Students apply knowledge of genres to identify different genres from "reading-alouds of excerpts" from selected books representing different genres.

This marbel counting iteration of greater than, less than, and equal to with a specific "target number" help strengthen the concept for students.

This series of activities and lesson notes is part of a unit in which the purpose is, “Students will interpret visual information in order to make informed consumer decisions.” The activities begin with informal exploration.

Students use gumdrops and toothpicks to make lithium atom models. Using these models, they investigate the makeup of atoms, including their relative size. Students are then asked to form molecules out of atoms, much in the same way they constructed atoms out of the particles that atoms are made of. Students also practice adding and subtracting electrons from an atom and determining the overall charges on atoms.

This is the Senate's health care bill. The bill started off with text regarding an unrelated matter but the Senate is co-opted this bill as a vehicle for passage of their reform and changed the text in whole to the health care bill. They do this because the Constitution requires all revenue bills to start in the House, and their health reform plan involves revenue. So they have chosen to work off of a bill that started in the House, even if that bill is unrelated.

Library of Congress »

3/23/2010. Title I - Quality, Affordable Health Care for All Americans Subtitle A - Immediate Improvements in Health Care Coverage for All Americans (Sec. 1001, as modified by Sec. 10101) ...

House Republicans »

This legislation seeks to address inadvertent tax inequities imposed on uniformed service members and other federal employees deployed abroad as a result of other recent home-related tax legislation. Under current ...

House Democrats »

No summary available.

In this activity students measure their hand span. A line graph is used to record the data from the glass.

Harry and his students look at various arrangements of classroom desks in this video from Cyberchase.

This unit is designed to appeal to adolescents with its non-print text base, the movie "Groundhog Day". The pre-viewing activities prepare students for the allusions in the movie and include cultural literacy. The teacher can pick and choose from the activities to apply the concept of personal growth. The teacher may select from activities for science, workplace ethics, music, computer competency, and English language arts. The teacher may modify any of the attachments to suit the students' needs and interests. Students will: demonstrate accurate analysis of audience through appropriate choices in diction, motive support, point support, and non-print textual support; demonstrate knowledge of the concept of character qualities and reflect positive values. The content of the presentation must be persuasive and make connections between literary elements (plot development and dynamic characterization) and another discipline (psychology, science, vocational arts, or music).

Students use a hurricane tracking map to measure the distance from a specific latitude and longitude location of the eye of a hurricane to a city. Then they use the map's scale factor to convert the distance to miles. They also apply the distance formula by creating an x-y coordinate plane on the map. Students are challenged to analyze what data might be used by computer science engineers to write code that generates hurricane tracking models. Then students analyze a MATLAB® computer code that uses the distance formula repetitively to generate a table of data that tracks a hurricane at specific time intervals. Students come to realize that using a computer program to generate the calculations (instead of by hand) is very advantageous for a dynamic situation like tracking storm movements. Their inspection of some MATLAB code helps them understand how it communicates what to do using mathematical formulas, logical instructions and repeated tasks. They also conclude that the example program is too simplistic to really be a useful tool; useful computer model tools must necessarily be much more complex.

Students randomly select jelly beans (or other candy) that represent genes for several human traits such as tongue-rolling ability and eye color. Then, working in pairs (preferably of mixed gender), students randomly choose new pairs of jelly beans from those corresponding to their own genotypes. The new pairs are placed on toothpicks to represent the chromosomes of the couple's offspring. Finally, students compare genotypes and phenotypes of parents and offspring for all the "couples" in the class. In particular, they look to see if there are cases where parents and offspring share the exact same genotype and/or phenotype, and consider how the results would differ if they repeated the simulation using more than four traits.

Calculus is a year-long course that is comparable to calculus courses at the college or university level. In this course, the technological tools required for exploring, learning, and communicating calculus concepts include Microsoft Word with Microsoft Equation (or its equivalent) for typing math assignments, an approved graphing calculator (see a list of acceptable calculators at College Board AP Central) for the AP Calculus exam, and some type of grapher for creating graphs online such as Graphmatica (Windows) or Grapher (MAC) or an online graphing utility of your choice.

For too many Americans, the history class in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (remember the teacher’s plaintive question, “anyone, anyone?”) is all too familiar. Our approach is meant to challenge this false and familiar image of history: understanding and reconstructing the past requires ways of thinking, reading, and questioning much more engaging and challenging than mere memorization.
Teaching in a way that differs from your own schooling experience is not necessarily easy to imagine, let alone execute. Especially given the many pressures and demands on teachers today. This part of the Historical Thinking Matters website is devoted to providing instructional resources for teacher educators who want to challenge these iconic pictures of history instruction and start preparing their students to teach for historical thinking.

This project provides a model for engaging students in an investigation of authentic materials from the past. The students will be provided with four primary sources and questions to guide their investigation. A wealth of other primary resources can be accessed on the websites listed in the reference section.

Design and engineer a mechanical device that is powered by hydraulic (syringe and water) that includes levers and moving parts that will propel a ping pong ball to complete the 2 levels of the “Hoop Shoot Challenge”.

An interactive applet and associated web page that show the definition of a horizontal line in coordinate geometry. The applet has two points that the user can drag which define a line. The line flagged when it is horizontal (slope=0) and the equation of the line is shown. The grid, details and coordinates can be turned on and off. The applet can be printed exactly as it appears on the screen to make handouts. The web page has a discussion on how to test for horizontal, the line equation and has links to other pages relating to coordinate geometry. Applet can be enlarged to full screen size for use with a classroom projector. This resource is a component of the Math Open Reference Interactive Geometry textbook project at http://www.mathopenref.com.

Students will construct CD hovercraft and apply Newton's laws of motion to make them work. They will also investigate how hovercraft reduce friction; learn how the technology is used in training astronauts for space missions; and design their own hovercraft competitions.

In this unit, students start by observing a perplexing phenomenon. When a sewing needle taped to a cone is dragged over the surface of a plastic disc that is spun underneath it, it produces voices and musical notes. This leads students to start wondering about other sound-related phenomena, which in turn leads to wealth of new questions about 1) What causes different sounds? 2) What is traveling from a sound source to our ears? 3) How do we hear and why do we hear things differently in different places? and 4) How do electronic devices (digital sound sources) produce and detect sounds?

Students will analyze documents from the War Department’s Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands — better known as the Freedmen’s Bureau — that Congress established on March 3, 1865, as the Civil War was coming to an end. Using the scale in Weighing the Evidence, students will evaluate the effectiveness of the Freedmen’s Bureau in assisting formerly enslaved persons. Learning Objectives: Students will be able to identify and draw conclusions about the roles of the Freedmen’s Bureau (Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands), critically analyze primary sources, formulate opinions about the effectiveness of the Bureau, and back up their opinions verbally or in writing.

In this activity using a balance scale students practice weighing items to see how heavy they are. Cubes are used in the balance as units of measure so students may easily count them.

Students work in pairs to measure length by lining up cubes along the longest side of an item. They count and record length by counting the number of cubes.