Annenberg Learner Search Results

Episode 32: Sparking Social Impact By Using Math to Inspire Young Minds

This episode features Omo Moses, founder of MathTalk, a community-based edtech startup that helps families explore the math around them. Moses has dedicated his life to showing young children and their parents that math is fun and that they should view it as a tool to effect change in the community. (The interview has been…

Episode 27: LA84 Foundation Part II with Jason Morgan

…now is with the Compton Math Equity Project, and we’re trying to cultivate and sustain equitable math experiences for students of color through these, what we call deconstructing anti-racist math approaches, building strong mindful and culturally relevant math identities and communities, and just enhancing our students’ vibe with math, through movement and play based mathematics….

Episode 29: Understanding Wildlife Conservation and the Importance of Early Math Interventions

Episode 29: Understanding Wildlife Conservation and the Importance of Early Math Interventions January 24, 2024 This episode is a two-parter. The first half of the conversation features Beth Pratt, who serves as the California Regional Executive Director for the National Wildlife Federation. Pratt leads the #SaveLACougars campaign and has worked in environmental leadership roles for…

Episode 17: 2022 Teacher of the Year with William Morejón

…development opportunities with the district math leadership team and other teacher leaders to focus on strengthening the district’s newly adopted integrated mathematics pathway through the use of rigorous mathematical tasks. As an educator, he has developed practices that support differentiated instruction for both intervention and honor student populations. After teaching in the International Baccalaureate and…

Episode 22: Games for Change with Luis Saltos

…not sure. What caused you to transition from math to CS? How do you apply those principles of growth mindset and trying, in the math classroom? Luis Saltos [11:10] For the last couple of years, I have not been teaching math, but I do tutor outside of school, and I still do math. I love…

Episode 31: Bringing STEM Education into the Classroom and Making Music Education Relevant

…their EnCorps STEMx tutor. And then in terms of developing that STEM identity, which we also work towards, 90% reported that they have a good understanding of how they will use math in their daily life. 82% said that they know more about different kinds of STEM jobs, and 67% said that they believe they…

Episode 5: Rafael Cruz, LA County Teacher of the Year 2021-22

…taught Math, I did some of those but not with other curriculums. I got really good test scores when I taught math; I think part of it was that we were doing projects as well; we were incorporating as much real-life experiences. We even did some songs with angles, so we would just create projects…

Episode 26: LA84 Foundation with Renata Simril

…had been doing to support the ecosystem of sport-based youth development organizations – those on the ground engaging young people in sport, play, and movement to help create lifelong well-being, mental health, physical health, but also in helping them create pathways to success in life. It was very clear to me that despite our efforts…

Episode 10: Griffin Education with Tim Griffin

…into the classroom. We did drama for math. On Friday afternoons we would do Matherpiece Theater where the kids would write and perform short plays about whatever we had been working on for math that week. We would write songs, sometimes by myself, about a lesson, or sometimes with the kids where they would have…

Episode 1: Two Bit Circus with Dr. Leah Hanes

…do over the weekend, and all he’d have to review everything they forgot over the weekend. He implemented something that he called Math-ter piece Theater. He brought this class into two groups, and they had to do two plays. They each had to do a play that incorporated the math that they had worked on…

Episode 3: High-Impact Tutoring with Susanna Loeb

…something in education, but they can’t say why. They’ll say I care so much about arts education because by having arts education, it will have students more interested in math to engage them in school. The reason we have the art is because it increases math, literacy or something like that. Well, that doesn’t need…

Episode 11: Reading Partners with CEO Adeola Whitney

…math or something else? Adeola Whitney [07:37] When we first existed, the founders at the time, were doing some volunteer work in Silicon Valley, specifically in some inner-city schools. They were volunteering to help read, they weren’t volunteering to do math or anything else. In conversations with principals, they saw how many students were struggling…

Episode 12: Statistics In Schools with Victoria Glasier & Jessica Palmer  

…prepare students for a data-driven world. Victoria Glasier [02:49] One of our goals is just to show teachers and everyone that statistics is a scary word and a mouthful, but it’s not just high school math. I’d like to give an example of my son that he probably hates, but math was such a struggle…

Episode 21: Teen Talk App with Franny Reynolds

…a lot of them throughout my life now because they’re really helpful. Nati Rodriguez [04:22] That’s great. Would you mind sharing one of those coping mechanisms that you’ve learned that has been really useful for you? Franny Reynolds [04:29] Yes, I find it very helpful for myself sometimes, mostly to help others. I know a…

Episode 16: Neuroscience & the Classroom – Making Connections

…higher level of understanding.   Emotional Connections in Math and Science [27:20]  Gary Scott: My name is Gary Scott. I’m with the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California. My research is on the emotional connections that I think have to be developed to math and science content knowledge in order to sustain…

Episode 6: Haydee Rodriguez – CA State Board of Education Member  

…how is that? I tell them, how is it? “Oh, I’m not a math person,” and I see them like doing this boom, boom, boom, quicker than I can. I tell them, I think you are a math person – maybe it’s different when you have some kind of a block when you go into…

Episode 25: Chemistry – Challenges and Solutions

…Atoms and Electrons: The Periodic Table [11:19]  Julie Gostic: Basically, the periodic table is our lifeline.   Ken Moody: As a chemist, I use the periodic table on a daily basis. All chemists would find useful information in the periodic table.   Daniel Rosenberg: And now we’re going to react potassium with water.   Sam Kean: The elements…

Episode 4: Out of School Learning with Benjamin Dickow  

…and educational purposes. Transcript Nati Rodriguez [01:23] I know that you’re wearing multiple hats. Would you mind sharing a bit about your background and how you got into this work? Ben Dickow [01:33] Sure. Like most people, you probably get back into this thing, and all of a sudden, it becomes your life’s work. I…

Episode 28: South LA Best Buy Teen Tech Center with Thai Buckman

…since I was a little girl. So, this learning model aligns so much with my beliefs. In the book, Lifelong Kindergarten by Mitch Resnick, who actually is the foundation of this philosophy at the Teen Tech Centers and the Clubhouse Network, he discussed how studies have shown that people and youth in particular work longer…

Episode 24: Social Media Literary with Rob Greenfield

…High School The Equality Machine by Orly Lobel TikTok Twitter Ukraine war Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O’Neil SHARE THIS POST Explore More Episodes Learner PodcastMathematics Episode 33: ExpandLA’s Work to Increase Access to Quality Out-of-School Time Programs for Youth Learner PodcastMathematics Episode 32: Sparking Social Impact By Using Math to Inspire Young Minds…

Episode 9: When Schools Work with Bruce Fuller

…illness or disease. Like healthcare, these groups are saying that to move kids in poor communities over the proficiency bar, to help them reach proficiency in reading math, [and] social studies, those communities do need extra support, and it’s this progressive form of school finance that’s being pushed on. The report out two weeks ago…

Episode 19: 2022 Superintendent of the Year with Dr. Vivian Ekchian

Episode 19: 2022 Superintendent of the Year with Dr. Vivian Ekchian December 19, 2022 Dr. Vivian Ekchian was named the 2022 Los Angeles County Superintendent of the Year. Vivian Ekchian is a lifelong educator, visionary leader, and champion for equity with a relentless focus on accelerating student outcomes. A longstanding Glendale resident, Dr. Ekchian is…

Episode 18: 2022 Teacher of the Year with Michelle Stradford

…one in our schools, and so it’s just a fun game that they get to play. I’m not always great at it, but it is deeply part of my daily thing to give them time to just be kids. Sometimes that’s watching a funny video that’s letting them – I had a kid write a…

Episode 8: Best Buy Teen Tech Centers with Chheav Em

…I think about the school environment, in a traditional school, it’s very structured and it’s not interdisciplinary. If you’re in math, you’re doing math. If you’re in English, you’re doing English and this type of project seems like everything gets pulled to the table. Chheav Em [14:32] To your point about how things are structured…

Episode 2: Step Up Tutoring with Daniel Halper

…do about 30 minutes of homework help or just curriculum-based learning. Whatever he’s learning in class, whether it’s math or English, we support that curriculum and then the rest of the time, we play a fun academic game. There are a million things that we do, but it’s all sort of these planned lessons that…

Episode 13: Discovery Education with Matthew Woods, DEN Star

…to feel like they belong. Matthew Woods [16:41] Yeah. I think we all see the news and everything going on in the world. For a lot of folks who aren’t traditional educators, that’s hard to understand. No, kids just need to learn about English and Math and History and Science. When you even ask those…

Episode 14: LabXchange with Marty Samuels

…and think about reaching out to them to do research with them and ask them if they’d like to join their lab. So really our mission is to support high school teachers, high school students, and lifelong learners who are interested or passionate about science and science education. Nati Rodriguez [04:00] Thank you. It sounds…

Episode 33: ExpandLA’s Work to Increase Access to Quality Out-of-School Time Programs for Youth

…listening to these days? Lou Calanche [24:16] So, I just started this book, it’s called Designing Your Life. It was recommended by another person who’s a coach, and he’s like, ‘Oh, you know, I’m sharing this with, you know, other folks.’ So, it’s written by a Stanford professor, and they have a class at Stanford…

Episode 7: Communities In Schools Los Angeles with Elmer Roldan

…already at the organization. I’d love to just take a step back and talk about CIS LA’s mission. The CIS LA mission is to surround students with a community of support, empowering them to stay in school and achieve in life. Can you share about how the organization does this? What are some of the…

Episode 15: Florida Principal of the Year, Adam Lane

…environment while striving to improve students’ academic, emotional, and social development. He believes in providing students with the foundation of education that promotes lifelong learning. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. Transcript Nati Rodriguez [02:11] Thank you. The recent news is that Adam recently received a Principle of the Year award. Congratulations!…

Episode 23: Californians for All with Tania Salinas

…that also looks like the community and is from the community that you’re serving. So, you’re working with TK through 7th. Can you tell us about what you’ve worked on with them? What subjects or any projects that you’ve done? Tania Salinas [04:36] With them, I’ve done Math, English, more specific would be, with their…

Episode 20: Californians for All with Josh Fryday

…them the model and the life inspiration that people that look like them, they can see themselves in college, that they’re being tutored by people from their community who look like them. One of the things we’re most proud of with our College Corps program, including many of our tutors is for the first time…

section: Interview with Andy Knoll

…and that if you want to look at where life began, you have to look at the conditions on the planet at that time. ANDY: I think that there’s no question that life really is a planetary phenomenon, that life arises on a planet as the product of planetary processes that are in play when…

List of Recent Series Discontinuations

…on December 31, 2018. (Browse our list of resources for other series that may be of interest to you.) Calculating Change Rural Communities School Testing- Behind the Numbers Teaching Geography Mathematics Assessment Teaching Math K-2 Teaching Math 3-5 Teaching Math 6-8 Teaching Math 9-12 Teaching Math K-4 Library Teaching Math 5-8 Library Teaching Math 9-12 Library…

lesson: Children’s Ideas

…all life comes from something that is alive—there is no “discontinuity” of life during a life span. Seeds, spores, eggs, and pupae represent the living beginnings of a life span and have the potential for growth, development, reproduction, and death. They also demonstrate the other characteristics of life. This makes them alive. Children may believe…

section: Interview with Lonnie Thompson

…one. And that’s where life as we know it exists. In the scale of things we can see this is a very unusual planet. For that reason I think it behooves us all to try and protect it and see that it can maintain life as we know it, because there are some really beautiful…

video: Animal Life Cycles

Learning Goals Animal (frog) During this session, you will have an opportunity to build understandings to help you: Describe the life stages in the life cycle of an animal Comprehend the role of DNA in ensuring the continuity of life from generation to generation Video Overview There are life processes that are so much a…

lesson: TerrAqua Column

…as plants, animals, or other life forms. Get a Life Necklace Life Science suggests several activities for the TerrAqua Column that are excellent introductions to a scientific study of the living world. “Get a Life!” features the “necklace” worn in the video by Bottle Biology creator Paul Williams. In this activity, the challenge is to…

lesson: Brassica & Butterfly System

…Science has suggested a few that can help you understand plant and animal life cycles better–and that can be used with great success in K-6 classrooms. The “Brassica & Butterfly Life Cycles” activity follows the progress of Brassica from seed to seed as it interconnects with the life cycle of Pieris from egg to egg….

section: Online Textbook

lesson: Animal Life Cycles: Children’s Ideas

…likely to add this to their definition of life. 2. Reproduction is synonymous with mating. Children probably hold this idea because they are most familiar with an animal model for reproduction – where mating involves the act of copulation. Not all life forms mate to reproduce. Even life forms that involve the union of male…

section: Authors and Literary Works

section: Interview with Edward O. Wilson

Interviewer: Tell us about your early life, when you first realized you were going to be a naturalist. EDWARD: I became a naturalist probably at the age of 9. I became so devoted to it that I decided even at early as that, 9 or 10, that I was going to be an entomologist when…

video: Three Farewells: Medicine & the End of Life

“Three Farewells” looks at the difficult and sometimes heart-rending choices a loving family makes as they confront the end of life. Our story begins with Hope, literally and figuratively. Hope is the name Faith and her husband picked out for the baby they were having if it were a girl. For Faith’s mother, Charity, still…

section: My Name is Red – Read Excerpt

…might think, “Who cares what you earned when you were alive? Tell us what you see. Is there life after death? Where’s your soul? What about Heaven and Hell? What’s death like? Are you in pain?” You’re right, the living are extremely curious about the Afterlife. Maybe you’ve heard the story of the man who…

video: Plant Life Cycles

Learning Goals Pollination During this session, you will have an opportunity to build understandings to help you: Describe the stages in the life cycle of a flowering plant Compare the plant and animal life cycles Video Overview Which life forms reproduce at a distance, give rise to offspring miles away and even after death, trick…

section: Online Textbook

…in his or her area of research and the potential impacts of those advances on everyday life. The classical physics related to each new topic is covered briefly to help the reader better understand the research, its effects, and our current understanding of physics. Click on “Content By Unit” (in the menu to the left)…

lesson: Children’s Ideas

…of energy and matter. Plants were making food well before animal life evolved. And, in the absence of animals, plants still make food. Many children can’t see the “point” of a plant except as a source of food for an animal. One way to get children to broaden their ideas about plant life is to…

section: Homework

…Readings Chapin, Suzanne and Johnson, Art (2000). Chapters 3 and 4 in Math Matters: Understanding the Math You Teach, Grades K-6 (pp. 40-72). Sausalito: CA: Math Solutions Publications. Reproduced with permission from the publisher. © 2001 by Math Solutions Publications. All rights reserved. Download PDF File: Math Matters: Understanding the Math You Teach, Grades K-6…

lesson: Plant Life Cycles: Children’s Ideas

…as the seed’s energy source. 6. Flowers are for insects to feed upon. Children often think that one life form exists to serve another. When they observe insects feeding on flowers, this may be a conclusion. Life forms, however, do not have a “purpose”; they have functions, which may include being beneficial to other life…

section: Interview with Tom Maddock

…Howard University. He taught me an introductory math course that just lit up the world for me in terms of mathematics. During my undergraduate work at the University of Houston, I worked primarily in math and physics. Then when I went to Harvard for my graduate work, I studied under the Committee of Applied Math…

lesson: Animal Life Cycles: Bottle Biology Spotlight

…life cycles of each intertwine. See below for more information and to track the progress of our own Essential Science for Teachers system. Bottle Biology Spotlights: Session 3 System: Activity Instructions: Track Our Progress: Brassica & Butterfly Life Cycle See Our Life Cycle Results Brassica & Butterfly The Salad Bar See Our Salad Bar Results…

video: Classifying Living Things

Learning Goals During this session, you will have an opportunity to build understandings to help you: Distinguish between plants, animals, and other life forms based on cell features Classify different life forms into broad biological groups Video Overview Japanese Maple leaves. Image courtesy Len Gittleman. Our Earth hosts an astonishing diversity of life forms. We…

unit: Different Learners, Different Minds

video: Domestic Life

From furniture and tapestries to bowls and baskets, art has figured prominently in domestic life for thousands of years. Within the space of the home—be it a palace or a hut—aesthetically and culturally significant objects have fulfilled purposes both mundane (e.g., storage and service) and transcendent (e.g., the facilitation of prayer). Moreover, the activities and…

video: What Is Life?

Learning Goals Boy with “green stuff” During this session, you will have an opportunity to build understandings to help you: Distinguish between living, dead, and nonliving Define the characteristics of life Video Overview What is life? This question at first seems deceptively simple—we all know how to recognize what is living and what is not….

lesson: Plant Life Cycles: Featured Classroom – Sally Florkiewicz, Lakewood, CO

Sally Florkiewicz, Lakewood, CO “The best part about teaching life science is that I think the kids really relate to it. It gives them a hands-on experience. They can actually sit and observe something and relate to it. Some of the other sciences are a little bit more abstract and they’re not able to have…

lesson: Nat Love (1854-1921)

…“Deadwood Dick”–a nickname he retained all his life–when he won a rodeo competition in Deadwood, South Dakota. Love’s narrative indicates that he found a deep satisfaction in western life, celebrating the freedom of the open range and the “brotherhood of men” which bound cowboys to one another. Aside from his opening chapters, which critique the…

lesson: William Faulkner (1897-1962)

…name later in life) was born in Albany, Mississippi. Four years later, the Falkners moved to nearby Oxford, which William would call home for the rest of his life. Faulkner’s childhood was fairly average for a young middle-class white boy of the period: he grew up surrounded by romantic and glorious tales of the Old…

section: Southern Renaissance – Activities

video: Variation, Adaptation, and Natural Selection

…seems to find a way? Changes–both large and small–are ever-present in the environment that surrounds life. But despite sometimes extreme challenges to survival, life forms persist from generation to generation. In the last two sessions, we focused on life cycles and their connection to DNA, and we began to look at life at the level…

lesson: Plant Life Cycles: Bottle Biology Spotlight

…their life cycles. How do you think this works? Check out Bottle Biology Spotlights below to track the progress of our very own Essential Science for Teachers systems. Bottle Biology Spotlights: Session 4 System: Activity Instructions: Track Our Progress: Brassica & Butterfly Life Cycle See Our Life Cycle Results Brassica & Butterfly Mother Knows Best…

section: Interview with Howard Hu

…or in the brain, to eventually cause toxicity. This particular set of studies is focusing on early life, probably because pregnancy and the first two years of life are generally recognized as being extremely vulnerable periods to toxicants, particularly neurologically – brain affecting – toxicants. Interviewer: Can you explain the different projects involved in this…

section: Interview with Penny Chisholm

…PENNY: I started being interested in biology in high school, but then got interested in mathematics and when I went to college, I studied mathematics for a while, but realized that it wasn’t quite as interesting as things that were alive so I switched and became a biology major. My advisor worked on plankton in…

lesson: J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur (1735-1813)

[1889] Paul Revere, The Bloody Massacre Perpetrated in Kings Street Boston on March 5th 1770 by a Party of the 29th Regt. (1770), courtesy of the Library of Congress [LC-USZC4-4600]. Although his writings evince a reverence for pastoral, quiet farm life, J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur led a restless existence marred by war, instability,…

session: Japanese: Daily Routines

CLASSROOM AT A GLANCE Teacher Margaret Dyer Language Japanese Grades 5 School Clarendon Elementary School, San Francisco, California Lesson Date May 16 Class Size 26 Schedule 45 minutes daily Video Summary In this lesson, students practice vocabulary related to daily routines in Japan and in the U.S. First, Ms. Dyer uses Total Physical Response and…

section: Online Textbooks

video: Two Dance Collaborations

PROGRAM AT A GLANCE School Sheridan Global Arts and Communications School / FAIR School Location Minneapolis, MN / Crystal, MN Grade 6, 7, 8 Disciplines Dance & Science Dance & Math Description Physical forces and geometric concepts are explored through dance and movement. The Integrated Instruction Part One: Learning the Laws of Motion Roberta Carvalho-Puzon,…

lesson: Plant Life Cycles: A Closer Look

Look for the following topics in the video, indicated by the onscreen icon, and click below to learn more. Alternation of Generations Transition From Water to Land Flowers and Pollination Fruit and Dispersal Seeds vs. Eggs Teaching Tips: Asexual Reproduction Scientist at Work Curriculum Resources…

lesson: Samson Occom (1723-1792)

…settlement, the scheme was never entirely successful because of legal struggles and controversies over land claims. Occom died in New York in 1792. During his lifetime Occom wrote extensively and published two works, making him one of the few Native Americans of the period to leave a written record of his life and thought. While…

section: Expert Interview Transcripts: Anna-Louise Reysenbach, PhD

Microbial Ecologist Reysenbach is a microbial ecologist with special interests in the ecology of terrestrial and deep-sea hydrothermal vents, and in the evolution of biogeochemical cycles. She teaches the core microbiology course at Portland State University, as well as courses in Microbial Ecology and Microbial Diversity….

section: Becoming Visible – Activities

section: Authors and Literary Works

lesson: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) (1835-1910)

[3777] Anonymous, Mark Twain, Captain (1895), courtesy of the Mark Twain House, Hartford, CT. Samuel L. Clemens, better known by his pen name “Mark Twain,” continues to enjoy a reputation, already attained by the end of his lifetime, as an icon of American literature. As such, he and his most enduringly popular novel, Adventures of…

lesson: Henry Adams (1838-1918)

…constantly troubled by the feeling that he was missing out on participating in the most significant American event of his lifetime. Perhaps in an effort to involve himself in the political and cultural life of his own country, Adams took time away from his diplomatic work to write ambitious essays and reviews that were published…

lesson: Leslie Marmon Silko (b. 1948)

…is a way of interacting … a whole way of seeing yourself, the people around you, your life, the place of your life in the bigger context, not just in terms of nature and location but in terms of what has gone on before, what’s happened to other people. It’s a whole way of life.”…

lesson: Black Elk (1863-1950) and John G. Neihardt (1881-1973)

…be more accurately described as “communo-bio-oratory”(community-life-speaking) rather than “auto-bio-graphical” (self-life-writing), since they were about the person’s life in the context of their human, spiritual, and natural communities and the writings were intended to be part of an oral recitation, rather than to stand on their own. Black Elk Speaks provides an opportunity to question our…

lesson: Children’s Ideas About Material Cycles in Ecosystems

…proportions. Life essentially extracts these elements from the nonliving world into organic molecules, which are unique to life. As children observe living things, they are much more likely to see differences from rather than similarities to the nonliving world. This distinction is typically encouraged in the early grades as children are taught “living vs. nonliving.”…

lesson: Toni Cade Bambara (1939-1995)

…she was fervently devoted to activism in other forms. Early in her life she worked “in the trenches” to help minority city dwellers, and late in her life she made activist films, including a television documentary that spotlighted police brutality. In the 1970s and 1980s, she was also involved in the women’s and black liberation…

section: The Tale of Genji – Read the Text

…the lack of anyone to whom she could turn for comfort and advice. But to return to the daughter. In due time she bore him a little Prince who, perhaps because in some previous life a close bond had joined them, turned out as fine and likely a man-child as well might be in all…

lesson: Life Span Development

…the life span. As you explore, keep in mind the following questions that are on the forefront of the developmental psychology: How do innate and environmental factors interact? What relationships exist between development in one period of life and development in another? How might differences in culture and social class shape the course of development?…

unit: A Writer’s Notebook

“Writing is very difficult. What I like best is having written.” – Judith Ortiz Cofer No one knows the anguish and joy of writing better than a writer. That’s why numbers of educational organizations believe those who teach writing should be writers themselves. That doesn’t mean that you have to be a great elegist or…

Games for Change Student Challenge Los Angeles 2019 Celebration!

