This unit on thermal energy transfer begins with students testing whether a new plastic cup sold by a store keeps a drink colder for longer compared to the regular plastic cup that comes free with the drink. Students find that the drink in the regular cup warms up more than the drink in the special cup. This prompts students to identify features of the cups that are different, such as the lid, walls, and hole for the straw, that might explain why one drink warms up more than the other.

Students investigate the different cup features they conjecture are important to explaining the phenomenon, starting with the lid. They model how matter can enter or exit the cup via evaporation However, they find that in a completely closed system, the liquid inside the cup still changes temperature. This motivates the need to trace the transfer of energy into the drink as it warms up. Through a series of lab investigations and simulations, students find that there are two ways to transfer energy into the drink: (1) the absorption of light and (2) thermal energy from the warmer air around the drink. They are then challenged to design their own drink container that can perform as well as the store-bought container, following a set of design criteria and constraints.

This unit on weather, climate, and water cycling is broken into four separate lesson sets. In the first two lesson sets, students explain small-scale storms. In the third and fourth lesson sets, students explain mesoscale weather systems and climate-level patterns of precipitation. Each of these two parts of the unit is grounded in a different anchoring phenomenon.

The unit starts out with anchoring students in the exploration of a series of videos of hailstorms from different locations across the country at different times of the year. The videos show that pieces of ice of different sizes (some very large) are falling out of the sky, sometimes accompanied by rain and wind gusts, all on days when the temperature of the air outside remained above freezing for the entire day. These cases spark questions and ideas for investigations, such as investigating how ice can be falling from the sky on a warm day, how clouds form, why some clouds produce storms with large amounts of precipitation and others don’t, and how all that water gets into the air in the first place.

The second half of the unit is anchored in the exploration of a weather report of a winter storm that affected large portions of the midwestern United States. The maps, transcripts, and video that students analyze show them that the storm was forecasted to produce large amounts of snow and ice accumulation in large portions of the northeastern part of the country within the next day. This case sparks questions and ideas for investigations around trying to figure out what could be causing such a large-scale storm and why it would end up affecting a different part of the country a day later.

Students understand the meaning of exponents.

Objective
SWBAT explain how plants with different structures meet their own needs.

Big Idea
In this lesson, students learn about the classifications of plants within the plant kingdom. Then, students further research plant structures while analyzing how different plants meet their needs.

Overview: Prior to grade 6, students reasoned about division of whole numbers and decimals to the hundredths in different ways. During this lesson, they revisit two methods for finding quotients of whole numbers without remainder: using base-ten diagrams and using partial quotients. Reviewing these strategies reinforces students’ understanding of the underlying principles of base-ten division—which are based on the structure of place value, the properties of operations, and the relationship between multiplication and division—and paves the way for understanding the long division algorithm. Here, partial quotients are presented as vertical calculations, which also foreshadows long division.This lesson then introduces students to long division. Students see that in long division the meaning of each digit is intimately tied to its place value, and that it is an efficient way to find quotients. In the partial quotients method, all numbers and their meaning are fully and explicitly written out. For example, to find 657÷3 we write that there are at least 3 groups of 200, record a subtraction of 600, and show a difference of 57. In long division, instead of writing out all the digits, we rely on the position of any digit—of the quotient, of the number being subtracted, or of a difference—to convey its meaning, which simplifies the calculation.In addition to making sense of long division and using it to calculate quotients, students also analyze some place-value errors commonly made in long division (MP3).

Students review the standard long-division algorithm and discuss the different ways the answer to a whole-number division problem can be expressed (as a whole number plus a remainder, as a mixed number, or as a decimal).
Students solve a series of real-world problems that require the same whole number division operation, but have different answers because of how the remainder is interpreted.

Students use area diagrams and partial products to represent and find products of decimals.

This unit on metabolic reactions in the human body starts out with students exploring a real case study of a middle-school girl named M’Kenna, who reported some alarming symptoms to her doctor. Her symptoms included an inability to concentrate, headaches, stomach issues when she eats, and a lack of energy for everyday activities and sports that she used to play regularly. She also reported noticeable weight loss over the past few months, in spite of consuming what appeared to be a healthy diet. Her case sparks questions and ideas for investigations around trying to figure out which pathways and processes in M’Kenna’s body might be functioning differently than a healthy system and why.

