Browse Lesson Plans

Be Direct - Oil Spills on Land

Direct variation is taught using a simulated oil spill, using toilet paper tissues (to represent land) and drops of vegetable oil (to simulate oil). 

Bigger and Smaller - Exponent Rules

Use a scene from Alice in Wonderland to introduce negative exponents and the rules for dividing powers. 

Bouncing Ball - Function Families

Explore quadratic functions by using a motion detector known as a Calculator Based Ranger (CBR) to examine the heights of the different bounces of a ball.

Ceremony

Understand Ceremony in the context of the “monomyth,” as defined by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

Civic Engagement

Define a project and meet with a community partner. Present the community problem and proposed solutions to a special session of the city council.

Comparing Communities

Students learn the conditional tense in French while discussing different communities.

Constitutional Convention

Simulate the writing of a constitution for the hypothetical country of Permistan.

Controversial Public Policy Issues

Conduct an opinion poll on-racial profiling. Physically engage students by having them move around from “Agree” to “Disagree” to “Undecided” positions during discussion.

Critical Pedagogy: Lawson Fusao Inada

Visit a cultural center to see artifacts and hear first-person accounts of the victimization of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Critical Pedagogy: Abiodun Oyewole

Help students understand the political underpinnings of Abiodun Oyewole's spoken word poetry and learn how to express their own political beliefs.

Critical Pedagogy: Octavia E. Butler

Make connections between newspaper articles and issues Butler raises in the book. Encourage students to involve themselves politically by writing letters that call for social justice.

Critical Pedagogy: Ruthanne Lum McCunn

Discuss the Chinese practice of footbinding and then explore how contemporary American women suffer to make themselves conform to society's standards of beauty.

Cultural Studies: Graciela Limon

Cultural Studies: Ishmael Reed

Compare trickster figures in this poem with the same type of character in other literature.

Cultural Studies: N. Scott Momaday

Use family photographs to contextualize the familial experience of Momaday's work, and to respond through creative writing.

Cultural Studies: Russell Leong

Immerse students in Asian American culture with a class trip to Chinatown in Los Angeles. Create Japanese renga poems to describe the experience.

Cups and Chips - Solving Linear Equations Using Manipulatives

Manipulatives visually represent the steps taken to obtain the solution to an algebraic equation.

Curses and Re-Curses! It's Happening Again

The class learns about basic recursion by exploring patterns in the data they generate from two simple probability-based experiments.

Electoral Politics

Prior to the 2002 mayoral election in Newark, New Jersey, students study the candidates’ positions on issues they have chosen to track.

Europe - European Cities

Create a brochure promoting a European city and write a letter proposing future plans to improve it.