…Healthy, Joseph Le Conte MS HIGH SCHOOL FINALISTS Avery’s Way, STEM Academy of Hollywood (winner) Steps to Survival, William Howard Taft Charter HS Living to 110, Los Angeles Leadership Academy Your Life in a Day, Venice High School Endangered Species MIDDLE SCHOOL FINALISTS Desperate, Florence Nightingale MS Life Without Animals, South Gate MS (winner) Help…

unit: Interview with Featured Scientist Paul Chaikin

…properties that you get from the ensemble of particles, from them all acting together rather than the individual particles. And, of course, this can be some simple things like what we might imagine is simple like going from a gas to a liquid to a solid, or originating life. All of that is emergent. Interviewer:…

lesson: Evolution and the Tree of Life: A Closer Look

A Closer Look Look for the following topics in the video, indicated by the onscreen icon, and click below to learn more. Classifying Reptiles Identifying Species Vertebrate Evolution Building a Tree of Life Scientist at Work Curriculum Resources…

section: Popol Vuh – Read the Text

Popol Vuh: The Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life Translated by Dennis Tedlock, Touchstone, 1996 Popol Vuh Part One   This is the beginning of the Ancient Word, here in this place called Quiché. Here we shall inscribe, we shall implant the Ancient Word, the potential and source for everything done in the citadel…

section: Interview with Jeremy B. C. Jackson

…at maintaining fish docks at some stable level so that we can count on exploiting them at some predictable rate. It’s not impossible, but it’s really difficult. We have these ideas like maximum sustainable yield in which we do a whole lot of mathematical calculations and we figure out what’s the production and how much…

lesson: Field Population System

The Field Population System The Life Science Field Population System is designed to demonstrate concepts that are fundamental to understanding biological evolution. It is a companion to the videos for Session 5 (Variation, Adaptation, and Natural Selection) and Session 6 (Evolution and the Tree of Life). The name is derived from the system that it…

section: Interview with Martha Farnsworth Riche

…question how many are too many? And it really came down to a huge array of estimates and it depended on what kind of life you wanted. And that’s what really goes into this equation; it’s a matter of trade offs. Certainly in my lifetime, the U.S. population has tripled. Life is very different from…

section: Interview with Paul Hoffman

…and at that time, we didn’t know about the life that exists in the deep oceans for example, around hydrothermal vents which wouldn’t be much affected by freezing surface temperatures. But also, they didn’t know about all the life that lives quite happily in Antarctica, in ice, around ice, beneath ice, those organisms which could…

lesson: Bottle Biology

…to defining life and classifying living things. Sessions 3 and 4 focus upon animal and plant life cycles. The “Brassica and Butterfly System” allows firsthand experience with plant and animal life cycles that are intertwined. The basics of biological evolution are addressed in Sessions 5 and 6. Using the “Field Population System,” you can do…

Part A: Comparing Rocks (15 minutes)

…you use?   Problem A4 How could you measure these properties?   Think about what instruments, devices, or methods you might use.   Part A adapted from Chapin, Suzanne, and Johnson, A. Math Matters: Understanding the Math You Teach, Grades K-6. p. 177. © 2000 by Math Solutions, Publications. Used with permission. All rights reserved….

section: Session Author and Literary Works: James Welch

…Lee has commented, Welch “has made it his lifework as a writer to illuminate the richness of his culture and the heartache of its dislocation.” Welch attended the creative writing program at the University of Montana. Though his early attempts at poetry were, he says, “filled with majestic mountains and wheeling gulls” — the things…

lesson: John Rollin Ridge (Yellow Bird) (1827-1867)

…for a time, he received a classical education and showed an early love for literature, writing his first poems around the age of ten. Ridge’s life was radically disrupted in 1849 when he shot and killed a man during a brawl. Rather than face prosecution for the crime, he fled first to Missouri and then…

section: Scientists

…life. He has studied the physical circulation of the modern ocean, focusing on El Niño and the tropical Pacific. He has worked on theories for Pleistocene ice-age cycles over the last few hundred thousand years. He helped develop the Snowball Earth hypothesis, proposing that a series of global glaciations occurred between 750 and 580 million…

section: Authors and Literary Works

section: Session Author and Literary Works: Esmeralda Santiago

…Santiago’s first book, the memoir When I Was Puerto Rican, was published in 1993 and received great critical praise. Her first novel, America’s Dream, followed in 1997. A year later, she published Almost a Woman, a second memoir that took up her life story at the point at which When I Was Puerto Rican ended….

video: Energy Flow in Communities

…community Video Overview In Session 1, we saw that one characteristic of life was the need for a constant supply of matter and energy. Why is this? What’s the difference between the two? The next two sessions explore these questions. Session 7 focuses on energy and life, while Session 8 focuses on matter and life….

unit: Implications For Schools

video: Lessons for Life: Learning and Transfer

“We don’t learn in school just to stay in school for the rest of our lives. We have to be able to transfer what we learn in one setting and use it somewhere else. In order to transfer our knowledge we have to be able to learn things in a way that is flexible, that…

video: Feelings Count: Emotions and Learning

“How students feel affects whether and how they can learn. If they’re anxious or fearful they’re not going to be able to take in information. Teachers not only can learn to create a safe environment they can learn to develop emotional intelligence. The students actually gain the skills of managing their emotions, solving conflicts, and…

video: Southern Renaissance

“My subject in fiction,” Flannery O’Connor tells us, “is the action of grace in the territory held largely by the devil.” One might do well to ask what, if not the devil, haunts the American South in this era between the wars. This program uncovers the revisioning of Southern myths during the modernist era by…

video: The Bhagavad Gita

This epic tale of the warrior-prince Arjuna confronting a life-or-death dilemma during civil war presents a unique and powerful philosophy of duty, discipline, and serving a higher purpose. Beautiful illustrations connect the story with its rich history and culture. Featured speakers include Sheldon Pollock, Professor of Sanskrit Studies and acclaimed composer Philip Glass.

lesson: Grace Paley (b. 1922)

…Europe and later were active members of a variety of progressive movements. A self-described “combative pacifist and cooperative anarchist,” Paley has continued to play an active role in peace, feminist, and anti-nuclear war movements throughout her life. Paley balanced married life, motherhood, and teaching creative writing at such institutions as Sarah Lawrence, Syracuse, and Dartmouth….

lesson: Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880)

…brother, who had become a Unitarian minister. When she joined the Unitarian Church herself, Child adopted a new name to signal her independence and new identity. Rebaptized as Lydia Maria, she preferred to be called Maria for the rest of her life. Child embarked on her literary career after reading a piece in The North…

lesson: Material Cycles in Ecosystems: A Closer Look

A Closer Look Look for the following topics in the video, indicated by the onscreen icon, and click below to learn more. What is an Ecosystem? Matter and Life The SPONCH CaFe Building Bodies Material Cycles Scientist at Work Curriculum Resources…

video: Perspective Shifting in Math

Teachers transform an idea presented by researchers into new approaches to teaching math. While the traditional way of teaching math relies on learning one solution to a particular type of problem, perspective shifting offers many ways of seeing and approaching one problem, as these middle school math students learn. Multiple perspectives create the potential for…

section: Search for Identity – Activities

section: Online Textbook

video: Death

Death is one of the few experiences common to all people and all societies. But how different people have conceived of death and how those conceptions have shaped their behaviors and practices has varied over time and across cultures. Through art, people have expressed attitudes toward death that are in some respects universal, while in…

session: Bottle Biology | Bottle Basics

…being addressed in the sequential pairs of sessions that compose the course. The “TerrAqua Column” has been designed as a companion to Sessions 1 and 2, reinforcing concepts related to defining life and classifying living things. Sessions 3 and 4 focus upon animal and plant life cycles. The “Brassica & Butterfly System” allows firsthand experience…

lesson: Harriet Jacobs (c. 1813-1897)

…agreed to publish the manuscript provided Jacobs could get Lydia Maria Child to write an introduction and act as editor. Child agreed to the project and, with the help of her introduction and minor editorial contributions, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl was published in 1861. Jacobs’s history is unique among slave narratives…

section: Class Context

…that’s really from Japan.” – Margaret Dyer   YEAR AT A GLANCE Self Personal information (e.g., name, age, pets) Preferences (e.g., hobbies, sports, foods) Future plans; Body and health Family Family members’ personal information Home Daily routines Rooms in the house; Location of objects Food Fruits/vegetables; Japanese foods and dishes Shopping and cooking; Money; Restaurants…

session: Assessment and Accountability

…daily instructional routines use assessment results to plan and improve instruction for your students “The most useful information for teachers is assessment information gathered in the course of daily classroom routines. The purpose of this assessment is to improve instruction and help students become better readers and writers” Kathryn Au Professor of Education University of…

lesson: Featured Classroom: Gail Modugno, Springfield, MA

…groups: in the morning, half have math and science while the other half study language arts and social studies, and in the afternoon, they switch. “When I came into teaching, I was surprised that I fell towards the math and science,” said Gail. “I never expected to, but over the years, that’s just the direction…

section: Teaching Strategies: Concepts First, Skills Later

Teacher Peggy Lynn’s mathematics classroom probably looks different from many classrooms you have seen. That’s because Peggy teaches math in context, using special activities to bring out math concepts. Listen to audio clip of teacher Peggy Lynn   Audio from Peggy Lynn I’ve been teaching for 17 years, so when I first started teaching, I…

video: Creating Opportunities for Mathematical Discourse

…Decision Making because it saw a need for students to learn more about problem solving. The course covers a variety of topics, including financial math applications, probability and statistics, and graph theory. The Boston Community Leadership Academy requires four years of math, and students in Ms. Langer’s class come from a variety of math backgrounds….

section: Part A: Measuring Accurately (45 minutes)

…pennies?   Problem A3 Where else in mathematics is the concept of transitivity used? Give an example other than measurement. “Conservation, Transitivity, and Unit Iteration” adapted from Chapin, S. and Johnson, A. Math Matters: Understanding the Math You Teach, Grades K-6. pp. 178-180. © 2000 by Math Solutions Publications. Used with permission. All rights reserved….

unit: Interview with Featured Scientist Piers Coleman

…we didn’t know how to put it all back together again. And what we are discovering increasingly is that as matter comes together it develops new kinds of structures and new forms of collective motion. And the rules that govern that collective behavior have a life of their own. Interviewer: What is a superconductor? PIERS:…

section: Slavery and Freedom – Activities

section: Compare: What Can Art About Death Tell Us About Life?

…in. (162 cm.) Location: Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain Credit: Courtesy of Art Resource/Photo by Erich Lessing What can art about death tell us about life? Death is, in some ways, the greatest mystery of life. Almost every culture formulates its own ideas, however amorphous, as to what happens to the individual after death. Often,…

section: Compare: What Can We Learn From Images of Domestic Life?

…Museum of Art/Courtesy of the Library of Congress What can we learn from images of domestic life? Familial structures and domestic activities play a major role in virtually every culture. It is not surprising, then, that they have often provided fodder for visual artists. Images of home interiors, with or without their inhabitants, might reveal…

section: Scientists

…life. He has studied the physical circulation of the modern ocean, focusing on El Niño and the tropical Pacific. He has worked on theories for Pleistocene ice-age cycles over the last few hundred thousand years. He helped develop the Snowball Earth hypothesis, proposing that a series of global glaciations occurred between 750 and 580 million…

lesson: Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (1852-1930)

[1546] Harper’s Weekly, Eight illustrations depicting a New England farmhouse, courtesy of the Library of Congress [LC-USZ62-102852]. In composing her well-received realist depictions of women’s lives in New England villages, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman wrote about the people and places she had known all her life. Born in Randolph, Massachusetts, Freeman grew up in intimate…

section: International Response to Global Human Displacement

…responsibility of providing international protection for refugees, the core principle of the work of the UNHCR is non-refoulement, or the belief that a refugee cannot be returned to a country where they face serious threats to their life or freedom. The UNHCR, also known as the UN Refugee Agency, is a United Nations organization that…

timeline: Track Our Progress: Brassica and Butterfly Life Cycles

Scroll through the days below to see our Brassicas and butterflies develop through their life cycles. Then, at the bottom of the page, see an animation of the entire Fast-Plant life cycle in timelapse. See the Life Cycles activity instructions for questions to consider, then use the Brassica & Butterfly Data Sheet (PDF) to record…

section: A Brief History of Photography

…half of the twentieth century, photography expanded its presence in use across a variety of fields and in everyday life through magazines, newspapers, and other printed media. At home, the production of photographs became synonymous with domestic and familial life. Although inventors and artists had experimented with color photography during the nineteenth century, color photography…

lesson: Caroline Stansbury Kirkland (1801-1864)

…to write her first work, a collection of realistic and often humorous sketches of frontier life called A New Home–Who’ll Follow?, written under the pseudonym of “Mrs. Mary Clavers.” In 1843, after William lost the family’s landholdings and capital to a swindling land agent, the family was forced to return to New York. There, Kirkland…

video: The Power of the Situation

Experiment: Simulating Prison Life In the early 1970s, Craig Haney, Curt Banks, Carlo Prescott, and Philip Zimbardo conducted a landmark situational study at Stanford University. The experiment tested the fundamental attribution error: our tendency to attribute causes of behavior to personal factors, underestimating the influence of situational conditions. For this study, a small group of…

lesson: Susanna Rowson (c. 1762-1824)

…is passive and dies after she is abandoned by the men in her life–the novel has also been read as subtly protesting women’s tenuous position in society. Whatever the politics of her fiction, Rowson’s own life was characterized by a resourcefulness that testifies to the possibilities for women’s independent thought and action in eighteenth-century America….

section: Interview with Pam Matson

…into areas that are called dead zones where there’s very little life left in those systems, at least life in terms of fisheries. That has tremendous impact on the fishermen and women who make their livelihoods on fishing in the coastal waters, and it also has really negative consequences, of course, on the biodiversity and…

unit: About the Learning Math Courses

When teachers have a deep conceptual understanding of mathematics, it can help their students develop strong mathematical skills and knowledge. Learning Math is a series of five multimedia, college-level courses designed to teach mathematics content to elementary and middle school teachers. Organized around the content standards developed by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics…

unit: The Unity of Emotion, Thinking, and Learning

lesson: Ghost Dance Songs

…native customs and images, as well as aspects of the daily life of the tribe. In its syncretism (its combining of different spiritual traditions), the Ghost Dance thus illustrates the American Indian value of keeping rituals currently relevant to the life of the tribe. Like most traditional Native American songs, the Ghost Dance songs were…

video: Candide

This video introduces a question: is everything that happens, good or bad, part of a larger cosmic plan that justifies it? Or is life a game of chance, with no greater good or larger aim? Follow Candide through all of his hellish but hilarious adventures and see what conclusions people who love this book have…

lesson: Energy Flow in Communities: A Closer Look

A Closer Look Look for the following topics in the video, indicated by the onscreen icon, and click below to learn more. Energy and Life Communities Photosynthesis Energy Pyramids Scientist at Work Curriculum Resources Cell Respiration…

section: Session Author and Literary Works: Mourning Dove

…rights, Mourning Dove wrote that she was grateful to have been born and come of age during the early years of official U.S. Indian Policy; she spent her life writing and working to represent Indian culture to a dominant white world. Scholar Janet Finn writes that Mourning Dove “wrote against the dominant grain of Indian…

Ten Novels

lesson: What Is Life? | A Closer Look

Look for the following topics in the video, indicated by the on-screen icon. Cells Organic Molecules Extremophiles Teaching Tips Scientist at Work Curriculum Resources  …

lesson: Animal Life Cycles: Featured Classroom – Mary Bitterlich, Lakewood, CO

…difference: “Not only is that a great way for the kids to learn, but it’s also a fun way to teach the kids, because they’re so involved, so motivated, so engaged…Science is their favorite subject now, and years ago, I wouldn’t say that was true.” Life science especially appeals to them, said Mary, because of…

video: The Tale of Genji

The shining Genji, a man of wealth and power, devotes himself to love―at the risk of losing everything. Enter the court of medieval Japan, and follow Genji’s attempts to find perfect love and a beautiful life in the midst of the back-biting, scheming, and deceit of the powerful people around him. All Video on Demand…

video: Material Cycles in Ecosystems

…regard to material cycling in an ecosystem Describe examples of material cycling through an ecosystem Contrast energy flow with material cycling Video Overview Our final session looks at life at one of the highest levels of organization: the ecosystem. Shifting from Session 7’s focus on energy, Session 8 explores matter and its connection to life….

section: Art: Night View of Saruwaka-machi (Saruwaka-machi Yoru no Kei) from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (Meisho Edo hyakkei)

…focused on Edo’s Yoshiwara quarter, a licensed pleasure district. The work seen here comes from a series of prints by Edo native Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858) entitled Meisho Edo hyakkei, or “one hundred views of the famous places of Edo.” Although Hiroshige’s scenes are set in famous locales, their primary focus is the daily life of…

program: Immigration, Urbanization, and Identity: The Progressive Era City

…children, as they required less pay and could often handle delicate tasks better than adults. #3023 Photographer: Jacob Riis Source: Museum of the City of New York Many of these newly arrived immigrants lived in poverty, resulting in a very poor quality of life. In the cities, immigrants were faced with overcrowding, inadequate water facilities,…

lesson: The EcoColumn

…an aquatic habitat. We built ours by establishing a TerrAqua Column first and then adding to it—you can build yours the same way or as a complete system from the start. The Life Science EcoColumn is designed as a study system for concepts addressed in the videos for Session 7 (Energy Flow in Communities) and…

video: Regional Realism

Depicting the Local in American Literature, 1865-1900 Set in the antebellum American South, but written after Emancipation, Mark Twain’s novel The Adventure’s of Huckleberry Finn remains a classic of American Literature. This episode compares Twain’s depiction of Southern vernacular culture to that of Charles Chestnutt and Kate Chopin, and in doing so, introduces the hallmarks…

section: Rhythms In Poetry – Activities

lesson: Sui Sin Far (Edith Maud Eaton) (1865-1914)

…provide her readers with insight into the unique culture that had developed in America’s Chinatowns. Sui Sin Far published nearly forty short stories and more than thirty articles about Chinese life in prominent national magazines. Near the end of her life she published two autobiographical accounts and collected some of her stories into a full-length…

section: Art: The Scream

…which depicts highly charged, affective moments related to themes of life, mysticism, love, and death. Described by Olso’s Munch Museum as “the actual mental image of the existential angst of civilized man,” The Scream is dominated by feelings of anxiety and alienation that were often associated with modern life at the turn of the century….

video: Kinetics and Nuclear Chemistry – Rates of Reaction

From an instantaneous explosion to the slow rusting of iron, the rates at which different chemical reactions proceed can vary tremendously depending on several factors, including temperature and concentration. Sometimes, like with the rotting of food, chemists want to slow down reaction rates. But often, the goal is to speed them up—and one way to…

section: Teaching Strategies: Developing a Community of Learners

…much about mathematics and to have as much fun learning about it that we possibly can. In the classroom, we create an environment so that we are constantly talking about the math, we’re discussing the math, but we’re also discussing the relevancy of the math, how important it is, and how it relates to their…

video: Building a Literary Community

…experience the literature, constantly reshaping their initial interpretations of the works, as well as apply new concepts. Students set new daily and weekly reading goals and consult with the teacher about their progress, questions, and accomplishments. Each group appoints a leader and recorder for group discussion. The students’ OWL logs — or discussion guides that…

video: A Vital Progressivism

program: Place, Culture, and Representation: The Art and Politics of the Harlem Renaissance

…depict the ordinary African American person as an individual, while simultaneously speaking to a unique African American experience, and celebrating life and all it had to offer. They argued against depicting only “cultured” and “high class” African Americans who mirrored the standards of white society. These young artists advocated art for art’s sake. Some artists,…

video: Modernist Portraits

Jazz filled the air and wailed against the night. Caught in the sway, American prose writers sought out the forbidden – the slang, the dialects, and the rhythms of the folk and of everyday life. Writers such as Hemingway, Stein, and Fitzgerald forged a new style: one which silhouetted the geometry of language, crisp in…

section: Native Voices – Activities

video: Slavery

section: Masculine Heroes – Activities

lesson: Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945)

…Americanized children, and the hollowness of the American drive for material success. Dreiser’s own life provided him with many of the experiences and concerns that he later translated into his fiction. He was born into a large, impoverished family in Terre Haute, Indiana. His father, a German immigrant, tried to make his children conform to…

lesson: Bret Harte (1836-1902)

