learning how to write an argumentative essay in their zeal to defend their opinion with evidence from the text. 

This lesson is the third of a three-part unit on plate tectonics, which includes hands-on, inquiry-based activities. Students will learn about the relationship between temperature and density using lava lamps. The students will also model a theory for the mechanism that drives tectonic plate movement by using a hot plate and water to produce convection cells or currents, and food coloring gels to make the currents visible.

This module includes hands-on and inquiry-based activities related to the processes of meiosis and gamete formation. Using yarn and pop beads, students will simulate the changes in chromosome pairs during the various stages of meiosis. The students will use Playdough to model the formation of the sperm and egg cells. Students will denote the differences in cytokinesis and explain the reasoning for the differences.

This module provides three different methods for learning about mitosis and includes hands-on, inquiry-based activities. Students will prepare and examine slides of their cheek cells and compare them to those of other students. This will demonstrate the relationship between the structure and function of cells and the similarity of the same types of cells within the same species. Using yarn and popsicle sticks, students will model and explain each of the stages of mitosis. The students will observe prepared slides of onion root tips and whitefish blastula to discover the differences in mitosis in plant and animal cells.

This lesson plan includes several hands-on, inquiry-based lab activities exploring the concepts of osmosis and diffusion. The lesson plan is divided into three modules. First, the teacher will demonstrate osmosis and diffusion using gummy bears, salt, celery, food coloring, and hot and cold water. Next, students will participate in a hands-on lab activity that will demonstrate diffusion using various concentrations of corn starch and Lugol’s solution. Lastly, students will demonstrate the process of osmosis using dialysis tubing, sucrose solution, cornstarch, phenolphthalein, ammonia, vinegar, and universal indicator solution.

In this lesson, the students will learn about the Boston Massacre and how this event led to the American Revolution. The students will understand that when governments are unjust, sometimes people revolt. The students will compare and contrast the two sides of the American colonists in the 1770’s, “Colonists Should Fight the British for Independence” versus “Colonists Should Not Fight the British for Independence.” In addition, the students will create a web video on one event that led to the American Revolution. This lesson is designed to integrate technology, such as WeVideo, with social studies.

This lesson is a small group phonics lesson. Using Sheep in a Jeep students will learn that ee says /e/. Students will read and write long e words and read the story Sheep in a Jeep.

This lesson compares and contrasts the traditional Three Little Pigs, by Golden Books to The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith. Students will discover how an author’s point of view can influence how a reader feels.

Students will work together in groups to discuss the different character traits their character displays. After developing many traits, students will collaborate to create a presentation of at least 4 slides with sentences that describe the character displaying these traits throughout the book. After completing the presentations, students will head back to their groups and create a timeline of their character's events throughout the story. 

In this activity, students will learn the characteristics of bats. The students will be able to see that different texts can present points in different ways. The introduction to the lesson will begin with a video clip of bats. They will listen to two stories one fiction and the other nonfiction. They will listen to learn the characteristics of bats from both stories. Students will turn and talk with a partner after each book to discuss characteristics they learned about bats. Once they have heard both stories they will complete a Venn Diagram comparing and contrasting the two books. Students will use a digital learning management system to publish their writing and share it with their classmates. They will have the chance to read other students' posts and reply back with meaningful text connections. This lesson would work well around Halloween.

This lesson is designed to help students become comfortable with idioms. Students will work closely with idioms to discover meanings and present them to the class.  Students will use technology to present the information.

Students will explore and review prime and composite numbers. Students will also build a factor tree model by displaying how to write out a prime factorization of a number correctly, how to identify prime and composite numbers, and how to check their results. This hands-on approach allows students to use different mediums and practice their understanding of mathematics. 

In this lesson, students will learn the characteristics of the five geographic regions of Alabama by researching the regions using maps, the Internet, and books. The students will also make a salt dough map depicting Alabama’s land regions.

This lesson was created as a part of the Alabama History Education Initiative, funded by a generous grant from the Malone Family Foundation in 2009.

Author Information: Ivy Murry and DeShaundra Johnson (Cohort 1: 2009-2010); Holly Hill Elementary and Hall-Kent; Elementary Enterprise City Schools and Homewood City Schools;  Enterprise, AL and Homewood, AL

This lesson will include the use of a primary document and period photographs for a cross-curriculum lesson analyzing setting to identify some adverse effects of the Great Depression for farmers. The student will create a postcard which depicts an understanding of the impact of the Great Depression on farmers.

This lesson was created as a part of the Alabama History Education Initiative, funded by a generous grant from the Malone Family Foundation in 2009.

Author Information: April Mitchell (Cohort 2: 2010-2011); Greenwood Elementary; Bessemer City Schools; Bessemer, AL

This lesson explores the reasons for the development of the tenant farming and sharecropping system in the post-Civil War era. Using primary sources (pictures and labor contracts), the lesson presents some of the situations that caused the system to develop. It covers the lifestyle of the farmers and investigates the reasons for the decrease in the system of tenant farming and sharecropping after the Depression and World War II.

This lesson was created as a part of the Alabama History Education Initiative, funded by a generous grant from the Malone Family Foundation in 2009.

Author Information: Vicki Looser (Cohort 1: 2009-2010); Lanett High School; Lanett City Schools Lanett, AL

This lesson engages students in research on a prominent African American and his role in politics during Reconstruction in Alabama. Photographic primary sources are used in this lesson.

This lesson was created as a part of the Alabama History Education Initiative, funded by a generous grant from the Malone Family Foundation in 2009.

Author Information: Rebecca Campbell (Cohort 2: 2010-2011); Uniontown Elementary School; Perry County School System; Uniontown, AL

This lesson will use primary sources to compare and contrast the perspectives of George C. Wallace at the beginning and in the latter part of his life as a political figure in Alabama. The students will develop a hypothesis about the effect that Wallace’s views and actions had on the image of Alabama and the changes in his character over time.

This lesson was created as a part of the Alabama History Education Initiative, funded by a generous grant from the Malone Family Foundation in 2009.

Author Information: Misty Freeman (Cohort 2: 2010-2011); Rehobeth Elementary; Houston County Schools; Dothan, AL