Students investigate data specific to M’Kenna’s case in the form of doctor’s notes, endoscopy images and reports, growth charts, and micrographs. They also draw from their results from laboratory experiments on the chemical changes involving the processing of food and from digital interactives to explore how food is transported, transformed, stored, and used across different body systems in all people. Through this work of figuring out what is causing M’Kenna’s symptoms, the class discovers what happens to the food we eat after it enters our bodies and how M’Kenna’s different symptoms are connected.

Lesson designed for a 7th Grade ELA Deaf Education class room. Discusses the differences between fiction and non-fiction in literature as well as how to use the title and cover of the book to create an educated guess on whether the book is fiction or non-fiction. The lesson includes a learning center in which students apply what they have learned into a practice in which they organize characteristics of fiction and nonfiction into their appropriate category.

The 7th grade poetry unit gives an in depth approach to poetry involving the four strands within the core. I've included worksheets, rubrics, and answers keys where applicable. I have also used literature examples from the core.

In this unit, students develop ideas related to how sounds are produced, how they travel through media, and how they affect objects at a distance. Their investigations are motivated by trying to account for a perplexing anchoring phenomenon — a truck is playing loud music in a parking lot and the windows of a building across the parking lot visibly shake in response to the music.

They make observations of sound sources to revisit the K–5 idea that objects vibrate when they make sounds. They figure out that patterns of differences in those vibrations are tied to differences in characteristics of the sounds being made. They gather data on how objects vibrate when making different sounds to characterize how a vibrating object’s motion is tied to the loudness and pitch of the sounds they make. Students also conduct experiments to support the idea that sound needs matter to travel through, and they will use models and simulations to explain how sound travels through matter at the particle level.

Lesson PlanDate: 1/16/18                                Grade Level: 8Concept: Color Wheel  Objectives:Students will demonstrate knowledge of color wheel in pairs by receiving 10/10 points on an assignment at the end of lesson.Introduction: Utilize prior knowledge of primary and secondary colors to incorporate new concepts of complementary colors. Motivational Device- Red dot on white board, introduction to complementary colorsVocabulary: Primary, secondary, complementary, cool and warm colors, and ROY G BIV.Body of Lesson: Ask student’s favorite color to transition into previous knowledge primary and secondary colors. Relate favorite colors or colors around the room to the color wheel and explain primary and secondary color relationships. Use red dot optical illusion to introduce complementary colors (motivational device).  Introduce color wheel assignment (worksheet). Accommodations/Modifications: ADHD- Allow student(s) to stand or sit on exercise ball while working.  Multiple Intelligence(s) Addressed: Linguistic- Provide alternate activity.Assessment: Color wheel assignment. Materials: Red paper, colored pencils, color wheel example, blank assessment Standards: HSE.MS.8.18- Understand Color Theory

This template is meant to be a guide for Nebraska Physical Education Teachers when creating digital online lessons. Headings and/or topics not included in the lesson plan should be marked N/A.

V is for vocabulary. A content area unit provides the theme for a specialized ABC book, as students select, research, define, and illustrate a word for each alphabet letter.

This is an ongoing series of lessons to teach the 26 letters of the alphabet through functional skills that can be used on a daily/weekly basis building on and transferring to other educational tasks. These lessons incorporate coloring, marking, painting, cutting, pasting, creating, listening and following directions.

This lesson uses a familiar fairy tale to teach writing. It is designed to emphasize using varied sentence patterns in writing.

The students will use ACC basketball statistics to practice the process of converting fractions to decimals then to percents and will learn how to create and edit a spreadsheet. They will then use this spreadsheet to analyze their data. This unit is done during the basketball season which takes approximately 15 weeks from the middle of November to the middle of March. Teachers must have Clarisworks to open the sample spreadsheet in the lesson, but may recreate it in another spreadsheet program.

This template was created to help plan lessons that support English Language Learners for the SPELL project.