[3707] Louis Charles McClure, The Gold Miner (c. 1890), courtesy of Denver Public Library, Western History Collection. At the height of his career, in the 1860s and 1870s, Bret Harte was one of the most famous and most highly paid American writers. His popular accounts of life in Gold Rush-era California, including short stories such…

video: Rethinking

…have put the text aside. They can return here as they reconsider and think through what they have done, or said, or thought from the perspectives the text has offered them. The opportunity to gain insight about one’s life by reading literature is at the heart of why many of us continue to read. This…

lesson: Flannery O’Connor (1925-1965)

…he died two years later. During her father’s last years, the O’Connor family moved to Milledgeville, Georgia, where O’Connor would spend most of the rest of her life living with her mother. After finishing high school, O’Connor earned a degree in social science from a local college. In 1945, on the recommendation of one of…

lesson: Philip Roth (b. 1933)

[4764] Anonymous, Current Photo of Philip Roth (n.d.), courtesy of Nancy Crampton and Houghton Mifflin Publishing. Philip Roth was born in Newark, New Jersey. His father was a struggling businessman for most of Roth’s young life, and financial setbacks were not unusual for the family. Roth attended the Newark branch of Rutgers University for several…

lesson: N. Scott Momaday (b. 1934)

…II materialistic culture on his people. Momaday uses Native American oral and European American poetic traditions, oral and written history, autobiography, and legend to create a rich panorama of Native American life. His first major work, House Made of Dawn (1968), is about a Native American who cannot reconcile his Pueblo heritage with city life….

lesson: Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

…American naturalists and eco-literature writers. He was the third child of John Thoreau and Cynthia Dunbar and spent most of his life in and around Concord, Massachusetts. His father operated a pencil manufacturing business in the area. Thoreau attended Concord Academy and graduated from Harvard College in 1837. The next year he and his brother…

section: Session Author and Literary Works: Tomás Rivera

…of these workers, but they also celebrate the strength and resilience of this community. Rivera was an avid reader and writer all his life, though his formal education was uneven until high school. Surmounting years of obstacles, he received a bachelor’s degree in education, then went on to earn a master’s in education and a…

section: Art: Tar Beach 2

…of everyday life. Ringgold’s protagonist lies on a mattress beside her younger brother, Bebe, looking up at the starry sky. Four adults sit at a nearby table where they chat and play cards. Other signs of domestic life abound on the rooftop—newly washed clothing and linens hang out to dry and a variety of beverages…

video: Divisibility Tests and Factors

Part A: Alpha Math Part B: Divisibility Tests Part C: Factors Homework This session introduces some topics related to number theory. Number theory allows us to consider why mathematics works the way it does. You will work with “Alpha math” problems to explore relationships among numbers, which is an important part of thinking about mathematics….

lesson: Margaret Fuller (1810-1850)

…rigorous education she received from her father: under his tutelage she sometimes put in eighteen-hour days reading literary and philosophical texts in four languages. As her account of her early life in the “Autobiographical Romance” makes clear, Fuller developed into a prodigy but suffered emotionally in the absence of a normal childhood. By her early…

video: 100 Days of Reading

…15 “Life in school reflects what happens in the world. When something is going on in the world it creeps into your classroom. I use every event that happens in life to enhance the curriculum…. Everyone in the world is talking about it and they want to participate, they want to be involved.” Shari Frost…

lesson: Online Textbook

…in his or her area of research and the potential impacts of those advances on everyday life. The classical physics related to each new topic is covered briefly to help the reader better understand the research, its effects, and our current understanding of physics. Select a unit title to view the Web version of the…

section: Online Textbook

…in his or her area of research and the potential impacts of those advances on everyday life. The classical physics related to each new topic is covered briefly to help the reader better understand the research, its effects, and our current understanding of physics. Click on “Content By Unit” (in the menu to the left)…

section: Art: Death leading a doctor holding a vial of urine. La Danse Macabre.

…Resource, NY La Dance Macabre or “Dance of Death” is a medieval parable on the universality of death. Its lesson: Death will come to everyone, no matter what his or her status in life. A scene from the Dance of Death is the focal point of the manuscript page seen here. The illustration, set above…

lesson: William Apess (1798-1839)

…Wampanoag leader known of the English as “King Philip,” among his ancestors. Metacomet’s courageous but unsuccessful resistance of the English settlers during King Philip’s War (1675-78) probably made him an appealing historical figure to Apess, who devoted his own life to asserting and defending Indian rights. Few details of Apess’s life are known beyond those…

lesson: Joel Chandler Harris (1848-1908)

…in his childhood. Many of his biographers suggest that his early insecurities led to lifelong shyness, which he compensated for by writing humorous stories and playing practical jokes. At thirteen, Harris was taken on as an apprentice typesetter at The Countryman, a weekly newspaper run by Joseph Addison Turner on his large plantation, called Turnwold….

lesson: Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885)

…Pennsylvania Quaker who had made his fortune as a banker in Colorado. Although her new husband was wealthy, Jackson continued to earn an independent living, publishing stories and travel sketches about life in the West. In 1879, while she was visiting Boston, the course of her life and writing was forever changed when she attended…

section: Expert Interview Transcripts: Carl R. Woese, PhD

Professor of Microbiology Professor Woese of the University of Illinois, is a self-described molecular biologist turned evolutionist. Woese used ribosomal RNA as an evolutionary record to identify archaea as a huge and diverse group, separate from the prokaryotes (bacteria) and the eukaryotes. As a result, the entire “Tree of Life” as we know it was…

video: Population and Resource Distribution

Video Summary: How are resources divided among the world’s population? Who are the “haves” and the “have nots”? What is life like for each group? What actions can citizens of the world take to rectify inequities? To help her students understand the complex issues surrounding the distribution of resources throughout the world, Becky Forristal uses…

program: Disaster and Government Response: The Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, and the New Deal

…(1933–34) and the Second New Deal (1935–38) and created a new role for government in American life. Today, the success of the programs started as part of the New Deal is still a hotly debated topic. It is not often credited with ending the Depression, but it did provide economic relief for millions of Americans….

lesson: William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)

…expatriate life followed by so many other writers of his generation. In 1902, Williams entered the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, and he later completed his residency in New York City. A practicing physician, Williams often wrote poetry in his office between visits with patients, and his verse bears the mark of a physician’s precise,…

lesson: Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941)

…has not a nice sense of word values; but he has an intense vision of life; he is a cautious and interpretative observer; and he has recorded here a bit of life which should rank him with the most important contemporary writers in this country.” H. L. Mencken called the book “some of the most…

section: Art: Lady with Mink and Veil

…© 2009 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn German artist Otto Dix was part of the Neue Sachlichkeit, or New Objectivity, movement centered in Berlin during the years between the two World Wars. Life was difficult in the country that had lost the First World War, and the Weimar Republic government…

section: Class Context

…they did this activity, I asked them not just to have two students together, but to have four people agree on things. This is what happens in real life. – Belal Joundeya     YEAR AT A GLANCE Weather and Seasons; Hobbies and Sports Food and Beverage; Eating Etiquette University Majors; Employment and Future Careers…

Annenberg Learner and Step up Tutoring Partner to Recruit Volunteer Tutors for Los Angeles Elementary Students

…that more than 13,000 middle and high school students consistently disengaged in fall 2020 and an additional 56,000 did not actively participate on a daily basis. Two in three students are falling behind in literacy and math, with Black and Latino elementary school students falling the furthest behind. Small-group and one-on-one tutoring have been shown…

video: Emotional Connections in Math and Science

…of clinical education in USC’s Rossier School of Education, taught high school and middle school math and science. He discusses how neuroscience will provide scientific evidence for how effective learning occurs, and makes the case for researchers and teachers to work together to develop teaching methods that foster meaningful emotional connections to math and science….

unit: Interview with Featured Scientist Lene Hau

Interviewer: How did you get interested in physics? LENE: Well, I think my first interest was in some sense in mathematics dating back, I think, to first grade and I had a terrific math teacher. I think having a great teacher that really gets you interested in a subject is super, super important. Then, when…

section: Part A: Meanings and Relationships of the Operations (40 minutes)

…7 rabbits. How many babies did the rabbit have? e. Reed’s parents gave him $5 for his birthday. He then had $12. How much money did he have before? Part A: Meanings and Relationships of the Operations adapted from Chapin, Suzanne and Johnson, Arthur (1999). Math Matters: Understanding the Math You Teach (pp. 40-72). ©…

video: One Hundred Years of Solitude

This video introduces the idea of magical realism, of a world where the impossible and the possible are mingled, and people accept the presence of both in their daily lives. How much of the novel is a metaphor for life in Latin America? Decide for yourself as you dive into this novel by the winner…

video: Matter and the Rise of Atomic Theory: The Art of the Meticulous

This program traces the story of how humans have always practiced chemistry; how, over time, it developed from a practical discipline into a science. Today, we keep up the chemists’ tradition to refine and purify substances. A current, real-life application of the “art of the meticulous” is the refining and purification of pure silicon from…

section: Regional Realism – Activities

video: Social Realism

Class Consciousness in American Literature, 1875-1920 This program presents the authors of the American Gilded Age, such as Edith Wharton, and juxtaposes them with social realists like Anzia Yezierska. These writers expose the double world that made up turn-of-the-century New York: that of the elite and that of the poorest of the poor. Which of…

section: Art: Life Mask of Chief Tapua Te Whanoa

» Maori artist, New Zealand Life Mask of Chief Tapua Te Whanoa Artist / Origin: Maori artist, New Zealand Region: Oceania Date: 1854 Period: 1800 CE – 1900 CE Material: Tinted cast incised with small bone adze dipped in liquid charcoal Medium: Other Location: National Museum of New Zealand, Wellington, NZ Credit: Courtesy of Werner…

lesson: Booker T. Washington (c. 1856-1915)

…and educator, Washington articulated ideas that had a tremendous influence on the state of race relations in America. In his autobiography, Up from Slavery (1901), he told the story of his life as the fulfillment of the mythic American Dream: he stresses that his success was achieved through hard work, perseverance, and virtue. Washington’s skillful…

lesson: Henry James (1843-1916)

…a naturalized British subject near the end of his life. James always maintained an active social life (he was famous for dining out almost every night of the week) and had a close relationship with his family, especially with his brother William, a pioneering American psychologist who was an important influence on James. But despite…

lesson: Simon J. Ortiz (b. 1941)

…part of his life. As he explains, “I think that because storytelling is a process, that is a dynamic of culture. . . . [I]t was with that first utterance of sound that your parents or those who are closest to you in your family utter that first sound or that first word and you…

video: Dreams and Visions

Art, of course, is about seeing. But it is not always about representing the world as it exists, and sometimes it can allow us to see with more than our eyes. From Aboriginal artists who paint the unseen forces of the universe to Surrealists who looked into the recesses of the unconscious mind for inspiration,…

lesson: Washington Irving (c. 1783-1859)

…to the American legation in London. His diverse works range from The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus(1828) and The Alhambra (1832), both written during his stay in Spain, to A Tour on the Prairies (1835) and The Adventures of Captain Bonneville, U.S.A. (1837), studies of the American West written on his return from Europe,…

lesson: John Ashbery (b. 1927)

…school of abstract painters prolific in the 1940s and 1950s, influences his verse. Like many of these painters, Ashbery explores the relationship between nature and life, but rather than using nature as a blueprint for life, Ashbery chooses not to emphasize realism. Instead, his poems examine the creative process itself, as a poem like “And…

video: Civil Rights: Demanding Equality

The promise of political and social equality has a powerful hold on American life. This unit brings to life the roles that individuals played in changing our understanding of equality both socially and politically.

lesson: Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton (c. 1832-1895)

…him. At the close of the war, she took advantage of the terms of the Treaty of Guadelupe-Hidalgo to move to Alta California with her mother, where the two became American citizens. In 1849, Maria Ruiz married Henry Burton in Monterey, California. Embarking on a new life within a social circle made up of both…

lesson: Richard Wright (1908-1960)

…job taught Wright new lessons about the tenuousness of life for an African American in the segregated South. Although his first story was published in an African American newspaper in Mississippi when Wright was in the eighth grade, Wright claimed to have awakened as a reader and writer during the mid-1920s, when he read H….

section: Art: Funeral Portrait of a Woman

…that the preservation of the physical body was crucial to the survival of the deceased in the afterlife. Sarcophagi in human form were created as a means not only of protecting the actual body, but also as an alternate anchor for the life force, or ka, in the event that the corpse was damaged. An…

section: Journey to the West – Read the Text

…and shame are one to me, A simple life prolongs my days. Those I meet upon my way Are Immortals, one and all, Who from their quiet seats expound The Scriptures of the Yellow Court. When Monkey heard these words he was very pleased. “There must then be Immortals somewhere hereabouts,” he said. He sprang…

section: Classifying Living Things | A Closer Look

Look for the following topics in the video, indicated by the onscreen icon, and click below to learn more. Classifying Living Things CO2 and O2 Taxonomic Classification Teaching Tips Scientist at Work Curriculum Resources…

video: Things Fall Apart

This video introduces the world of the Igbo, whose civilization is threatened by the colonial advances of the British into their lands in Nigeria. You’ll see this native world in all its logic, beauty, and problems, and then watch it begin to crack under internal and external pressure. All Video on Demand files are protected…

video: Online Textbook and Video

This online textbook chapter supports and extends the content of the HIV and AIDS video. The chapter provides an overview of the human immune system, and covers the viral life cycle and current obstacles in controlling HIV. Click on the Go button to begin reading, or skip to a sub-section of the chapter in the…

lesson: Bernal Díaz del Castillo (1492-1584)

…superiors did. Much later in his life, he decided to write an account of those impressions, intending to offer a corrective to what he saw as the distortions and half-truths perpetuated by other historians. (Significantly, Díaz’s work also serves as a corrective to Cortés’s “great man” view of history in that it emphasizes the role…

lesson: Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)

…his father’s enthusiasm for manual labor and a steady home life. Sandburg left school after the eighth grade and then worked at a variety of odd jobs before volunteering in the Spanish American War in 1898. While serving in the war, he wrote columns about his experiences in the army for the Galesburg newspaper. After…

section: Compare: How Can a Way of Life Influence a Culture’s Artistic Forms?

…(152 cm.) Location: De Young Museum, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA Credit: Courtesy of De Young Museum, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Gift of George and Marie Hecksher How can a way of life influence a culture’s artistic forms? Nomadic lifestyles call for domestic objects that are first and foremost…

section: Interview with Pieter Tans

…zebra mussel, for example, that has been invading the Great Lakes, and is like a plague for local ecosystems. We’re doing that all over the place. I think we’re basically endangering our own existence. Interviewer: So what must we do in order for life as we know it to be sustainable? PIETER: Actually, life as…

section: Interview with Stuart Davies

…standing in, take that to degraded lands or heavily utilized lands so that people can restore and regenerate these forests or parts of these forests, for example: how to grow the most important timber species in an open area. Interviewer: Can you talk a bit about the diversity of plant life and animals? STUART: In…

section: Expert Interview Transcript: Eric S. Lander, Ph.D.

…layout of the human and mouse genomes. He has published more than 240 original research articles in mathematics, economics, and biology in peer-reviewed journals such as Science, Nature, Cell, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and The American Journal of Human Genetics. He has also written a book entitled Calculating the Secrets of Life….

video: Students Create a Multi-Arts Performance

…Teachers met for planning sessions every week, and the kindergarten and fourth-grade classes met jointly with all the teachers twice a week. The unit began with background lessons in several subject areas, including math, science, English, and the arts. Later, the children watched the videotape of Quidam. This program includes highlights of the creative process….

section: Online Textbook

…advances in his or her area of research and the potential impacts of those advances on everyday life. The classical physics related to each new topic is covered briefly to help the reader better understand the research, its effects, and our current understanding of physics. Click on “Content By Unit” (in the menu to the…

lesson: Approaches in Practice

To begin, you will learn about these approaches and their unique perspectives on human nature and psychological disturbance. Then, you will put each into practice for a common psychological disorder.

video: Different Kinds of Smart: Multiple Intelligences

“Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, gives us a different framework for teaching and thinking in the classroom, as well as how we think about what people do in life. We rely on lots different abilities to succeed in life. Different people have those abilities differently developed, and using the strengths that we have as…

video: Using Primary Sources

…students. After completing the institute, Ms. Waffle developed a unit to help students learn what life was like as the colonies began to experience economic growth. In this video lesson, students examine two primary sources from the colonial period: an advertisement and a contract. Students use a graphic organizer to analyze an advertisement placed in…

lesson: Eudora Welty (1909-2001)

[5169] Ben Shahn, Two Women Walking along Street, Natchez, Mississippi (1935), courtesy of the Library of Congress [LC-USF33-006093-M4 DLC]. Eudora Alice Welty was born in Jackson, Mississippi, where she lived nearly all of her life. A first-generation Mississippian, Welty grew up in comfortable circumstances and developed an early love of reading. After graduating from the…

program: The Human Brain

…Although your brain works as a unified whole, neuroscientists can identify areas within it that perform specific functions. Your brain is organized into three interconnected layers: the central core, limbic system, and cerebral cortex, all of which contain structures that regulate everyday life. Explore the human brain and its role in regulating your life.  …

section: Online Textbook

video: The Thousand and One Nights

This video introduces the world of high Islamic culture, lowbrow comedy, and encounters with the spirit world, all through the stories of the brave Shahrazad, who saves her own life, her husband’s sanity, the kingdom, and all of her readers from the evils of life with her stories. All Video on Demand files are protected…

video: The Urban Experience

…In turn, the urban experience has inspired the creation of artwork depicting aspects of city life. All Video on Demand files are protected by copyright law and are free for this streaming purpose only. Downloading, in whole or in part, is strictly prohibited. Offenders will be subject to civil and/or criminal liability under applicable laws….

video: Moving Through

Introduction Being In and Moving Through a text is the point in the envisionment-building process where readers develop a deeper understanding, all the while connecting human possibilities and experiences to make meaning out of the text. Readers in this stance are utilizing ideas, hunches, past experiences in reading, and life experiences to build a hearty…

video: Planning and Professional Development

Introduction “Taking classes… and… [doing] professional reading really got me on track… And I’ve had mentors through all my professional life. I continue to have them… because I don’t think we ever stop evolving. Professionally, I don’t think you can.” Flora Tyler 6th Grade Teacher, Picacho Middle School Las Cruces, New Mexico A common thread…

video: Evolution and the Tree of Life

Learning Goals Which skull is a lizard and which is a snake? During this session, you will have an opportunity to build understandings to help you: Define what is meant by “species.” Describe how new species evolve as a result of variation and adaptation through natural selection. Comprehend a tree of life as a model…

unit: Many Planets, One Earth

lesson: Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960)

…the small, all-black town of Eatonville, Florida. Hurston would later write that she spent the first years of her life blissfully unaware of the racial oppression experienced by the vast majority of southern blacks in that era. “How It Feels to Be Colored Me,” Hurston’s famous essay recounting this experience, sets the unapologetic, joyful, and…

section: Exploring Borderlands – Activities

video: Becoming Visible

Ethnic Writers and the Literary Mainstream, 1945-1969 This episode guides the viewer through the works and contexts of ethnic writers from 1945-1965. Starting with the works of Ralph Waldo Ellison, Philip Roth, and N. Scott Momaday, we explore the way writers from the margins took over the center of American culture….

video: Developing an Arts-Based Unit

Students in the first and second grades create their own drama as a year-end project at Lusher Alternative Elementary School in New Orleans, Louisiana. A team of first- and second-grade teachers at Lusher Alternative Elementary School in New Orleans, Louisiana, plans a year-end project that lets students show what they have learned in science, math,…

lesson: Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909)

[9066] Joseph John Kirkbride, Panorama of Mooseriver Village (c. 1884-91), courtesy of the Library of Congress [LC-USZ62-61485]. Sarah Orne Jewett’s evocative sketches of village life in nineteenth-century Maine have earned her a place among the most important practitioners of American regional writing. Born in South Berwick, Maine, Jewett grew up steeped in the idioms and…

video: Learning From Others: Learning in a Social Context

“Vygotsky understood that all learning is social – that we don’t actually end up doing most of our learning all by ourselves in our own heads; that we work with others, we assist one another to learn. Teachers can help students learn by consciously teaching within their zone of proximal development – right in that…

section: Gothic Undercurrents – Activities

section: Teaching Strategies: Strategies for Teaching English Language Learners

…everything in context. We were talking about fractions and I brought in some brownies and we cut up the brownies in different ways. So any time you can bring in real-life situations, something to connect their life with the abstract world of mathematics and bring them together, I think that really is going to help….

section: Expert Interview Transcript: Philip D. Gingerich, Ph.D.

Professor of Geological Sciences Gingerich is a professor of geological sciences and director of the Museum of Paleontology at the University of Michigan. He has studied the evolution of archaic whales for over twenty-five years, collecting specimens in Pakistan and Egypt. In 2000, he found fossils that confirmed the assertion by molecular biologists that whales…

section: Authors and Literary Works

video: Online Textbook and Video

This online textbook chapter supports and extends the content of the Microbial Diversity video. The chapter covers microbial energy sources, polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and the role of microbes in nutrient cycling. Click on the Go button to begin reading, or skip to a sub-section of the chapter in the list below….

section: Authors and Literary Works

video: Returning to the Classroom

…envisionment-building classrooms have to look and feel the same, they are guided by some basic principles (from Judith Langer’s Envisioning Literature): Principles of Practice: Students are treated as life-long envisionment builders. Questions are treated as part of the literary experience. Class meetings are a time to develop understandings. Multiple perspectives are used to enrich interpretation….

lesson: Thomas Pynchon (b. 1937)

[6241] Anonymous, Anti-Communist Poster Showing Russian Soldier and Joseph Stalin Standing over Graves in Foreground; Cannons and People Marching to Siberia in Background (1953), courtesy of the Library of Congress [LC-USZ62-117876]. Thomas Pynchon has become famous as the man who does not want to be famous. Little is known about this author’s personal life: we…

section: Authors and Literary Works

lesson: Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

…early age against the narrow constraints of life in Puritan Boston. As a teenager, he rejected his family’s pious Puritanism in favor of Deism, a persuasion that privileges reason over faith and rejects traditional religious tenets in favor of a general belief in a benevolent creator. He also rebelled against his lengthy apprenticeship in his…

lesson: Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)

…wife and parent brought many difficult issues to the forefront of her life. Raised with 1950s middle-class values, Plath struggled with the tensions between those domestic ideals and her own feminism, and her poetry bears the mark of the conflict between her role as artist and her role as wife/mother. Plath’s struggle to represent women’s…

video: Breathing Life Into Myths

PROGRAM AT A GLANCE School Mineral Springs Middle School Location Winston-Salem, NC Grade 8 Disciplines Visual Art, Language Arts Description Students create ceramic place settings based on literary characters. HELEN SCHELL, 6th-Grade Language Arts Teacher I’m trying to immerse the children in the idea that mythology and Greek culture permeate our day-to-day life. I chose…

lesson: Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000)

…followed, such as Maud Martha (1953), Bronzeville Boys and Girls (1956), and In the Mecca (1968). A pivotal moment in Brooks’s life occurred in 1967 when she attended the Second Black Writers’ Conference at Fisk University, where she encountered young black poets writing “as blacks, about blacks, to blacks.” She began conducting poetry workshops for…

lesson: Animal Life Cycles: A Closer Look

A Closer Look Look for the following topics in the video, indicated by the onscreen icon, and click below to learn more. Body Cell Reproduction Sex Cell Production Cloning The Incredible Egg Teaching Tips: DNA Extraction Scientist at Work Curriculum Resources…

lesson: Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938)

…reputation for the rest of his short life. Born Thomas Clayton Wolfe in Asheville, North Carolina, Wolfe was the youngest of eight children. He attended a private school in Asheville before going on to the University of North Carolina when he was just shy of his sixteenth birthday. It was at UNC that Wolfe began…

lesson: Katherine Anne Porter (1890-1980)

…never known. Porter did not take to domestic life, however, and soon separated from her husband, assumed the name Katherine Anne, and turned to a life of travel and career changes. After a serious bout with tuberculosis, Porter took her first job as a professional writer with the Fort Worth Critic, and from there she…

lesson: Ralph Ellison (1914-1994)

…Act (1964). In the 1930s the communist party attracted much community attention as a force in the civil rights movement, and many African American intellectuals gravitated to it. Ellison found his way into the party because it seemed at the time to be the strongest and most promising force for change in African American life,…

section: Art: Eagle Coffin

…NJ Credit: Courtesy of The Newark Museum For the Ga, the dominant ethnic group in southern coastal Ghana, funerals are a time for both mourning and celebration. According to the traditional beliefs of the Ga, one’s life carries on beyond death. Many Ga choose to be buried in what are often referred to in the…

lesson: Hart Crane (1899-1932)

…fragmented and hopeless. His life was not an easy one; his relationship with his parents was strained, he drank heavily, and he was homosexual at a time when homosexuality was not openly discussed, much less tolerated. Born in Ohio, Hart Crane moved to New York at the age of eighteen to pursue a career as…

section: Authors and Literary Works

unit: Pop Bottle Ecosystem

ELEMENTARY SCHOOL — LEVEL 3 An ecosystem is a community of organisms living within the same environment. For this project, kids will build a thriving ecosystem they can put in the window at home. Add a little fishy friend and this project relies on you daily to keep the ecosystem healthy and balanced. FUN FACTS…

unit: Big Ideas in Literacy – English

Introduction The English language arts classroom has always been the primary place where students are taught academic literacy practices. These days, as teachers of other subjects, like math and science, are asked to incorporate academic literacy into their classrooms, some English teachers ask each other, “If reading and writing are taught in science, math, and…

video: Blended Learning: Using Technology to Learn Math Concepts

Leon Young uses technology in the classroom to facilitate communication among peers and to support differentiated instruction of small learning groups. Teacher: Leon Young School: REALM Charter School, Berkeley, CA Grade: 8 Discipline: Mathematics (Algebra 1) Lesson Topic: Arithmetic sequences Lesson Month: January Number of Students: 23 Other: REALM, the Revolutionary Education and Learning Movement,…

section: Part A: Alpha Math (35 minutes)

“Alpha math” problems, where each letter stands for one digit of a number, can help you identify some of the things you know about the behaviors of particular base ten digits under various operations. Your task is to decode each of the following problems, figuring out what digit each letter represents. See Note 1 below….

video: Voices in the Conversation

“The read-aloud in my classroom is the center of the day. It’s a time when we have cried together. It’s a time when we have laughed together. It’s a time when kids have said, ‘This is how life is for me.’…And to me those moments where one child says, ‘I had no idea about what…

section: Candide – Expert’s View

An excerpt from Candide, by Voltaire The Old Woman describes her plight “Imagine my situation, the daughter of a pope, only fifteen years old, who in the space of three months had been exposed to poverty and slavery, been raped almost daily, had seen her mother torn to pieces, had endured war and famine, and…

video: Pulling It All Together: Creating Classrooms and Schools That Support Learning

…to think about their thinking, and where they become learners for life.” Linda Darling-Hammond Key Question How can schools organize for powerful learning? Learning Objective Organizing schools around students’ development and learning – Teachers will understand that organizing schools for powerful learning means integrating what we know about children’s development and learning with what we…

video: The Teacher’s Role in a Literary Community

…foster classroom community. To accommodate a diverse range of interests, ages, and abilities, Mr. Hoonan offers students a choice of 15 titles linked to the theme, “Life’s Not Fair.” Students are invited to read at least two books and form discussion groups based on the reading of shared titles. In addition, the class read-aloud book…

video: When Chemicals Meet Water: The Properties of Solutions

The majority of chemical reactions happen in solutions—whether inside an espresso machine or in a human cell. For example, when we breathe, the nitrogen in the air dissolves in our blood. Henry’s Law gives us the power to predict, prevent, and treat “the bends”—a life-threatening condition that can happen to SCUBA divers when nitrogen in…

program: Protest and Politics: 1968, Year of the Barricades

…more and more students were being admitted into the university system, stretching physical capacity to the limit. University years offered many young people a period between adolescence and adult life in the workforce, a time in which many experimented with lifestyles that challenged previous cultural norms and mores. As this new, larger, more diverse generation…

video: Citizenship: Making Government Work

video: Historical Change

…like change and the passage of time. Next, Mr. Kitts reads Oxcart Man, which provides a glimpse of what life was like on a farm 200 years ago. Working together, students write comparison statements about farming tools and techniques past and present. Then they record those statements on time wheels that illustrate the similar and…

lesson: Louise Amelia Smith Clappe (1819-1906)

…a participant in and chronicler of the Gold Rush. She was raised by her father, a mathematics professor, after her mother’s early death, and then by a guardian after she was orphaned in 1837. Her thorough education left her with a well-rounded knowledge of arts and literature. In 1848, Louise Smith married Fayette Clapp, a…

video: A New System of Government

lesson: Jean Toomer (1894-1967)

…a nation with a long habit of dividing itself along racial lines. Light-skinned enough to “pass,” Toomer grappled with his complicated racial identity all his life. Toomer was not alone in this predicament; novelists James Weldon Johnson and Nella Larsen both explored the notion of passing in their fiction. In 1923, Toomer’s most famous work,…

section: Art: Terracotta Army (detail) from the Tomb Complex of Qin Shi Huangdi

…to achieve eternal life. According to historical records, construction of Qin Shi Huangdi’s elaborate tomb began with his accession to the throne and likely was not completed by the time of his death. Although the emperor’s burial mound was visible above ground, the vast underground complex would not be rediscovered until 1974, when farmers attempted…

lesson: Robert Frost (1874-1963)

…values of rural New England. His father, William Frost, graduated with honors from Harvard and spent most of his life working as a journalist, but alcoholism led to an early death in 1885. In answer to William’s wishes to be buried in Lawrence, Massachusetts, the family moved back east and settled in Lawrence. Robert quickly…

section: Session Author and Literary Works: N. Scott Momaday

…in myself; I could sense it but could not take possession of it until I translated it into language My poem ‘Rainy Mountain Cemetery’ is an act of understanding. Beyond that, there is no other way.” Through his poetry and his innovative fiction and scholarship, Momaday has infused both Kiowa and American culture with life….

section: Session Author and Literary Works: Pat Mora

…adults,” writes Mora. Several of her children’s works bring to life her personal family stories. In The Rainbow Tulip, Mora tells of her mother’s bicultural experiences: “At home I’m Estelita. At school my name is Stella.” In her memoirs and poetry, she introduces readers to her extended family and ponders the nature of her relationships…

section: Art: The Railroad Stations Were at Times So Over-Packed with People Leaving that Special Guards Had to Be Called in to Keep Order from the Migration Series

…who were impacted by it. In addition to studies from life, the work involved extensive research. In preparation for the project, Lawrence spent months poring over migration-era documents at the Schomburg Collection in Harlem, which remains a major center for the study of African American culture and history today. The Migration Series, which consists of…

section: Session Author and Literary Works: Ruthanne Lum McCunn

Ruthanne Lum McCunn Author Bio Ruthanne Lum McCunn was born in San Francisco’s Chinatown district in 1946, and was raised and schooled in Hong Kong. As a young girl, McCunn recalls being left out of kids’ groups because of her mixed ethnic background (Chinese and Scottish). But her isolation from children gave her access to…

video: Economic Dilemmas and Solutions

Video Summary: How can an exam review bring economic concepts to life? Steve Page’s 12th-grade economics class reviews for an exam by discussing real-life social dilemmas and their effect on the economy, and by developing viable economic solutions to those dilemmas. The class is divided into small groups, and Mr. Page assigns each group a…

session: Spanish: Food Facts and Stories

CLASSROOM AT A GLANCE Teacher John Pedini Language Spanish I Grades 8 School Michael Driscoll School, Brookline, Massachusetts Lesson Date January 9 Class Size 14 Schedule 40 minutes daily Video Summary In this lesson, students make connections to science, health, and math during a nutrition discussion. They talk about the effects of a fast-food diet,…

unit: Bringing It All Together – Mathematics

…mathematics. You may want to take notes on the questions below. Before you watch: How does reading, writing, speaking, and listening provide opportunities to engage in the authentic work of mathematicians? How does this support mathematics learning? What are the implications for how you plan for instruction? Watch the video: As you watch, notice how…

video: Comprehending Informational Texts

…reading group. Teacher: Wendy Barrales School: Urban Assembly Institute of Math and Science for Young Women, Brooklyn, NY Grade: 6 Discipline: English Language Arts (Humanities) Lesson Topic: Analyzing genres Lesson Month: March Number of Students: 25 Other: This is an all-girls college preparatory middle and high school with a focus on math, science, and technology….

video: Emotion in Math

Abigail Baird discusses how connecting math to the real world helps students to be more engaged and emotionally involved.

video: One-on-One Conferences

…unknown word. Teacher: Wendy Barrales School: Urban Assembly Institute of Math and Science for Young Women, Brooklyn, NY Grade: 6 Discipline: English Language Arts (Humanities) Lesson Topic: Analyzing genres Lesson Month: March Number of Students: 25 Other: This is an all-girls college preparatory middle and high school with a focus on math, science, and technology….

lesson: Part A: Line Symmetry (30 minutes)

…regular polygons.   Part A: Finding Lines of Symmetry adapted from IMPACT Mathematics, Course 3, developed by Educational Development Center, Inc. pp. 289-290. © 2000 Glencoe/McGraw-Hill. Used with permission. www.glencoe.com/sec/math Problems A1 and A2 adapted from IMPACT Mathematics, Course 3, developed by Educational Development Center, Inc. pp. 290-291. © 2000 Glencoe/McGraw-Hill. Used with permission. www.glencoe.com/sec/math…

video: One-on-One Conferences

…Teacher: Wendy Barrales School: Urban Assembly Institute of Math and Science for Young Women, Brooklyn, NY Grade: 6 Discipline: English Language Arts (Humanities) Lesson Topic: Analyzing genres Lesson Month: March Number of Students: 25 Other: This is an all-girls college preparatory middle and high school with a focus on math, science, and technology. Full Details…

video: Ceremony and Society

People across the world engage in a wide range of ceremonial rites and spectacles. Some of these are religious, others political or social. Through these practices and the arts that accompany them—costumes, masks, vessels, ancestor figurines, altarpieces, staffs, and other objects and images—people across cultures define identity, build community, express belief, negotiate power, and attend…

section: Online Textbook

…in his or her area of research and the potential impacts of those advances on everyday life. The classical physics related to each new topic is covered briefly to help the reader better understand the research, its effects, and our current understanding of physics. Click on “Content By Unit” (in the menu to the left)…

video: Teaching Music

…specialist Barrett Jackson developed her own teaching goals for each class, including those for the kindergartners and fifth-graders featured in this program At Smith Renaissance School of the Arts in Denver, Colorado, music teacher Sylvia Bookhardt uses the experience of learning and performing choral music to launch investigations into other topics, such as Renaissance life….

lesson: Featured Classroom: Melissa Minnick, Walkersville, MD

Melissa Minnick, Walkersville, MD “I think that when we teach life science with a hands-on constructivist method, we will bring these children’s world to them. Then they start to make the connections that we want them to make. Then they start to do that investigative thinking and that scientific thinking, and make the connections from…

lesson: Sandra Cisneros (b. 1954)

…of any background can appreciate her stories and their implications for one’s understanding of “Americanness.” By creating a voice and style uniquely her own, Cisneros tells stories that reflect her interests as well as those of her community. Cisneros’s novel The House on Mango Street modifies stories that she heard throughout her life, especially those…

video: Emily Dickinson

Though Emily Dickinson spent almost all her life in Amherst, Massachusetts, her poems represent a broad range of imaginative experience. They are rich in feeling, wide in their knowledge of nature, books, and geography, and expansive in their vision. Dickinson’s training in science suggests a source for her skill in accurate observation, whether of plants…

section: Controversial Public Policy Issues — Student Perspectives

The students whose interview comments are excerpted here were seniors enrolled in a one-semester law course at Champlin Park High School in Champlin, Minnesota. Here they discuss their experience participating in a structured academic controversy on the topic of racial profiling.

section: Art: The Fitting

…cm.); (Sheet) H: 17 ¼ in. (43.8 cm.), W: 12 in. (30.5 cm.) Location: Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York Credit: Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum In The Fitting, Impressionist artist and American expatriate Mary Cassatt offers viewers a scene of everyday life in nineteenth-century Paris that speaks not only to gender roles, but also to…

section: The God of Small Things – Getting Started

…twin siblings Rahel and Estha experience full immersion in their large, diverse, unique, and typical family. Grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles, cousins and siblings all play a role in shaping the world of the twins, for better and for worse. Each family member’s life is affected by politics, history, and culture clash, and while each…

section: Art: The Night Journey of Muhammad on His Steed, Buraq from the Bustan of Sacdi

…floor of a closed interior. The illustration comes from the Bustan (literally “Garden”), a collection of entertaining anecdotes, in which the Persian poet Sacdi shares life lessons as well as spiritual wisdom. The image likely was placed toward the front of the manuscript, near the prologue where Sacdi offers praise to God and the Prophet…

section: Art: Kennedy Family on beach, Hyannis Port, 1959 (Caroline overhead)

…unofficially, as the Kennedy family photographer throughout the presidency. On assignment by Life magazine, Shaw took this photograph of then Senator Kennedy, his wife, and daughter at the beach in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, in 1959. Shaw’s black and white photograph shows John Kennedy lying on his back at the beach’s edge. With his knees bent,…

lesson: John Smith (c. 1580-1631)

…inquiry, Smith and his writings have come to be regarded as representative of the colonial Virginia experience. Despite his rather ordinary beginnings as the son of a yeoman farmer in England, Smith early hurled himself into a life of adventure. Upon his father’s death in 1596, he journeyed to continental Europe and volunteered as a…

video: Portraits

Throughout history and across cultures, people have shown a fascination with faces, and in turn, with portrait representation. The depiction of an individual likeness is about identification, but more than that, it is a record of an interaction between an artist and a sitter, both of whom contribute to the portrait’s form and content. Far…

lesson: Anne Bradstreet (c. 1612-1672)

…philosophy, and Bradstreet benefited from an extensive classical education such as was usually reserved only for male children. Her sixty years of life were troubled by recurring sickness and ill health, beginning with an attack of smallpox when she was sixteen. Shortly after recovering, she married her father’s assistant, Simon Bradstreet. She immigrated to America…

lesson: Wallace Stevens (1883-1963)

…in church, and “The Comedian as the Letter C” and “Peter Quince at the Clavier,” which consider the life of the mind and the life of the senses, locating meaning within appreciation of the world. Stevens’s wit, insight, and careful diction earned him a place as one of the foremost poets of the twentieth century….

lesson: Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)

…life in the church. He showed remarkable promise as a child, entering Yale–at that time, a bastion of conservative religious training–when he was thirteen and graduating as valedictorian. While in college, Edwards complemented his traditional theological education by studying the Enlightenment philosophy of John Locke and Isaac Newton. He also developed a scientific interest in…

lesson: Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

…individual’s unlimited potential. In contrast to the optimism that characterized his writings and philosophy, Emerson’s own personal life was pervaded by tragedy. His father died in 1811, when Emerson was only eight years old, leaving his mother to struggle to support her five sons. After graduating from Harvard, Emerson suffered from serious eye strain and…

section: Migrant Struggle – Activities

video: The New City

section: Advocating and Securing the Rights of Displaced Persons: The Roles of Governments, International Groups, and Individuals

…refugees, which are: Non-refoulement (the belief that a refugee cannot be returned to a country where they face serious threats to their life or freedom). Freedom of movement, which means that refugees have the right to choose their place of residence within the territory and to move freely within that area. Liberty and security of…

lesson: Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

…Poe secured his fame, but he was not succeeding as well in his personal life. His wife died in 1847, and Poe was increasingly ill and drinking uncontrollably. He died on a trip to Baltimore, four days after being found intoxicated near a polling booth on Election Day. Poe was influenced by the fantastic romances…

lesson: William Gilmore Simms (1806-1870)

[7245] The International Magazine of Literature, Art and Science, William Gilmore Simms (1852), courtesy of the Making of America Project, Cornell University Library. Born in Charleston, South Carolina, and remaining near his birthplace throughout his life, Simms was well-known as the author of romances such as The Yemassee (1835), The Lily and the Totem (1850),…

lesson: Frederick Douglass (1818-1895)

…The Liberator, William Lloyd Garrison’s radical abolitionist newspaper. He soon became involved in Garrison’s abolitionist circle and emerged as an eloquent speaker for the cause of African American rights, addressing audiences all over the country with moving accounts of his experiences as a slave. In 1845, he published his Narrative of the Life of Frederick…

lesson: Briton Hammon (fl. 1760)

…autobiography by an African American. Composed in the tradition of the popular Indian captivity genre, Hammon’s narrative tells an exciting tale of travel, shipwreck, bondage among Native American and Spanish captors, and daring escapes. Unfortunately, no details of Hammon’s life are known beyond those recorded in the “Narrative.” Although he does not discuss his race…

lesson: Abraham Cahan (c. 1860-1951)

…Arbeiter Zeitung, the newspaper of the United Hebrew Trades. In 1897 Cahan helped to found the influential and widely distributed Yiddish newspaper the Jewish Daily Forward and served as its editor for almost fifty years. In the Forward, Cahan pioneered the use of conversational, Americanized Yiddish that could be easily understood by his immigrant readers….

video: View & Analyze the Video

…class includes heritage learners (who can range from bilingual students to students with minimal skills in the target language)? How do visuals and props enhance student learning? How do you incorporate cultural comparisons into a topic like daily routines? How do you let students know what the planned activities and goals are for a lesson?…

section: Interview with Wendy Graham

…program, the Total Maximum Daily Load Program, which is trying to define the maximum contaminate concentration these water bodies can withstand without disrupting the natural system. The EPA mandated that these total maximum daily loads be implemented for all major water bodies in the country. And not much happened for a few decades. The heat…

section: Extend Your Knowledge | Writing

…providing appropriate time for instruction and practice in writing. Every writing expert, from Donald Graves to Lucy Calkins and Nanci Atwell, talks about time. We must have regular times for our students to write. We would hope that this is true on a daily basis, but, if it’s not possible, there will be certain days…

section: Before You Watch | Creating Contexts for Learning

…factor into your classroom environment: organization of materials and desks or tables; books and other literacy materials; daily reading and writing routines; and student groupings. Now, jot down your answers to the following questions and, if you are taking this workshop for credit, save them for your Literacy Practices Portfolio: How does your classroom organization…

section: Class Context

…Months, Birthdays, Seasons, and Weather Daily Routines Musical Instruments Argentina Connection Project The following topics are incorporated into multiple units: Spanish-speaking countries: Peru, Bolivia, Mexico, and Puerto Rico Geographic terms Map skills; Identifying Spanish-speaking countries on a world map Math-related content (e.g., graphs, Venn diagrams) School Profile Carina Rodriguez teaches Spanish in grades preK, 3,…

Press Release: Annenberg Foundation and Two Bit Circus Foundation Ignite Lifelong Love for Arts and Sciences with Free STEAM-Based Online Projects

…tech projects designed for educators, parents, and children across the country and around the world. This decision to introduce STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and math) content on Learner.org is in direct response to the overwhelming need for creative and accessible STEAM resources during this unprecedented global crisis. The projects are a solution for continuing…

section: Class Context

…Program (ESFL). In 1991, the school began German instruction for kindergarten students. Each year the program has added another grade, so that currently each K-5 student receives 30 minutes of German instruction daily. Austin students are graded on participation rather than on test performance in German class. Teachers also monitor and evaluate students’ progress by…

Press Release: NOLA-PS Partners with Annenberg Foundation to Provide Free Educational Programming to Families and Teachers

…light of the COVID-19 public health crisis. The Annenberg Learner content collection contains K-12 educational materials and videos covering a variety of subjects from math and science to literature and music. Starting today, the Annenberg Learner programming can be accessed at: https://nolapublicschools.com/opsb-tv or NOLA-PS TV on channel 8 via COX Cable now through July 31,…

unit: Building Out Of The Box

…receive bonus points or any other reward. Provide child with a math expression that can be used to solve the amount of bricks in the box. For example, place 4 bricks in the box and provide the expression x + 6 = 10. There are a number of ways that child may solve this problem….

lesson: Homework

…the two angles is larger? b. How much larger is it? c. How did you make your decision?   Problem H1 adapted from Connected Geometry, developed by Educational Development Center, Inc. p. 72. © 2000 Glencoe/McGraw-Hill. Used with permission. www.glencoe.com/sec/math Problem H2 developed by Educational Development Center, Inc. © 2000 Glencoe/McGraw-Hill. Used with permission. www.glencoe.com/sec/math…

section: Class Context

I think it’s important that we touch upon history, science, math, and all the other curricula in our Spanish class to show that these things are done in this language. In different countries that are Spanish-speaking countries, they do study science. They do study history. They study math. So do we. But when you put…

video: Talking Like a Mathematician

Kim Dinh has students explain a math process in order to better understand linear equations and graphing. Teacher: Kim Dinh School: Health Sciences High and Middle College, San Diego, CA Grade: 9 Discipline: Mathematics (Algebra 1) Lesson Topic: Word problems involving linear inequalities Lesson Month: February Number of Students: 35…

unit: Divide a Build

…to cover the plates. Have child model this division problem as well, and ask them how it differs from the previous one. Child then calculates how many studs are on each plate, and writes a division sentence to show their math. Have child compare their model to the written math problems to check their work….

section: Online Textbook

…in his or her area of research and the potential impacts of those advances on everyday life. The classical physics related to each new topic is covered briefly to help the reader better understand the research, its effects, and our current understanding of physics. Click on “Content By Unit” (in the menu to the left)…

video: Acids and Bases: The Voyage of the Proton

Acids and bases are found all around us, and the currency of acid-base chemistry is the proton, or hydrogen ion. Acid-base chemistry is part of everyday life, from baking and the food we eat to the innumerable reactions that keep the human body alive. Acid-base chemistry is measured on the pH scale—the concentration of hydrogen…

video: Growth and Empire

video: Preserving a Place for the Arts

…“My Life, My Roots, My Dreams” – the students are integrating science, language arts, photography, visual art, and social studies. They’re creating an heirloom – a book that they’ll want to keep for the rest of their lives. Rebecca Hennis, Dance and Language Arts Teacher I am the only dance teacher in this county. Instead…

lesson: Samuel de Champlain (c. 1570-1635)

…in exploring and claiming vast areas of North America for France. Born in the town of Brouage on the Atlantic coast of France, Champlain learned the arts of seafaring, navigation, and cartography early in his life. Because he was passionately interested in, as he put it, “obtain[ing] a knowledge of different countries, regions, and realms,”…

section: Compare: What Is the Role of Painting in Domestic Life?

…life? Painting played an important role in the homes of both the Roman nouveaux riches living in Pompeii and the yangbang elite of Korea’s Chosôn period. Although the form and style that painting took in each case was very different, it maintained some essential functions across time and geography. Like all art in the domestic…

Ten Novelists

lesson: Bottle Biology Spotlight: Session 2

By the end of the second week* in this course, you should have a Bottle Biology system up and running. Be sure to share your experiences with your colleagues as you go. You can also track the progress of systems set up by Life Science as a way of comparing your observations with ours, or…

lesson: H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) (1886-1961)

[7105] New York Times Paris Bureau Collection, London Has Its Biggest Raid of the War (1941), courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration. Born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Hilda Doolittle attended exclusive private schools in Philadelphia and was admitted to Bryn Mawr College. Her father was a professor of mathematics and astronomy at Lehigh University…

lesson: Mary Rowlandson (c. 1636-1711)

…was very young, settling first in Salem and later in the frontier town of Lancaster, in the Massachusetts colony. In 1656, Mary married Joseph Rowlandson, the Harvard-educated Puritan minister of Lancaster, and for the next twenty years she occupied the role of a Puritan goodwife, tending to her home and raising children. Her life was…

program: Explorations

Choose a section below to begin. History of Psychology: Explore historic moments in the development of modern psychology. Research Methods: Explore the scientific method of psychological research. The Human Brain: Explore the human brain’s role in regulating everyday life. Life Span Development: Explore our amazing capacity for change. Approaches in Practice: Explore the approaches and…

lesson: Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1837)

…in her newspaper Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly. After a long trial, this suit ended with the jury in disagreement; Beecher’s friends claimed that he won. Despite being publicly embarrassed by the trial, Beecher remained influential for the rest of his life. His works include The Life of Jesus, the Christ (1871) and Evolution and Religion(1885)….

section: Expert Interview Transcript: Fred Gage, Ph.D.

Professor of Genetics Fred Gage, Ph.D., is a professor in the Laboratory of Genetics at the Salk Institute in San Diego. His research is focused on the generation of new neurons during adulthood, an idea that runs counter to neuroscience dogma. Gage hopes that the work will one day lead to therapeutic uses for people…

section: Examine the Topic | Connecting School and Home

…your children. Children love to be told nice things by their parents. Let your children know that you are proud of them when they ask a good question, say something interesting about a book, or read well. Relate the book to your life. Use the book as a jumping-off point to tell your children something…

section: Class Context

…now they’re challenging each other. – Meghan Zingle     YEAR AT A GLANCE Geography of Spain (physical and political) Regions of Spain Events that have influenced people today in Spain (history) Guernica discussion Research on Spanish artists and their corresponding histories Integrated into above units: How would my life be different if I lived…

section: Part A: A Framework for Algebraic Thinking (15 minutes)

…within the mathematics community regarding what mathematics should be taught and how mathematics should be taught. In reality, both components are important. One can hardly imagine thinking logically (mathematical thinking tools) with nothing to think about (algebraic ideas). On the other hand, algebra skills that are not understood or connected in logical ways by the…

lesson: Lorenzo Asisara (b. 1819)

…life within the Spanish Franciscan mission system from a Native American perspective. Transcribed from oral testimony Asisara gave in 1877 in an interview with field historian Thomas Savage, “Punishment” is an unusual narrative of mission discipline, the decline of the Franciscan order in California, and the decimation of the local Native American population. The Franciscan…

section: Class Context

  I cannot call it learning a language if there is no authentic opportunity for students. If you don’t use what you learn, you’re going to lose it, pretty much. Lots of people learn a language over their life, but they lose it. The reason they lose it is because they never had a chance…

section: Art: The Ecstasy of St. Teresa

…Located above the altar of the Cornaro Chapel in Rome’s Santa Maria della Vittoria, Bernini’s The Ecstasy of St. Teresa represents an episode from the life of the saint as recorded in her spiritual autobiography. Teresa describes an angel carrying a fire-tipped spear with which he pierces her heart repeatedly, an act that sends her…

section: Interview with Daniel Pauly

…to have this information available. Now we can now look back at these reports and we see descriptions of the various countries that are now developing countries. We can see the description, for example, of abundance, abundance of mammals, of birds, of life in general, which we can use and plot. We can plot against…

section: Controversial Public Policy Issues — Other Lessons

…(e.g., Rosa Park’s choice not to move to the back of the bus) or from the real-life experiences of students.2 Beyer (1976) proposed a multi-staged strategy to guide such moral discussions: (1) defining and clarifying the dilemma; (2) asking each student to take a tentative position on the dilemma; (3) dividing students into small groups…

lesson: Audre Lorde (1934-1992)

…chronicles her life from her childhood in Harlem to her “coming out” as a lesbian. In addition, Lorde recounts her battle with cancer in her poignant book The Cancer Journals (1980). These works, along with many of her poems, offer Lorde’s readers personal glimpses into her life and experience, a trait that aligns her with…

section: The Risks and Challenges of the Displaced

Individuals and families face a multitude of challenges when seeking a better life: changing weather conditions as many travel hastily by foot or by boat, or limited time or access to necessities like shelter, food, or water. In countries such as Croatia, they risk encountering undetonated mines leftover from the decades of war in that…

section: Advocating and Securing the Rights of Displaced Persons: The Roles of Governments, International Groups, and Individuals

…to a country where they face serious threats to their life or freedom). Freedom of movement, which means that refugees have the right to choose their place of residence within the territory and to move freely within that area. Liberty and security of the person, which means they should not be forcefully detained. Family life,…

section: Art: Court Dress

…one was reserved for the formal and ceremonial life of the court. The social life of the nobility in both eighteenth-century France and Britain was defined in many ways by ritual and spectacle. One’s behavior in social settings was dictated by formalized etiquette. Likewise, one’s dress had to meet certain standards of decorum as well…

lesson: W. E. B. Du Bois (c. 1868-1963)

…halves, where the darker half was held back by race prejudice and legal bonds.” Moved by the situation that he saw in the South, he decided to devote his life to fighting against racial prejudice and effecting legal and social change for blacks in America. After graduating from Fisk, Du Bois went on to receive…

section: The Thousand and One Nights – Read the Text

…her sister said, “Sister, what a lovely and entertaining story!” Shahrazad replied, “What is this compared with what I shall tell you tomorrow night if the king spares me and lets me live! May God grant him long life.” “It will be sufficient to break off a branch and carry it to plant in your…

section: Session Author and Literary Works: James Baldwin

…writer Richard Wright, also an African American, and through him, Baldwin was introduced to the American expatriate arts community. He lived in the south of France for most of the rest of his life, although he returned regularly to the United States to lecture and teach. Though he was a “black writer” before the Civil…

section: Session Author and Literary Works: Rudolfo Anaya

…father’s vaquero (cowboys); his beloved grandmother was, like Ultima, considered by many in their community to be a curandera, or healer. Anaya has spent his life in the southwestern United States, and the magic and myth of his fiction draw heavily on the landscape and traditions of that region. Bless Me, Ultima took Anaya seven…

section: Art: Triumph of Death

…Credit: Courtesy of Art Resource/Photo by Erich Lessing Painted by Bruegel around 1562, this apocalyptic work known as the Triumph of Death depicts the end of all life on earth. Because of the high horizon, Bruegel is able to present a broad vision of death and destruction. Two narratives are enacted in the horrific scene….

video: Contemporary History

section: Online Textbook

section: Art: Converging Territories #30

…Essaydi In this photograph, number thirty in Lalla Essaydi’s Converging Territories series, we see a progression of Muslim women at four different stages in life from childhood to adulthood. As they age, their bodies are increasingly concealed, so that the most mature member of the group is completely covered head to foot. Calligraphic script, written…

video: Finding Your Voice

…on the genocide unit. It’s called I Never Saw Another Butterfly, and it’s about the children at a concentration camp and what they did in order to survive. The students are realizing what life was like for these people and they’re putting real life experiences behind what they’re learning about in their World Cultures class….

section: Patriotism and Foreign Policy — Other Lessons

…Unlike World War II and Vietnam, the press can broadcast directly from the battlefield. Within seconds, the whole world–including the enemy–can see the report. Without controls, a reporter could unintentionally compromise U.S. forces. The military views its control over the press as a matter of life and death. For the most part, Americans supported the…

section: Civic Engagement — Other Lessons

…provide structured time for a young person to think, talk, and write about what he/she did and saw during the actual service activity; provide young people with opportunities to use newly acquired academic skills and knowledge in real-life situations in their own communities; enhance what is taught in the school by extending student learning beyond…

lesson: Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)

[1549] T. H. Matteson, The Trial of George Jacobs, August 5, 1692 (1855), courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts. Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts, a descendant of the first Puritan colonists, including one of the judges of the Salem witchcraft trials, an ancestry that would haunt him throughout his life and provide…

section: The Epic of Gilgamesh – Read the Excerpt

…Cow, the goddess Ninsun! Gilgamesh the tall, magnificent and terrible, who opened passes in the mountains, who dug wells on the slopes of the uplands, and crossed the ocean, the wide sea to the sunrise; who scoured the world ever searching for life, and reached through sheer force Uta-napishti the Distant; who restored the cult-centers…

section: Compare: Why Has the Modern City Inspired so Many Artists?

…their different approaches to that subject reveal not only distinct aesthetic goals, but also different underlying preoccupations. Questions to Consider These two paintings were created less than half a century apart. The period that they encompass, however, was one of rapid changes to city life. To what kinds of changes is each artist responding? How…

video: Asking Questions

…students to get involved with the texts they read by selecting engaging young adult literature that features adolescents struggling with real problems. Ms. Hernandez believes that students become highly engaged in their reading experiences and gain greater literacy when they see themselves and real life conflicts in the literature they read. In this lesson, students…

section: Interview with William F. Laurance

…having major impacts on the wildlife communities. This is an island of forest and it is shrinking over time. There are many different species of plants and animals, in particular, things like jaguars and pumas and harpy eagles that require large areas of space in order to survive. And so really, this is the heart…

lesson: Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

[3320] J. H. E. Partington, Ambrose Bierce (1928), courtesy of the Library of Congress [LC-USZ62-20182]. Ambrose Bierce spent an unhappy childhood in Ohio and left home as a bitter and pessimistic young man. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Bierce joined the Union Army; he later brought his military experience vividly to life in…

section: Class Context

…recycle more vocabulary and you encourage students to talk more. This human interaction is very important. — Ghislaine Tulou     YEAR AT A GLANCE Me and My World Home life and responsibilities School day; School community After-school activities Health Me and my health How do people stay healthy? Community The car and driving responsibilities…

video: Online Textbook and Video

This online textbook chapter supports and extends the content of the Evolution and Phylogenetics video. The chapter covers the evolution of phylogenetics as a field of study.

video: Whole-Group Discussions

…asks students to read a minimum of half an hour daily. For the first part of the school year, students make their own reading selections, either from a well-stocked classroom library, from the school library, or from sources outside school. By respecting students’ choices early, Rief believes they are more open to choices she makes…

video: Creating a Classroom Culture

Darby Masland explains how a class-wide focus on standards helps students meet learning goals more effectively. Teacher: Darby Masland School: The Urban Assembly Institute of Math and Science for Young Women, New York, NY Grade: 9 Discipline: Social Studies (Global Studies) Lesson Topic: “Grassroots lesson” (a focus on skills with which students are struggling) Lesson…

video: Flexible Grouping to Promote Learning

Darby Masland uses flexible grouping to foster understanding of texts and vocabulary. Teacher: Darby Masland School: The Urban Assembly Institute of Math and Science for Young Women, New York, NY Grade: 9 Discipline: Social Studies (Global Studies) Lesson Topic: “Grassroots lesson” (a focus on skills with which students are struggling) Lesson Month: March Number of…

unit: Different Brains

video: Building on What We Know: Cognitive Processing

“We process information, efficiently or inefficiently depending on what the context is, whether we can hook it to what we’ve learned before, whether there’s some advanced organizers that let us know where the information is heading, and we also tend to process differently, some of us more orally, some more visually, some more kinesthetically. If…

section: Resources

video: Using Math Vocabulary to Articulate Understanding

Derek Boyd shows how reinforcing vocabulary helps students understand and retain content. Teacher: Derek Boyd School: MetWest High School, Oakland, CA Grade: 9 Discipline: Mathematics (Geometry) Lesson Topic: Angle-side-angle (ASA) and angle-angle-side (AAS) triangle congruence theorems Lesson Month: January Number of Students: 16…

video: Properties

…big role when multiplying factors to get a product. Part 2: Understanding Basic Recursion Recursion is the process of describing the next term in a sequence in relation to preceding terms. Recursive formulas can model population growth patterns, the distance traveled on a trip, the interest earned on a bank account, and other real-life events….

section: Online Textbook

…in his or her area of research and the potential impacts of those advances on everyday life. The classical physics related to each new topic is covered briefly to help the reader better understand the research, its effects, and our current understanding of physics. Click on “Content By Unit” (in the menu to the left)…

section: Online Textbook

…in his or her area of research and the potential impacts of those advances on everyday life. The classical physics related to each new topic is covered briefly to help the reader better understand the research, its effects, and our current understanding of physics. Click on “Content By Unit” (in the menu to the left)…

video: Choosing Justice: Elections and Judicial Independence

John Fairfield, a former prosecutor and respected state trial judge, is thinking of pursuing a lifelong dream: a seat on the state supreme court. In Fairfield’s state, Centralia, all the judges are chosen in nonpartisan elections, with no limits on what can be spent-or said-in the process of campaigning. Fairfield wonders what will be required…

section: Expert Interview Transcript: Mary-Claire King, Ph.D.

Professor of Medicine and Genetics King is an American Cancer Society professor of medicine and genetics at the University of Washington in Seattle. She was the first to prove that breast cancer is inherited in some families. She is now investigating the genes that predispose some women to breast cancer to learn what these genes…

section: Expert Interview Transcript: G. David Tilman, PhD

G. David Tilman, PhD Professor of Ecology; Director, Cedar Creek Natural History Area Professor of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior at the University of Minnesota, and Director of the Cedar Creek Natural History Area. Tilman studies patterns in the biological diversity, structure and dynamics of plant (and sometimes insect) communities, as well as the effects of…

session: French: Comparing Communities

CLASSROOM AT A GLANCE Teacher Ghislaine Tulou Language French III Grades 9-12 School McLean High School, McLean, Virginia Lesson Date March 21 Class Size 26 Schedule 94 minutes every other day Video Summary In this lesson, students discuss community life at home and abroad and practice new grammatical structures. First, students share what they like…

program: Garbage: The Science and Problem of What We Throw Away

Introduction Each person in the United States generates five or more pounds (2.3 kilograms) of waste a day: about the weight of a medium bag of sugar. More than half of that garbage is buried and stored in landfills. Increasingly, however, cities are promoting recycling programs, often getting schools involved so students can learn about…

video: California Missions

Video Summary: “How can I teach my students California’s state history, integrate technology, and support a bilingual class?” This question prompted fourth-grade teacher Osvaldo Rubio to develop the lesson “California Missions.” The California Framework for state history requires students to learn about the geography of California; the social, political, cultural, and economic life of its…

video: Explorations in Archeology and History

Video Summary: How can ancient history and archeology be brought to life in the classroom? To launch her lesson on world civilizations, Gwen Larsen begins by looking at each student’s personal history. By taking on the roles of archeologists and presenting their own heirlooms, students learn how to decipher artifacts and make connections to the…

video: Popol Vuh

This video introduces the Mayan creation story in all its grotesque humor, luminous beauty, and unique language. See the Mayan writing and drawing that originally brought this story to life, and follow its journey around the world. All Video on Demand files are protected by copyright law and are free for this streaming purpose only….

video: Student Diversity

…and life experiences generate the multiple perspectives that typify our complex society and enrich our interactions with one another. Certainly the many different points-of-view students bring to the classroom present a number of challenges for teachers. How can both curriculum and instruction be designed and presented to meet the needs of such diverse populations? In…

video: Stepping In

…information about story elements, while at the same time connecting that information to what they already know and to their own life experiences. For instance, if a piece is set during the Great Depression, the reader can immediately call up knowledge about that era and other experiences related to the topic and then connect the…

lesson: Luci Tapahonso (b. 1953)

…In the preface to Saanii Dahataal, Tapahonso writes of two literary issues that appear as concerns for many other American Indian writers. First, she notes the centrality of storytelling to Indian life: “There is such a love of stories among Navajo people that it seems each time a group of more than two gather, the…

section: Using Media to Portray the Experiences and Perspectives of Displaced People

…item, without recognizing the myriad life stories contained in that image. In other words, these media features tend to lump all displaced people together. Grade Level High School Subjects Geography Social Studies U.S. History World History The subject of refugees is one topic that demonstrates the need for more critical media literacy and media habits….

section: Art: Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve (The Ambassadors)

…has been suggested by some scholars that the painting contains not only symbols of life’s brevity, but also references to the crisis of religion that was sweeping across Europe at the time. For example, a lute with a broken string on the bottom shelf placed adjacent to a Lutheran hymnal has been interpreted as a…

video: Rhythms in Poetry

Amidst the chaos following World War I, Ezra Pound urged poets to “Make it New!” This call was heeded by a large range of poets, from T.S. Eliot to Jean Toomer. This episode explores the modernist lyrics of two of these poets: William Carlos Williams and Langston Hughes. What is modernism? How did these poets…

video: The Natural World

From the earliest times, people have found sustenance and solace, challenge and mystery in the natural world. From representations of animal and vegetable life to landscapes and earthworks, art has been a means by which humans have expressed their awe of, communion with, dependence on, and isolation from nature. Of course, art is never a…

video: The Twenties

video: Maturing and Aging

Test Yourself: Myths and Realities About Old Age As the human life span increases, the elderly make up a greater part of the general population. We know more about the physical and mental effects of aging than ever before, and yet outdated cultural ideas about old age are pervasive, and often influence how we view…

section: Utopian Promise – Activities

section: Art: Standing Statue of Hatshepsut

…world, and portraits of the elite, especially, tend to depict their subjects in the prime of life, eternally young, strong, and healthy. The standing statue of Hatshepsut exemplifies all these qualities. At the same time, the unique circumstances of Hatshepsut’s position called for art that was in other ways atypical. Hatshepsut, who reigned from 1479…

section: Expert Interview Transcript: Rick Ostfeld, PhD

Rick Ostfeld, PhD Animal Ecologist Animal ecologist at the Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York. His research focuses on the interactions among organisms that influence the risk of human exposure to vector-borne diseases and the dynamics of terrestrial communities. His recent research has focused on the causes of the spread of Lyme disease…

lesson: Claude McKay (1889-1948)

…his career, McKay left America for Russia in 1922. While abroad, he wrote his bestseller Home to Harlem (1928) and Banjo (1929). His status as an exile, first as a Jamaican in America, and then as an American in Russia, colored his writing throughout his life. Poems like “Tropics in New York” represent this struggle…

section: Art: Bud (William) Fields, Lily Rogers Fields, and Lilian Fields

…the U.S. Department of Agriculture to document the impoverishment of people living in rural America. While the RA aimed to use photography as an instrument of social and political change, Evans had his own goal—to create “pure records” of American life. In the midst of his work for the government, Evans was offered an assignment…

section: The Tale of Genji – Getting Started

…“Probably one of the most famous motifs in The Tale of Genji is the ephemeral cherry blossoms and how they scatter and thus it is with relationships. Thus it is with our life. You know that things don’t last. And concurrently with that, is the idea that things are beautiful precisely because they don’t last.”…

video: The Classroom Mosaic: Culture and Learning

“Learning is essentially cultural, that is, we live in a culture – it comprises our experience. We use that whenever we learn something new. So teachers need to know how to understand the cultural context and experiences their students bring to the classrooms. They also need to help students find themselves in the school curriculum…

section: Assignments + Projects

video: The Fifties

section: Teaching Strategies: Lesson Study

When the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) was conducted in 1996, more than 60 percent of American math and science teachers who participated in the study reported that they never had the opportunity to observe or be observed by another colleague. In contrast, Japanese teachers observe colleagues in classrooms all the time. Derived…

section: Teaching Strategies: Alternative Assessment

…in order to make sense of the mathematics. And in this lesson, Tremain focuses on what they commonly call in math education the Rule of Four – getting students to represent a concept graphically, numerically, analytically, and verbally. All students should learn representations, but Tremain recognizes that each student has his or her own strength…

section: Public Policy and the Federal Budget — Teacher Perspectives

Teacher Perspectives: Leslie Martin Leslie Martin teaches a two-semester course on economic, legal, and political systems to ninth-grade students at West Forsyth High School in Clemmons, North Carolina. The course is called a freshman seminar in recognition of the fact that more than half of these students are considered gifted. These interview excerpts relate to…

video: Making Bread Together

Video Summary: Kindergarten teacher Meylin Gonzalez brings economic concepts to life in the classroom by creating a hands-on assembly line in which her students make bread. Ms. Gonzalez begins by reading a book entitled Pasta, Please to help students understand how pasta is made and where commercially prepared food comes from. Then they discuss the…

video: Introducing the Envisionment-Building Classroom

…in key understandings about human beings as learners and as makers of meaning, the basic tenets of envisionment theory could productively underpin literature instruction in any classroom, at any grade level. Dr. Langer identifies four central characteristics of the envisionment-building classroom: Students are treated as life-long envisionment builders. Both teachers and students assume that students…

video: Industrial Supremacy

section: Session Author and Literary Works: Abiodun Oyewole

Abiodun Oyewole Author Bio Abiodun Oyewole, known as “Doon” to friends and fans, has been writing poetry and working for social justice for most of his life. He has recorded spoken-word albums and acted as a creative writing consultant. Currently, he writes and teaches poetry at Columbia University. But he is perhaps best known as…

video: Learning As We Grow: Development and Learning

“As children develop, the ways in which they learn change. If teachers are tuned to those sequences of development, then they can be more thoughtful about how they design their lessons, how they pace instruction, how they move kids along from one concept to the next. Doing these things will build students’ ability to think…

section: Art: La Calavera de la Catrina

…tumult, and fallibility goes on. Death is the subject of mockery here. In similar fashion, the ephemeral nature of Day of the Dead art, whether it be a fragile piece of paper or a sugary candy, acts not as a warning of death’s inevitability so much as a reminder to enjoy the sweetness of life….

unit: Reading and Analyzing Texts

section: Authors and Literary Works

video: The Epic of Gilgamesh

This video introduces the earliest work of literature—The Epic of Gilgamesh. Learn how this ancient story still inspires readers and artists today, and how its themes of power and leadership, and friendship still resonate. All Video on Demand files are protected by copyright law and are free for this streaming purpose only. Downloading, in whole…

section: Art: Isenheim Altarpiece (exterior)

» Mathis Gothart Neithart (Matthias Grünewald) (German, 1480–1528) Isenheim Altarpiece (exterior) Artist / Origin: Mathis Gothart Neithart (Matthias Grünewald) (German, 1480–1528) Region: Europe Date: ca. 1515 Period: 1400 CE – 1800 CE Material: Oil on wood panel Medium: Painting Dimensions: (Central Panel) H: 8 ft. 9 5/8 in. (2.69 m.), W: 10 ft. (3.07 m.);…

section: Art: Lintel 25 of Yaxchilán Structure 23

…others that it is Lady K’abal Xook herself in another form. Bloodletting was a central part of Maya life from the Late Preclassic period (400 BCE–250 CE) onward and was especially critical to rituals of kingship. According to Maya belief, when a member of the royal family sheds his or her blood, a portal to…

lesson: Adriaen Van der Donck (1620-1655)

[2642] John Heaten, Van Bergen Overmantel (c. 1730-45), courtesy of the New York State Historical Association. Adriaen Van der Donck began his professional life studying law at the University of Leyden in the Netherlands. Then, in 1641, he changed the course of his career by accepting a commission to travel to the Dutch commercial colony…

video: Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath’s status as a major American poet has been obscured by her reputation as a martyr, a victimized woman whose tragic life finally ended in suicide. Nevertheless, there are many who insist the poems in her posthumously published volume, Ariel, represent the most dazzling and productive short period of writing since Keats. In this…

video: Research and Discovery: Shirley Sterling and Laura Tohe

…related to her novel, her life, and their research topics. As Brownfield’s students uncover a subject that has long been painful in the Native American community, they write, talk, and work together to construct new knowledge — and reflect on how their discoveries change them. Teacher educator Jerome Harste notes that Brownfield’s approach encourages students…

section: One Hundred Years of Solitude – Getting Started

The Magic and the Real One Hundred Years of Solitude is not just a great novel—it became the standard-bearer for an entire literary movement called magical realism. You’ll notice from the very first page that this is a story of two worlds, the magical and the real, that somehow co-exist without contradicting each other. The…

section: Things Fall Apart – Expert’s View

…but his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness. As a man who cleared his throat drew up and raised his machete, Okonkwo looked away, he heard the blow. The pot fell and broke in the sand, he heard Ikemefuna cry, “My father! They’ve killed me!” as he ran…

lesson: Spirit of Nationalism – Activities

section: Patriotism and Foreign Policy — Student Perspectives

The students whose interview comments are excerpted below were seniors in a one-semester course in U.S. government at Duke Ellington School of the Arts, a magnet high school in Washington, D.C. Here they discuss their experiences creating a Museum of Patriotism and Foreign Policy.

video: English Settlement

section: Art: Ka’ba

…gods of many faiths. After a long exile in Medina, Muhammad returned to Mecca, the place of his birth, in 630, and calling for the worship of a single God, cleansed the Ka’ba of its idols. From that point on, the Ka’ba was associated exclusively with Islam. During daily prayers, no matter where they are,…

session: Arabic: How We Spend Our Free Time

CLASSROOM AT A GLANCE Teacher Katie Quackenbush Language Arabic I Grades 8 School Boston Latin Academy, Boston, Massachusetts Lesson Date May 8 Class Size 14 Schedule 47 minutes daily   اضغط هنا للترجمة باللغة العربية Video Summary In this lesson, eighth graders in Katie Quackenbush’s Arabic I class continue a unit on hobbies and practice…

unit: What Is Disciplinary Literacy?

INTRODUCTION When students enter middle and high school, their teachers expect that they have learned the basic skills and strategies for reading and comprehending text. Students who are still working to develop these proficiencies may need assistance from their classroom teachers and, in some cases, from specialists in reading or special education, to support their…

lesson: Part C: Problems That Illustrate Geometric Reasoning (55 minutes)

…Development Center, Inc. p. 453. © 2000 Glencoe/McGraw-Hill. Used with permission. www.glencoe.com/sec/math Problems C2-C3 adapted from Van de Walle, John A. Geometric Thinking and Geometric Concepts. In Elementary and Middle School Mathematics: Teaching Developmentally, 4th ed. p. 343. Copyright © 2001 by Pearson Education. Used with permission from Allyn and Bacon. All rights reserved.  …

section: Homework

…an exponential decay function? Will you ever get as an output? Explain your answer. Will you ever get negative numbers as outputs? Explain your answer. How does your answer to (c) relate to Problems H1-H4? Homework problems taken from IMPACT Mathematics Course 3, developed by Education Development Center, Inc. (New York: Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, 2000), p.175-176. www.glencoe.com/sec/math…

video: Literature, Art, and Other Disciplines

…letters, often enables students to imagine the human concerns behind historical events. Connections between literature and math or science expand student understandings of both areas while broadening habits of mind. Students who experience a range of such connections learn to establish relationships between and among seemingly contrary ways of defining and explaining the world. For…

section: Part E: Other Kinds of Functions (45 minutes)

…Come up with three more examples of relationships that are functions, and three examples of relationships that are not functions. For each relationship, explain why it is or is not a function. Problems in Part E taken from IMPACT Mathematics Course 3, developed by Education Development Center, Inc. (New York: Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, 2000), p. 489. www.glencoe.com/sec/math…

lesson: Part A: The Pythagorean Theorem (20 minutes)

…drawn on dot paper: Problem A1 Come up with a method to find the exact area of the square in square units. You can either use calculations or count the square units. Problem A1 adapted from IMPACT Mathematics, Course 1, developed by Educational Development Center, Inc. p. 536. © 2000 Glencoe/McGraw-Hill. Used with permission. www.glencoe.com/sec/math…

video: Online Textbook and Video

This online textbook chapter supports and extends the content of the Biodiversity video. The chapter examines our moral responsibilities to catalog and maintain the world’s ecosystems. Click on the Go button to begin reading, or skip to a sub-section in the list below….

lesson: Kate Chopin (1851-1904)

…Catholic school. At the age of nineteen she married Oscar Chopin, a French Creole from a Louisiana planter family. After a glamorous European honeymoon, the couple settled in New Orleans, where Oscar went into business as a cotton broker and Kate became active in the city’s social life. Her fluency in French and southern sympathies…

section: Expert Interview Transcripts: Ned David, Ph.D.

Founder, Syrrx, Inc. Founder of Syrrx, Inc., a proteomics company in San Diego that specializes in x-ray crystallography and determining protein structure for use in drug discovery….

unit: Interview with Featured Scientist Martin Zwierlein

…we know. So, that is why they are the fundamental particles to study. Interviewer: What is the many-body problem? MARTIN: So, we are all familiar with the two-body problem, like in everyday life we have to figure out that we find some work for our partner in the same city, that kind of two-body problem….

video: The Redemptive Imagination

unit: Microbial Diversity

Microbial diversity far surpasses that of other organisms on Earthmovers. This unit examines recent studies of microbes including extremophiles, the comparisons of Bacteria and Archaea, the formation and life cycle of biofilms, and the myriad ways that microbes impact our lives and our planet. ONLINE TEXTBOOK The online textbook chapters support and extend the content…

section: Social Realism – Activities

lesson: Charles Alexander Eastman (Ohiyesa) (1858-1939)

…who, according to many scholars, had a significant role in the writing and editing of his work. He did not publish again in his lifetime. Although he continued to lecture and occasionally became involved in various Indian causes, Eastman spent most of the end of his life in seclusion in a remote cabin in Ontario….

video: Evidence (video)

Videos A Closer Look Witness Lives Evidence Story An image can show us otherwise invisible processes, previously undiscovered life forms, and dramatic change over time. This video features three people who offer photographic evidence of the unknown and unseen. High school teacher Rima Givot teaches from the Genetics and Bioengineering collection. Scientist and photomicrographer Dennis…

video: Witness (video)

…power of photographs to teach and communicate. Middle school teacher Donald Rose conducts an activity from the Change and Resistance collection. Documentary film producer Ken Burns shares how he weaves photographs into historical narratives to bring the past to life. Photojournalist Louie Palu talks about what it takes and what it means to document war….

lesson: Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)

…the United States during the nineteenth century. The novel appealed to a wide audience by drawing upon mainstream religious and cultural beliefs: Stowe mobilized evangelical doctrine and the ideal of domesticity to argue that slavery was both unchristian and destructive to family life. Above all, Stowe intended to convince the nation that slavery was a…

section: Online Textbook

…in his or her area of research and the potential impacts of those advances on everyday life. The classical physics related to each new topic is covered briefly to help the reader better understand the research, its effects, and our current understanding of physics. Click on “Content By Unit” (in the menu to the left)…

video: Diversity in Texts

…to understand human nature, yourself, and how to get along in the world. Reading a variety of genres, styles of writing, and literature portraying many ways of life builds literate thought and minds. These diverse text experiences provide opportunities for lively discussions that support envisionment building in the classroom. The kinds of literary experiences you…

video: Slavery and Freedom

Race and Identity in Antebellum America How has slavery shaped the American literary imagination and American identity? This episode turns to the classic slave narratives of Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass, and the fiction of Harriet Beecher Stowe. What rhetorical strategies do their works use to construct an authentic and authoritative American self?…

lesson: Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

…an American epic, that is, a narration of national identity on a grand, all-encompassing scale–it is perhaps unsurprising that he continued revising, rearranging, and expanding this collection for the rest of his life. Between 1855 and 1881 he published six different editions of Leaves of Grass. Many literary critics were shocked by Whitman’s convention-defying style,…

video: The Odyssey

This video introduces the twisting, turning, and eternally tricky hero of the story, Odysseus. His many adventures—from the fanciful to the horrible—on his way home to Ithaca from the Trojan War are described, as well as his eventual, emotional reunion with his faithful wife, Penelope. All Video on Demand files are protected by copyright law…

unit: HIV and AIDS

HIV and AIDS have emerged as an epidemic of staggering proportions, and one of today’s greatest challenges to scientists and health workers. This unit provides an overview of the human immune system and viral life cycle: and explores recent developments in the study of HIV and AIDS, the future global impact of the current infection…

lesson: Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)

[4004] Carl Van Vechten, Portrait of Gertrude Stein (1935), courtesy of the Library of Congress [LC-USZ62-103680]. Gertrude Stein lived most of her life in Europe, yet considered herself an American, famously declaring that “America is my country and Paris is my hometown.” In 1903, after dropping out of medical school, she joined her brother Leo…

section: Art: Chrysler Building

…city to expand upward without destroying the quality of life on the ground. A dazzling showpiece in midtown Manhattan, the Chrysler Building was the tallest structure in the world when it opened in 1930. The skyscraper, designed by architect William van Alen, was self-consciously modern, and even somewhat futuristic by the standards of the day….

section: Modernist Portraits – Activities

video: Applying Psychology in Life

Interview Excerpt: Stephen Ceci on Child Witness Credibility Research Psychologist Stephen Ceci discusses the psychological factors that must be considered when interviewing young children in judicial settings. It may come as a surprise to some people that nearly three million young children in the U.S. are interviewed each year by law enforcement, child protection, and…

lesson: John Crowe Ransom (1888-1974)

…the urging of Donald Davidson, Ransom joined with eleven other southern men (including several who were also members of the Fugitives) to produce I’ll Take My Stand, a volume of essays that praised southern traditions and the agrarian ways of life that dominated the Old South. For the next several years, Ransom explored Agrarianism at…

session: German: Holidays and Seasons

CLASSROOM AT A GLANCE Teacher Margita Haberlen Language German Grades 3 School Austin Elementary School, Dunwoody, Georgia Lesson Date March 28 Class Size 23 Schedule 30 minutes daily Video Summary In this lesson, students review the months, seasons, and German holidays. They practice vocabulary and develop oral and written comprehension while singing songs, solving riddles,…

video: Modern Materials and the Solid State: Crystals, Polymers, and Alloys

While chemical reactions in gases and liquids are essential to the understanding of chemistry, the chemistry of solid-state materials characterizes most of the interactions we have with matter on a daily basis. Chemists take advantage of the complexity of solids to engineer new materials, including nanoparticles, polymers, and advanced metal alloys. These new materials have…

video: Readers as Individuals

About This Video Clip “I am excited. The kids are excited. I see what they’ve done and what they can do. I think it’s important that we expect the best from these kids… and that [our] expectations are high because they can do it.” Flora Tyler Picacho Middle School Las Cruces, New Mexico Flora Tyler…

section: Art: Shah Jahan Watching an Elephant Fight

…Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource, NY A number of manuscripts or albums documenting events from the life of the emperor in both text and illustration were produced during the Mughal period in India. Images from such books or collected works included everything from military engagements and hunting excursions to entertainments and ceremonies…

session: Spanish: Interpreting Literature

…to a student’s oral presentation about a local artist. Standards Addressed Communication: Interpersonal, Interpretive, Presentational Cultures: Products Connections: Making Connections, Acquiring Information Communities: School and Community *The class meets for 45-55 minutes daily every other week. On the alternate week, the class meets three days for 55 minutes each and one day for 90 minutes….

session: Arabic: A Place I Call Home

CLASSROOM AT A GLANCE Teacher Manar Mayalah Language Arabic II and III Grades 9 and 10 School Granada Hills Charter School, Los Angeles, California Lesson Date March 10 Class Size 22 (filmed with 12) Schedule 55 minutes daily اضغط هنا للترجمة باللغة العربية Video Summary In this lesson, students learn vocabulary used to describe the…

session: Japanese: Happy New Year!

CLASSROOM AT A GLANCE Teacher Leslie Birkland Language Japanese II Grades 9-11 School Lake Washington High School, Kirkland, Washington Lesson Date January 10 Class Size 32 Schedule 55 minutes daily Video Summary In this lesson, students learn about the products and practices of the Japanese New Year’s celebration. First, half of the class participates in…

section: Extend Your Knowledge | Fluency and Word Study

…What factors of fluent reading do you emphasize during these demonstrations? What opportunities do you provide in your daily instruction for reading connected text at “just right” levels? What is the range of reading levels in your classroom library? Do these levels match the reading levels of your students? How can you match appropriate fluency…

section: Teaching Strategies: Rule of Four

“High school students’ algebra experience should enable them to create and use tabular, symbolic, graphical, and verbal representations…” So begins the opening paragraph below the heading, “Understand patterns, relations, and functions” on page 297 of Principles and Standards for School Mathematics. These four modes of representation collectively form the “Rule of Four” in mathematics education….

lesson: Activities and Discussion

Second-graders at P.S. 156 in Brooklyn, New York, learn a West African dance called “Sunu.” Suggested Activities and Discussion Consider these questions for reflection: In your school, how can dance be incorporated into studies of other subjects, such as social studies, math, and science? How might you incorporate the natural movements that children do every…

lesson: Part B: Rotation Symmetry (30 minutes)

…of rotation does not have to be the center of the figure. A figure can have rotation symmetry about a point that lies outside the figure. Selected diagrams in Part B: Determining Rotation Symmetry taken from IMPACT Mathematics, Course 3, developed by Educational Development Center, Inc. p. 302. © 2000 Glencoe/McGraw-Hill. Used with permission. www.glencoe.com/sec/math…

lesson: Part A: Scale Drawings (50 minutes)

…of the original picture. Watch this segment after you’ve completed Problem A1. Compare your method with those the participants used in the video. You can find this segment in the session video approximately 3 minutes and 3 seconds after the Annenberg Media logo.   Mathematicians use the word “similar” to describe two figures that are…

lesson: Homework

Suggested Reading Van de Walle, John A. (2001). Geometric Thinking and Geometric Concepts. In Elementary and Middle School Mathematics: Teaching Developmentally, 4th ed.Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Reproduced with permission from the publisher. Copyright © 2001 by Pearson Education. All rights reserved. Download PDF File: Learning Math: Geometry — Geometric Thinking and Geometric Concepts…

video: Dramatic Tableaux

…Dr. Currence’s inclusion students. Units are thematically planned, weaving social studies, science, and even math into the language arts experience. The lesson featured in this video clip is part of a historical fiction unit, where students read a novel as a class and select one of their own from the same genre. Dr. Currence creates…

section: Part C: Problems That Illustrate Measurement Reasoning (55 minutes)

…to consider and understand? What prior knowledge is required? What later content does it prepare students for? How does the content in this problem relate to the mathematical ideas in this course? What other questions might extend students’ thinking about the problem? What other instructional activities or problems might you use in conjunction with this…

lesson: Featured Classroom: Kathy Price; Bloomfield, New Mexico

Kathy Price; Bloomfield, New Mexico “Naaba Ani is a Navajo term for a safe haven or a cave or a place of refuge and these kids — we have a lot of kids from very difficult backgrounds, dysfunctional life outside of school, so when they come here we want them to be — number one,…

unit: Interview with Featured Scientist David J. Wineland

…that it does involve mathematics. And I think one of the things I always liked was how the things we work on can be described by mathematics, quantum mechanics, for example. It’s maybe more complicated than simple algebra, but on the scale of what the mathematician thinks about, it’s not really that complicated. And yet,…

lesson: Part C: Applications of the Pythagorean theorem (35 minutes)

…distance from each of the endpoints. The line is the perpendicular bisector of AB. Use the Pythagorean theorem to explain why PA and PB (the dashed segments) are the same length.   Problems C1-C3 adapted from Connected Geometry, developed by Educational Development Center, Inc. pp. 65, 205, 206. © 2000 Glencoe/McGraw-Hill. Used with permission. www.glencoe.com/sec/math…

lesson: F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)

…life in mental institutions. After the stock market crash of 1929, Fitzgerald, like many other American expatriates, returned to the United States, where he wrote and published a fourth novel, Tender Is the Night (1934), which chronicles the decline of a young American psychiatrist, Dick Diver, whose marriage to a dependent patient interferes with his…

lesson: Tennessee Williams (1911-1983)

…playwright, Thomas Lanier Williams III was born in Columbus, Mississippi. Though some critics see Williams’s work as overly obsessed with “perversion”–murder, rape, incest, and nymphomania–Williams’s characters inhabit a world as emotionally unstable as their author’s. Williams’s mother, Edwina, was a southern belle who, despite enduring a lifetime of emotional and physical abuse from her husband,…

lesson: Children’s Ideas about Classifying Living Things

…a narrow definition of the concept “animal” (i.e., large, furry, and four-legged), then it is reasonable that life forms that don’t fit their definition are considered to be parallel categories, even though they are animals. Using scientific criteria–animals are multicellular, their cells have a nucleus, their cells don’t have cell walls, and they must ingest…

lesson: William Penn (1644-1718)

…within all individuals in the form of an “inner light,” “spirit,” or “Christ within” was powerfully egalitarian and radical in its implications, which Penn found appealing. Emphasizing the importance of unmediated, individual feeling in spiritual enlightenment, Quakers viewed scripture as secondary and rejected entirely the institution of professional clergy. Because they believed that all life…

video: The Developing Child

…helps us figure out how the world operates. Later in life, for example, we use it to read maps and understand languages. This research helps us appreciate the complexity of human thought in young children. The clearer our knowledge of what children know, the better we can work with them as educators and as parents….

video: Where Do Novels Come From?

lesson: Edith Wharton (1862-1937)

…well-received collection of short stories, Wharton began to perceive authorship as her life’s avocation. When her novel The House of Mirth became a bestseller in 1905, she found herself ranked among the most important American writers of the day. Her critical success proved inspiring: the productive years between 1905 and 1920 are traditionally understood as…

section: Expert Interview Transcript: Peter H. Raven, PhD

Peter H. Raven, PhD Director, Missouri Botanical Garden Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden, and one of the world’s leading botanists and advocates of conservation and biodiversity. He is a past president and chairman of the board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a recipient of the esteemed National Medal of…

video: TR and Wilson

video: Capital and Labor

timeline: TR and Wilson – Key Events

unit: Seeing Others from the Self

video: Motivation and Emotion

…question was: “What type of person copes with that kind of situation best?” We tested 15,000 applicants for life insurance sales, a difficult job with frequent rejection and a high drop-out rate. We measured, by questionnaire, the explanatory style (a metric of optimism and pessimism) of the regular qualified people who were hired. Also included…

section: Art: Portrait Head

…accuracy. The reappearance of idiosyncratic details in multiple portraits, moreover, indicates an interest not only in physical likeness, but also in representing the same person at various moments or stages in life. Although molds were used to produce the portraits, each seems to have been slightly altered to give it a unique appearance. This Moche…

video: The Reform Impulse

unit: The Building Bricks of Life

Objective: Child will be able to develop models of living things and their needs to live using SOHO Bricks as a modeling aid. Essential Question(s): What do living things need to survive? Where do they live and why? How do they use natural resources? Special Materials: Pen/pencil and paper, markers or colored pencils; cards with…

section: Art: The Penitence of St. Jerome (triptych)

…of meticulous study. In the left foreground of the central panel, for instance, it seems as though the artist has lavished attention on each individual leaf. Patinir’s landscapes rely on a technique known as aerial (or atmospheric) perspective. In contrast to linear perspective, which is based on geometry and mathematic calculations, aerial perspective is created…

video: Hart Crane

…Bridge, Crane set out to write an American epic that unified past and present, East and West, myth and reality. Crane’s poetic vision, based on views that alcoholic and sexual excesses were a way to achieve a perception of unity of all things, led to self-destructive behavior, and his short, turbulent life ended in suicide….

unit: Genetically Modified Organisms

While genetic modification of organisms has occurred naturally since life began, we now have the tools to insert specific genes from one organism into cells of unrelated species. This unit illustrates the processes used, and how such genetically transformed organisms are increasingly common in agriculture, industry, and medicine, and introduces the ethical considerations of GMO…

lesson: Zitkala-Sa (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin) (1876-1938)

…was brought up by her Indian mother in traditional Sioux ways. At the age of eight, Zitkala-Sa’s life was transformed when white missionaries came to Pine Ridge and convinced her to enroll in a boarding school in Wabash, Indiana. Part of a movement to “civilize” Indian children by removing them from their native culture and…

section: Art: Royal Crown (adènlà)

…the continuity of life, while the round faces on the headpiece’s exterior are to be understood as those of royal ancestors, including Odùduwà, the legendary founder of the Yoruba kingdom. These visages also give a face to the king, whose own features are obscured by the crown’s beaded veil. This veil is meant to focus…

section: The Bhagavad Gita – Getting Started

The Equanimity Called Discipline When you pick up a copy of the Gita, it is encouragingly slim, and the pages are only half-filled with verse. It seems like a quick read, and it can be—but if you really delve into the philosophy of life, death, right and wrong, you’ll find you’re spending a lot more…

lesson: Thomas Harriot (1560-1621)

…his daughter to John Rolfe; and, if we are to believe John Smith, this same Indian princess, Pocahontas, saved Smith’s life. Harriot’s and John White’s accounts provide us with important cultural information. Colonial accounts by travelers such as Harriot contribute to our limited understanding of the Native American communities whose own records have not survived….

section: Art: The Triumph of Juliers from the Marie de’ Medici Cycle

…France, and daughter of the grand duke of Tuscany and archduchess of Austria, Marie desired a series that would commemorate her own achievements. By mixing allegory and history, Rubens—with the assistance of Marie herself—crafted a magnificent collection of heroic images marking the significant moments in the queen mother’s life. The Marie de’ Medici Cycle was…

section: Art: Untitled, page number 21, from the Arrow’s Elk Society Ledger

…undisturbed by the arrows raining down on him, the warrior is a model of courage. In addition to autobiographical narratives like the one shown here, “ledger drawings,” as they have come to be known, focused increasingly on scenes of everyday and ceremonial life. The urgency with which these themes began to appear no doubt reflected…

section: Art: The Broken Column

…they give expression to something much more profound, an exploration of identity that encompasses gender, nationality, class, politics, and the artist’s own physical experience of her body. At the age of eighteen, Kahlo was involved in a violent bus accident. Thereafter, her life was marked by chronic pain and health problems. She required numerous surgeries…

section: Art: Miss ko2 (Project ko2)

…The voluptuous waitress is a life-size version of the kinds of figurines collected by otaku, a subculture obsessed with the sci-fi and fantasy worlds of anime (animation), manga (comic books), and video games. The blatant sexuality exuded by the figure is also associated with these forms of popular youth culture in Japan. Although trained in…

video: Envisioning

Introduction What actually happens when readers encounter a text for the first time? How do they make sense of it and what processes do their brains go through as they get further immersed in the literature? Why are some readers successful and others are not? More importantly, how does our teaching impact the success of…

timeline: The Tale of Genji – Map & Timeline

…something new. The old capital of Heian is where Murasaki Shikibu lived and set her novel, The Tale of Genji, a testament to an ideal society and ideal way of life that was mostly imaginary, but distinctly Japanese. This timeline shows both the history of the society of The Tale of Genji and its history…

video: Wallace Stevens

The hero of Wallace Stevens’s poetry is the human imagination. Like Emily Dickinson’s, Stevens’s sedate and uneventful outer life concealed a lush and adventurous inner one. Such adventures were for Stevens not an escape from reality but a journey toward a new reality. Although Stevens was no philosopher–he was a bold and brilliant poet–he explored…

unit: Argument Writing

…not convincing or historically sound. Argument writing is also linked to college, career, and civic readiness. The National Council for Social Studies (NCSS) College, Career, and Civic Life C3 Framework shares common language with the ELA/Literacy Common Core Standards. The C3 Framework focuses on evidence by emphasizing the communication of student conclusions based on evidence…

lesson: Children’s Ideas

…individuals in the existing population would somehow change during their lifetime to become more drought-tolerant. Children may begin to understand evolution as a process that helps living things respond to environmental change so that they can survive. Children may reason that this has to happen during a lifetime — that something has to be changed…

video: Physical Changes and Conservation of Matter

Learning Goals Dissolving activity preparation. During this session, you will have an opportunity to build understandings to help you: Matter is neither created nor destroyed during physical changes. Physical changes rearrange, but do not change particles. Under everyday conditions, physical changes are reversible. Video Overview In everyday life, observations that things “disappear” or “appear” seem…

lesson: William and Ellen Craft (c. 1826-1897)

…Ellen found work as a seamstress. Their comfortable life in Boston came to an abrupt end, however, with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Mandating that escaped slaves residing in the North had to be returned to their masters in the South, the law jeopardized William and Ellen’s hard-earned freedom. When Ellen’s…

section: Controversial Public Policy Issues — Teacher Perspectives

JoEllen Ambrose, who has been teaching social studies for 23 years, teaches law to seniors at Champlin Park High School in Champlin, Minnesota. In these interview excerpts, she talks about her approach to discussing controversial issues in the classroom. The particular issue her class debated was racial profiling. The discussion was governed by a formal…

section: Art: Fish and Rocks

…suicide, while others fell into poverty. Many took up reclusive lifestyles. Zhu Da, a descendant of the Ming royal house, is one of the most renowned of the yinmin artists. After the Manchus took power, Zhu Da withdrew to a Buddhist monastery. Some three decades later, however, he renounced his life as a monk and…

lesson: Children’s Ideas

…9. Traits that are developed during an individual’s lifetime can be passed on to their offspring. In order for traits to be passed to offspring, they must be coded in a parent’s DNA and then transferred during reproduction. Traits that are developed during a lifetime, such as a muscular build or the ability to speak…

lesson: Gary Snyder (b. 1930)

…to America briefly to teach at Berkeley, he returned to Japan to study Buddhism, an experience that deeply influenced his poetry. As his life suggests, Snyder is fascinated by travel and ancient cultures, and the metaphor of the journey appears often in his poetry. His educational background in anthropology also shapes his investigation of rituals…

lesson: Herman Melville (1819-1891)

…years, but an inheritance late in life allowed Melville to work on his final narrative, Billy Budd, Sailor, the manuscript of which was found upon his death in 1891. Only after his death did Melville rise from the ranks of second-rate adventure novelists to his present status as one of America’s most important writers. Many…

lesson: Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997)

…incorporate personal experience in his verse, a practice that opened the door for confessional poetry. Robert Lowell said that Howl forever changed how he would write poetry and made his book Life Studies possible. Ginsberg’s poetry features colloquial language riddled with slang and obscenities, a prophetic tone, lengthy lines meant to be performed aloud, and…

video: Nonlinear Functions

In This Session Part A: Exploring Exponential Functions Part B: Exponential Growth Part C: Figurate Numbers Part D: Quadratic Functions Homework In the previous two sessions, we looked at linear relationships and developed strategies for solving linear equations. Linear functions are important in mathematics and are usually studied first because linear equations are the easiest…

lesson: Paule Marshall (b. 1929)

…black and white, she notes that “they were preceded in my life by another set of giants . . . the group of women around the table long ago-this is why the best of my work must be attributed to them; it stands as testimony to the rich language and culture they so freely passed…

section: Session Author and Literary Works: Keith Gilyard

…about Gilyard’s own life and education with chapters examining scholarship on language acquisition and linguistic development. One of the key ideas underlying both sections is Gilyard’s belief that the language and experiences of children must have a legitimate place in the classroom. He writes: “A pedagogy is successful only if it makes knowledge or skills…

lesson: James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)

…woman from a wealthy New York family. Expecting to live as a privileged landowner, he was distressed when the following years brought financial setbacks, debt, and the loss of much of his inherited land. In 1820, Cooper changed the course of his life when he wrote his first work of fiction, Precaution, a conventional novel…

video: The Individual in Society

Video Summary: Questioning is a strategy that all teachers employ. In his philosophy elective, Brian Poon uses questioning to stimulate students’ critical thinking about the complex — and sometimes competing — theories in philosophy. In this lesson, Mr. Poon asks his students the following question: What role can an individual play in creating a just…

section: Art: Tent Door Cover (ensi)

…or semi-nomadic people, many Turkmen now live sedentary lifestyles. Textiles have long played an integral part in Turkmen life. Some items had uses tied to particular rituals or rites of passage. Others, however, made up the material landscape of the everyday. Bags, blankets, camel trappings, tent bands, carpets, clothing, and myriad other woven objects were…

section: Art: Grapevine in the Wind

…according to Confucian principles and mores, and applied these standards to their social spheres, as well as to their professional ones. Following Confucian tenets, the yangban typically maintained separate spaces for men and women within the home. The center of life in the male quarters was the sarangbang, or “study,” where the head of house…

lesson: Garcilaso de la Vega (1539-1616)

…Vega’s Incan histories are extraordinary testaments to the sophistication and civilization of pre-Conquest Peru. De la Vega’s other work, The Florida of the Inca (1605), is a romanticized and fictionalized account of the de Soto expedition and of native life in Florida at the time of contact. (Importantly, de la Vega himself never went to…

video: The Bacchae

This video introduces one of the greatest of Greek tragedies, The Bacchae of Euripides, a story of Dionysus and his followers, and the effect they have on Thebes, and its young leader, Pentheus. All Video on Demand files are protected by copyright law and are free for this streaming purpose only. Downloading, in whole or…

video: The God of Small Things

This video introduces the world of caste, where people are born into a certain level of society and mingle with others on pain of death. You’ll see a culture struggling with the burdens of the past yet reaching for a new future, and hear from passionate readers of the novel. All Video on Demand files…

lesson: T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)

…his wife’s mental instability appear in subtle references in his poetry, most notably in Part II of The Waste Land. In 1914, while in England, Eliot met Ezra Pound, who was to become one of the most influential figures in his life and career. It was Pound who first recognized Eliot’s genius, proclaiming he “has…

lesson: Langston Hughes (1902-1967)

…essays and articles and reported on the Spanish Civil War for the Baltimore Afro-American. While he continued to publish poetry throughout his life, he also began writing plays and books for children. In 1953 his radical activities brought him before Senator McCarthy’s committee, and the FBI considered him a security threat until 1959. During those…

video: Empathy

As research participants listen to stories designed to evoke social emotions, such as admiration and compassion, brain imaging shows activation deep within the brain’s non-conscious, life-regulating systems….

lesson: Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

[7119] Shoshan, Monkey Reaching for the Moon (c. 1910), courtesy of the print collection of Connecticut College, New London. Like T. S. Eliot, with whom he enjoyed a long friendship, Ezra Pound lived his early years in the United States but spent most of his life and career elsewhere. Born in Idaho, Pound spent his…

lesson: Gloria Anzaldúa (b. 1942)

…born on a ranch in south Texas, near the border of Mexico. In her youth, she and her family labored as migrant agricultural workers. Although she felt stifled by the confines of a traditional Chicano home life in which gender roles tended to be rigid and rather limiting, Anzaldúa early found what she calls “an…

section: Art: Henry VIII, King of England

…king’s age at 49, suggesting a date for the work of 1540. By that point in his life, Henry had already waged several wars, declared himself Supreme Head of the Church of England, and married five of his six wives, divorcing two of them and beheading another. The replication of this work suggests that it…

section: Art: Andy Warhol

…closed eyes. As this image of Warhol attests, Neel’s portraits are not about idealized exteriors. Rather, they are about personality, intimacy, vulnerability, and relationships. While she did not sell many paintings during her lifetime, she has come to be known as a keen observer of urban life and an exemplary artist in the Realist tradition….

video: What Is Matter?: Properties and Classification of Matter

…not matter? Matter is one of the big ideas in science. Most areas in physical science can be discussed and explained in terms of matter or energy, and matter is a subject that naturally bridges to the other sciences (chemistry, life, earth science, etc.). In this session, we’ll build a working definition of matter, learn…

section: The Odyssey: Expert’s View

…and moved it elsewhere. Not a man on earth, not even at peak strength, would find it easy to prise it up and shift it, no, a great sign, a hallmark lies in its construction. I know, I built it myself—no one else… There’s our secret sign, I tell you, our life story! Does the…

video: Online Textbook and Video

This online textbook chapter supports and extends the content of the Sex and Gender video. The chapter covers genetic imprinting, inter-sex conditions, the effect of hormones on sex determination, and ethics. Click on the Go button to begin reading, or skip to a sub-section of the chapter in the list below….

lesson: Americo Paredes (c. 1915-1999)

…to spare his people any further suffering. The story of Cortez, with its emphasis on heroic protest and resistance in the face of Anglo oppression, became legendary among Mexican Americans in the Texas border region and inspired many stories, drawings, and especially songs that celebrated Cortez’s life and martyrdom. Paredes’s dissertation, entitled With a Pistol…

unit: Interview with Featured Scientist Jenny Hoffman

…it. Yet we don’t have intuition about the microscopic quantum world because we don’t see that in our daily lives. I think most scientists, even professors of physics at Harvard, would admit that we don’t really understand quantum mechanics intuitively. So we resort to a mathematical language where we can follow from one mathematical line…

lesson: Susan Glaspell (1876-1948)

…a reporter for the Davenport Morning Republican and then for Davenport’s Weekly Outlook, where she edited the society pages. As a student at Drake University, Glaspell began writing for the college newspaper, and following her graduation became a statehouse reporter for the Des Moines Daily News, where she gained familiarity with the workings of American…

unit: Interview with Featured Scientist Deborah S. Jin

…it. Yet we don’t have intuition about the microscopic quantum world because we don’t see that in our daily lives. I think most scientists, even professors of physics at Harvard, would admit that we don’t really understand quantum mechanics intuitively. So we resort to a mathematical language where we can follow from one mathematical line…

video: The Behaving Brain

…to function normally, such as long-term memory. But damage to even one area, such as short-term memory, can dramatically affect our ability to navigate through daily life. Neuroscientists are learning from abnormal brain functioning, such as amnesia, to identify normal brain patterns. For instance, the interplay of brain regions and their role in thoughts, understanding,…

section: Interview with Featured Scientist S.-H. Henry Tye

…string or a closed string. So, if it’s a string, then there’s no hard point. It’s sort of flapping around. There’s no localized point. And, if you write down mathematically what happens, you find that gravity described by strings is consistent with quantum mechanics. In fact, that’s the only theory we know of that is…

video: English in the Real World: A Sports Journalist

Introduction The Real World videos in the Reading and Writing in the Disciplines course support teachers’ daily efforts to effectively teach students using the Common Core State Standards as benchmarks for success. Through stories of professionals working toward social justice in different disciplines, these videos can serve as a tool for showing students the role…

section: Art: Chûbon no zu (Picture of the Middle Class)

…is known for his mastery of ukiyo-e woodblock prints, or “pictures of the floating world,” which represented scenes of daily life and leisure activities in Edo as well as portraits of actors, courtesans, and other players on the urban scene. Utamaro was especially well-known for his depictions of Japanese “beauties” and often worked in series…

section: Class Context

…and retain their knowledge of Chinese characters (typically the hardest part of learning Chinese), Dr. Fu designed a student-led daily dictation. At the end of each class period, students select several characters or phrases from the current unit to learn for homework. The following day, one student leads the class through the dictation, while the…

video: Psychopathology

Experiment: The Genetics of Schizophrenia Psychopathology is defined as the study of any significant behavioral or psychological syndrome that impairs an individual’s daily functioning in society. The current dialogue among doctors and researchers treating mental disorders explores the intersection of genetics and environment in major mental illnesses. In their study of schizophrenia, a psychotic breakdown…

session: Spanish: Interpreting Picasso’s Guernica

CLASSROOM AT A GLANCE Teacher Meghan Zingle Language Spanish II Grades 10 School Glastonbury High School, Glastonbury, Connecticut Lesson Date March 1 Class Size 22 Schedule 40 minutes daily   Video Summary In this lesson, students interpret and discuss Pablo Picasso’s Guernica. First, as a class, students list vocabulary words suggested by the images in…

section: The Epic of Gilgamesh – Getting Started

…legends, their daily lives, what their kings were like, and what their heroes and legends meant to them. But we do share a key characteristic with them and with readers from any era: we love a gripping story and The Epic of Gilgamesh is just that. Adventure, the quest for immortality, the getting of wisdom,…

section: Art: Louis XIV

…coronation, the one-time event that officially legitimated his power. However, the portrait also played a role in the ongoing spectacle that encompassed nearly every aspect of the king’s life at the palace of Versailles from the 1680s onward. There Louis’s daily activities became part of a grand performance. Everything from the king’s morning toilette to…

section: Experts’ View: Enkidu’s Death

…the earlier rite of passage that brought him into Gilgamesh’s life: the seven days and nights of lovemaking with the temple prostitute Shamhat. His dream-vision of the House of Dust as he lies dying is, in fact, taken from an earlier Babylonian poem, “The Descent of Ishtar,” which describes the goddess of love going into…

session: Spanish: Politics of Art

CLASSROOM AT A GLANCE Teacher Lori Langer de Ramirez Language Spanish V Grades 12 School Herricks High School, New Hyde Park, New York Lesson Date February 26 Class Size 22 Schedule 43 minutes daily Video Summary In this lesson, students read a letter written by prominent Colombian artists and intellectuals to Spain’s prime minister. The…

video: History in the Real World: A Documentary Filmmaker

Introduction The Real World videos in the Reading and Writing in the Disciplines course support teachers’ daily efforts to effectively teach students using the Common Core State Standards as benchmarks for success. Through stories of professionals working toward social justice in different disciplines, these videos can serve as a tool for showing students the role…

session: Spanish: Routes to Culture

CLASSROOM AT A GLANCE Teacher Pablo Muirhead Language SpanishII Grades 9-10 School Shorewood High School, Shorewood, Wisconsin Lesson Date November 14 Class Size 19 Schedule 49 minutes daily Video Summary In this lesson, students explore some historical and cultural aspects of the African presence in Latin America. After a warm-up activity of charades, students participate…

session: French: Interpreting La Belle et la Bete

CLASSROOM AT A GLANCE Teacher Michel Pasquier Language French IV Grades 9-12 School Herricks High School, New Hyde Park, New York Lesson Date February 27 Class Size 23 Schedule 43 minutes daily Video Summary In this lesson, students discuss the classic 1946 film La Belle et la Bête, written and directed by Jean Cocteau. The…

unit: Salty Sound Waves

ELEMENTARY SCHOOL – LEVEL 1 It’s something we take part in daily: listening to the world around us. But how do we explain this in a way that students will receive and understand? With salt vibrations, we can teach visually about sound waves as we watch them generated before our eyes. FUN FACTS Roman Soldiers…

lesson: Getting Ready

…for an integrated unit of study. Guiding Questions These are questions for your group to consider as you work through the session: What is curriculum design? How can curriculum design inform your daily classroom activities? How can this curriculum design process be useful to you as you begin to integrate the arts into your curriculum?…

lesson: Featured Classroom: Ariel Owen and Jeff Parrish; Walnut Creek, CA

…to do on a daily basis is very important. So my philosophy is simple. It’s hard to learn, and it’s my job to bring as many ideas and facets to a lesson as I can. It needs to be visual, it needs to be oral, it needs to be kinetic. I need to get those…

video: Summarizing Nonfiction

Literacy development is a lifelong process. Anyone new to the field should talk to literacy specialists, gather administrative support, research and collect the best materials, and visit other classrooms.” –Eleanor Demont Eleanor Demont teaches fifth grade at the Heath School in Brookline, Massachusetts, a city that is home to many of Boston’s teaching hospitals. Heath…

section: Candide – Getting Started

…Candide comes to is wealth has not made him happy. [Nor has] success, finding love, getting the girl of his dreams. The only possibility he has of happiness is being in the real world, connecting himself to the earth represented by this small farm and doing real work, simple, real work on a daily basis.”…

section: Class Context

…  YEAR AT A GLANCE Going to School in Italy Living in Italy: Dwellings and Furnishings Living in Italy: Family Living in Italy: Daily Activities in the Home Family Gatherings Birthdays, celebrations, and holidays Gift-Giving and Receiving; Shopping Food Shopping Italian Restaurants/Bars and Meals Going Out to Eat Planning for a Vacation School Profile Marylee…

section: Compare: Why Do We “Dress Up” for Ceremonial Occasions?

…more beautiful, more expensive, more extraordinary, we step out of our daily routines, facilitating our own participation in out-of-the-ordinary events. As this British court dress and Turkmen chyrpy demonstrate, the concept of “ceremonial” garb translates across both cultures and historical eras. Questions to Consider Is it immediately apparent to you that these items of clothing…

section: Class Context

…outside of class time. (The art teacher helped with construction as needed.) During class, Ms. Neuman held daily check-ins to keep students on track and to problem-solve when difficulties arose. Students brought the completed buildings into class and used them for three weeks to practice vocabulary related to the buildings’ appearance and purpose. Students were…

section: Class Context

…of people of African descent Trips Aspects of traveling and different types of trips Tourism vs. living abroad (What kind of traveler do you want to be?) Daily Life Routines; Free time; Curfews School Grading systems in different countries Students’ preferences and strengths What is a good teacher? What is a good student? Health Physical…

section: Class Context

…states Classroom and School Time and Daily Routines Family Friendship; Adjectives Sports Animals of the World Fairy Tales School Profile Amy Garcia teaches grades preK-6 German at Brockett Elementary School in Tucker, Georgia. The school’s 470 students come from a diverse community; more than 70 percent of the students are minorities. Brockett is a pilot…

lesson: Alexander Posey (1873-1908)

…elected to the lower chamber of the Creek National Council and embarked on a long career of public service as an administrator to tribal schools. In 1902, he also began serving his community as a journalist, establishing the Eufaula Indian Journal, the first daily newspaper published by an Indian. As editor of the paper, Posey…

section: Art: Tribute to Jackie Robinson

…will live with them on a daily basis, fostering community and civic pride in the process. The Mural Arts Program has created more than 2,800 murals all over Philadelphia, and has served as a model for other similar agencies in cities around the world. Broad Street is a major thoroughfare that runs through the center…

section: Extend Your Knowledge | Assessment and Accountability

…What specific vocabulary do students need to know and use when taking these tests? How do you prepare your students to do well on these tests throughout the year and just before the testing? How do you integrate this preparation in your daily instruction? What challenges do you and your students face in this preparation?…

video: Science in the Real World: A Biotech Startup

Introduction The Real World videos in the Reading and Writing in the Disciplines course support teachers’ daily efforts to effectively teach students using the Common Core State Standards as benchmarks for success. Through stories of professionals working toward social justice in different disciplines, these videos can serve as a tool for showing students the role…

session: French: Chicken Pox

CLASSROOM AT A GLANCE Teacher Jai Scott Language French Grades Kindergarten School Ecole Kenwood Alternative Elementary School, Columbus, Ohio Lesson Date November 11 Class Size 27 Schedule About 6 hours daily (immersion) Video Summary In this lesson, students demonstrate their knowledge of body parts. They begin by talking about the chicken pox and reading Marc…

section: Teaching Strategies

Asking: Finding Inquiry Topics and Questions Investigating: Collecting and Working with Information Creating: Making Presentations Reflecting and Transforming: Writing, Thinking, and Acting on the Inquiry Process Resources…

video: Mathematics in the Real World: An Epidemiologist

Introduction The Real World videos in the Reading and Writing in the Disciplines course support teachers’ daily efforts to effectively teach students using the Common Core State Standards as benchmarks for success. Through stories of professionals working toward social justice in different disciplines, these videos can serve as a tool for showing students the role…

Technology and the Developing Brain

Guest post by Gretel Galo. As technological advances like Alexa™ continue to enhance the capacities of the smart home, parents, educators, and neuroscientists must consider how this daily interaction with technology may affect its youngest residents. According to a Common Sense Media research study, 98% of children under 8 years of age have access to…

session: Creating Contexts for Learning

How can classroom organization and daily routines help students become better readers and writers? In this session, literacy expert Jeanne Paratore outlines strategies teachers can use to enhance literacy skills. You will learn how classroom organization, everyday routines, and grouping practices affect literacy skills in the middle grades. You will explore research-based strategies that help…

lesson: Sorrow Songs

…performance. The songs developed out of the slave tradition are mostly religious in nature, but their spiritual subjects often had concrete applications to the slaves’ daily lives and their concerns in this world. The songs draw primarily on images of heaven and stories from the Old Testament, especially the story of Moses leading the enslaved…

unit: Building New Neural Networks

video: Learning in a Blended Classroom

Leon Young explains how he integrates technology into the classroom to support blended learning. Teacher: Leon Young School: REALM Charter School, Berkeley, CA Grade: 8 Discipline: Mathematics (Algebra 1) Lesson Topic: Arithmetic sequences Lesson Month: January Number of Students: 23 Other: REALM, the Revolutionary Education and Learning Movement, is a project-based and technology-rich charter school….

video: Students Think for Themselves

LaNelle Harvey is a fifth- and sixth-grade teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Her school lies in an area where the dropout rate for high school students reaches 70 percent. She discusses her effort to tackle this problem by using Socratic seminars to engage students in math, social studies, and language arts.

section: Homework

…it possible to provide a convincing argument to prove that the decimal expansion of 1/n has a period that is less than n? Problems H2-H11 adapted from Findell, Carol, ed. Teaching with Student Math Notes, Volume 3. p. 121. © 2000 by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. Used with permission. All rights reserved….

section: Part A: Interpreting Fractions, Units, and Unitizing (45 minutes)

…us to use our standard rules for operations with fractions? Interpreting Fractions, Units, and Unitizing adapted from Lamon, Susan J. Teaching Fractions and Ratios for Understanding: Essential Content Knowledge and Instructional Strategies for Teachers (pp. 27, 41, 54-57). © 1999 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. In This Part: Units and Unitizing Math problems should either implicitly…

section: Part D: Speeds, Rates, Steepness, and Lines (45 minutes)

…for these 15 seconds. Include where and when you started the trip and what you saw going on around you — in front of the car, to the sides, and through the rearview mirror. Car problem taken from IMPACT Mathematics Course 2, developed by Education Development Center, Inc. (New York: Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, 2000), p. 328-329. www.glencoe.com/sec/math…

section: Homework

…based on their equations? If the finish line was 30 meters from the starting line, who won? Which brothers’ relationships between distance from the starting line and time are proportional? How do you know?   Problem H3 taken from IMPACT Mathematics Course 2, developed by Education Development Center, Inc. (New York: Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, 2000), p.331-332. www.glencoe.com/sec/math…

lesson: Featured Classroom: Laurie Wicks; Middletown, DE

…two of them have developed what she calls a theme-based instruction program. The two select a theme, and then center all math, science, English, and social studies instruction around it. “We’ve invented the particular schedule and method,” explains Laurie, “and as far we know, there ’s nobody across the country doing exactly what we do.”…

unit: In the mx

…this activity, child will have an opportunity to blend science and math by performing a SOHO Brick stack. Take turns with your child stacking as many bricks as they as you can in a given time allotment: 1 second, 2 seconds, 3 seconds, etc. Each attempt should be repeated at least 3 times and the…

video: Linear Functions and Inequalities

Part 1: Linear Functions Linear functions are those that exhibit a constant rate of change, and their graphs form a straight line. They are also described as polynomial functions of degree one. Part 2: Linear Equations and Inequalities Solving linear equations and inequalities is typically a large part of the Algebra 1 curriculum. The mathematical…

lesson: Part A: Hidden Polygons (20 minutes)

…is a 17-gon. When people talk about a general polygon — one where you don’t know the exact number of sides—they often refer to it as an n-gon.   Hidden Polygons and the Video Segment problem adapted from IMPACT Mathematics, developed by Educational Development Center, Inc. pp. 42-45. © 2000 Glencoe/McGraw-Hill. Used with permission. www.glencoe.com/sec/math…

video: Annotating Word Problems

Kim Dinh teaches students how to determine important information to solve mathematical word problems. Teacher: Kim Dinh School: Health Sciences High and Middle College, San Diego, CA Grade: 9 Discipline: Mathematics (Algebra 1) Lesson Topic: Word problems involving linear inequalities Lesson Month: February Number of Students: 35…

lesson: Part B: Nets (30 minutes)

…tetrahedron. Take it Further Problem B4 A square pyramid has a square base and triangular faces that meet at a top vertex. Find all the possible nets for a square pyramid. Problems B1-B4 and the Video Segment problem adapted from Connected Geometry, developed by Educational Development Center, Inc. © 2000 Glencoe/McGraw-Hill. Used with permission. www.glencoe.com/sec/math…

lesson: Part C: Building Towers (45 minutes)

…building materials and take an additional 10 minutes to create a new freestanding structure. Your goal this time is to build a structure taller than the one you made before.   Building Towers problem adapted from IMPACT Mathematics Course, 2, developed by Educational Development Center, Inc. pp. 476-477. © 2000 Glencoe/McGraw-Hill. Used with permission. www.glencoe.com/sec/math…

workshop: Person to Person

Classroom interaction is simple. It is the talk that occurs in classrooms between teachers and students and among students. It’s also a very complex thing in that it is the primary medium by which learning occurs in classrooms, and that’s any kind of classroom, be it a history classroom or a math classroom or a…

lesson: Homework

…angles in the shadow ever vary from 90°?   TAKE IT FURTHER Problem H4 Which of these shapes could cast a square shadow, and which could not? Explain how you decided.   Problems H3 and H4 taken from Connected Geometry, developed by Educational Development Center, Inc. pp. 12-13. © 2000 Glencoe/McGraw-Hill. Used with permission. www.glencoe.com/sec/math…

unit: Big Ideas in Literacy – Science

…and understanding the components of a formal research report. Helping your students gain science literacy skills opens a universe of discovery and hones habits of mind to serve them a lifetime, whether or not they choose a science-related career. The goal of these units on disciplinary literacy in science is to sample some frameworks and…

lesson: Featured Classroom: Linsey Newton; Hudson, MA

…science and mathematics education, the goal of which is to “provide hands-on, inquiry-oriented, and problem-based instruction that encourages mathematical and scientific fluency.” Linsey says that her science background was enhanced considerably upon coming to this school system: “Dr. Arthur Camins, the elementary math and science director in Hudson, has been a huge influence on me….

section: Part A: Fractions to Decimals (65 minutes)

…not. Problem A8 Summarize your observations about terminating decimals. Fractions to Decimals is adapted from Findell, Carol, and Masunaga, David. No More Fractions — PERIOD! Student Math Notes, Volume 3. pp.119-121. © 2000 by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. Used with permission. All rights reserved. In This Part: Repeating Decimals All the fractions…

section: Part D: Examining Children’s Reasoning (30 minutes)

As this course comes to a close and you reflect on ways to bring your new understanding of data analysis, statistics, and probability into your teaching, you have both a challenge and an opportunity: to enrich the mathematical conversations you have with your students around data. As you are well aware, some students will readily…

section: Class Context

…names of colors, shapes, and more. Art and Arabic course content also naturally connects with several subject areas beyond art, including math, science, and history. For example, students have a chance to see artifacts from the Metropolitan Museum’s collection and learn where they came from, when they were created, and the stories behind them. Miss…

video: Creating a Culture — The Story Begins

PROGRAM AT A GLANCE School FAIR School (Fine Arts Interdisciplinary Resource School) Location Crystal, MN Grade 6 Disciplines Theatre Music Visual Art Social Studies Language Arts Math Description Students develop their own island cultures. The Integrated Instruction Rick Wright, 6th-Grade Teacher We are working on a unit that we call “Island Cultures.” We’re trying to…

lesson: Part A: Introduction to Geometer’s Sketchpad (25 minutes)

…constructing a figure. If you are using a pencil and manual drawing tools, constructing requires that you use a compass and a straightedge. When you construct an object using dynamic geometry software, you use the software’s tools to give the figure the necessary characteristics. The Geometer’s Sketchpad ® 2001, Key Curriculum Press, Emeryville CA, 1-800-995-MATH…

lesson: Homework

…an arbitrary quadrilateral. Find a way to dissect it into pieces that you can rearrange to form a rectangle. Test your method on quadrilaterals like these. Try to justify why it will always work. Problems H3-H5 adapted from Connected Geometry, developed by Educational Development Center, Inc. pp.169, 171. © 2000 Glencoe/McGraw-Hill. Used with permission. www.glencoe.com/sec/math…

section: Part D: Examining Children’s Reasoning (30 minutes)

…gaps on the green dots.” For more information about statistics problems for children like the problems in this session: Burns, Marilyn (1996). 50 Problem-Solving Lessons. Math Solutions Publications. Economopoulos, Karen and Murray, Megan (1998). Mathematical Thinking in Kindergarten. Dale Seymour Publications. Economopoulos, Karen; Akers, Joan; Clements, Douglas; Goodrow, Anne; Moffet, Jerrie; and Sarama, Julie (1998)….

section: Class Context

One of the things I just love about teaching languages is that we can deal with math, science, geography, social studies, and that also captures the student who might say, “Why am I in this class after all?” If they can relate it to what they’re thinking about majoring in in college or some of…

lesson: Featured Classroom: Monique Brinson; Jamaica Plain, MA

…Enrollment: 301 Students per Teacher: 20 Ethnicity: 62% African American 22% Hispanic 13% White 2% Asian Percentage of students receiving free or reduced-price lunch: 63% versus a state average of 30% From its inception in 1995, the Young Achievers Science & Mathematics Pilot School (YASM) in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, envisioned a math and science emphasis…

video: China Through Mapping

…they will use what they are learning about scale in math class to enlarge a small map of China to room size. To do this, Ms. Norton first draws a large grid on the floor. Then she hands out cards, each representing a small section of China. Students then copy the information on their card…

lesson: Part B: Similar Triangles (35 minutes)

In this part The Mirror Trick Similarity Tests Measuring with Shadows A mathematics teacher likes to astound her students with tricks that can be explained through mathematics. Before the class studies similarity, the teacher brings a mirror to class and performs this trick: Note 3 The teacher puts the mirror on the floor facing up…

lesson: Featured Classroom: Rebecca Cituk, Portsmouth, RI

…last four at the Portsmouth Middle School. She is currently enrolled in a master’s in science education program at the University of Rhode Island, and also participates in a summer program in the engineering department at Brown University called “Research Experience for Teachers,” where she has developed modules that integrate math and science. Portsmouth Middle…

video: Introducing Arts Education

Costumes lead to inquiry about the arts and social studies in a fifth-grade class at Lusher Elementary School in New Orleans, Louisiana What Is Arts Education? (14 minutes) To get you thinking, here is a montage of insights from teachers and administrators plus examples of successful arts instruction in classrooms across America. In the Observations…

section: Part B: Area Models for Multiplication and Division (45 minutes)

…mathematical computations? In This Part: Multiplication Model When thinking of Problem B1 as an area problem, you could represent 13 • 12 as a rectangle with length 13 and height 12. As you filled the rectangle with manipulatives, you built a related intermediate algorithm for the multiplication process: Notice how the area model for multiplication…

lesson: Part B: Cutting Up (50 minutes)

…a rectangle and dissect it into pieces you can rearrange to form that shape: An isosceles triangle A right triangle A scalene triangle A non-rectangular parallelogram A trapezoid   Problems B1-B5 and the Video Segment problems adapted from Connected Geometry, developed by Educational Development Center, Inc. p. 164. © 2000 Glencoe/McGraw-Hill. Used with permission. www.glencoe.com/sec/math…

lesson: Part C: Cross Sections (45 minutes)

…makes them impossible. Problem C3 Find a way to slice a tetrahedron to make a square cross section. How did you do it? Problem C4 What cross sections can you get from each of these figures? Cross Sections adapted from Connected Geometry, developed by Educational Development Center, Inc. © 2000 Glencoe/McGraw-Hill. Used with permission. www.glencoe.com/sec/math…

lesson: Activities and Discussion

In art class, second-graders at Ridgeway Elementary School in White Plains, New York, make stylized masks with exaggerated features. Suggested Activities and Discussion Consider these questions for reflection: How can you use visual art to teach your students about history, math, science, and other art forms? What questions do you think it is important for…

Valuable Classroom Resources For Summer Learning From Statistics in Schools

For parents or caretakers looking for a way to keep students engaged and learning during the summer months, Statistics in Schools (SIS) offers a range of helpful online learning resources. The materials are free and customizable for activities and lessons in social studies, math, English, geography, sociology, and more. SIS is working to bring school…

lesson: Homework

…the pitcher’s mound must be 60 feet, six inches from home plate, in the direction of second base. Is the pitcher’s mound in the center of the diamond? If not, is it closer to home plate or second base?   Converse One common mistake in mathematics is assuming that if a statement is true, the…

unit: Engineering Design Process

The Engineering Design Process is a tool used by engineers to define a problem. Art, Science, and Math are often the vehicles used to come up with creative solutions. Throughout various projects, students will be asked to use the engineering design process to synthesize their thinking through a lens of the arts, maths, and sciences…

section: Part A: A Simpler Number System (70 minutes)

…add two integers, you get an integer. They are not closed under division because 5 divided by 3 is not in the set — it is not an integer. Problem A7 Is this finite set closed under addition? Note that you can further explore units digit arithmetic in Learning Math: Patterns, Functions, and Algebra, Session…

session: French: A Cajun Folktale and Zydeco

CLASSROOM AT A GLANCE Teacher Paris Granville Language French Grades 8 School Pleasant Hill Middle School, Pleasant Hill, California Lesson Date January 13 Class Size 22 Schedule 80 minutes every other day Video Summary In this lesson, students learn about music and storytelling in the Cajun culture. They begin by comparing Louisiana and California life….

section: Compare: How Has Art Been Used As a Guide to Death and Dying?

…Credit: Courtesy of the Library of Congress How has art been used as a guide to death and dying? Both the Book of the Dead and the Ars Moriendi functioned to a degree as instructional manuals meant to ensure eternal life in the Underworld and in Heaven, respectively. These texts used illustrations both to clarify…

Ancient Immigration (Part 1)

Immigration is a hot topic in the U.S. today, loaded with political meaning and characterized by heated debates over who is coming to this country and why, and who should be allowed to come here and who shouldn’t. It seems like a very modern issue, but immigration has always been a part of human life….

section: Art: Realm of Hungry Ghosts (from The Six Realms of Rebirth)

…(152.6 cm.), 26 3/8 in. (67 cm.) Location: The British Museum, London, UK Credit: © The Trustees of the British Museum/Art Resource, NY “The Wheel of Life,” according to traditional Buddhist cosmology, contains six realms of birth (rokudō) that comprise the samsara cycle of reincarnation. Human beings, it is believed, exist in this endless cycle…

section: Teaching Strategies

Sustained Silent Reading Identifying Compelling Lines from the Text Publishing Student Writing Resources…

Key Terms | Teaching Reading: K-2 Workshop

video: Understanding Media: The Inside Story

video: War Stories: National Security & the News

Four years ago, a coalition led by American forces invaded the Central Asian nation of Khaoistan, where warlords had destroyed the central government and were supporting major terrorist activities. Today, the process of rebuilding the nation and fighting off an insurgency continues, covered by a group of journalists based in the capital city. One of…

section: Video Organizer Chart

All lessons are appropriate for K–12 teachers of any foreign language.

section: Online Textbook

…in his or her area of research and the potential impacts of those advances on everyday life. The classical physics related to each new topic is covered briefly to help the reader better understand the research, its effects, and our current understanding of physics. Click on “Content By Unit” (in the menu to the left)…

video: Why Integrate the Arts?

Learning Goals The goals of this workshop are for you to: Identify the benefits of arts integration for early adolescents Communicate using various art forms, and reflect on their differences for you as a learner. This workshop session explores how integrating the arts with other subjects can benefit middle school students. The program shows teachers…

video: Variables and Patterns of Change

Part 1: Translating Words Into Symbols Translating words into symbols is equivalent to modeling a situation using an equation and variables. Similarly, algebraic equations and inequalities can represent the quantitative relationship between two or more objects. Part 2: Linear Equations Linear equations can be used to model situations involving one or more unknowns. A linear…

unit: Conclusion: A Community of Educators

video: Quadratic Functions

Quadratic functions model a number of real-world situations. They describe the path of a ball in flight, represent a cross section of a headlight’s reflector, and enable business people to forecast sales….

unit: Big Ideas in Literacy – Mathematics

Introduction Welcome to the mathematics units on disciplinary literacy. These four units explore a disciplinary literacy approach to teaching mathematics that is consistent with the expectations of the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM), particularly with regard to the Standards for Mathematical Practice, and is also consistent with recommendations of the National Council of…

video: Direct and Inverse Variation

Part 1: Direct Variation Direct variation is a critical topic in Algebra 1. A direct variation represents a specific case of linear function, and it can be used to model a number of real-world situations. Part 2: Inverse Variation Inverse variations are excellent vehicles for investigating nonlinear functions. A number of real-world phenomena are described…

unit: About This Course

Reading and writing are no longer the sole responsibility of the English classroom, but a critical part of how students explore and understand complex concepts across all disciplines. By examining general disciplinary literacy strategies and practices—and then focusing more deeply on their own discipline—middle and high school teachers will gain insight into how to support…

section: Part A: Circles and Circumference (60 minutes)

In This Part Circumference Ratio of Circumference and Diameter Pi (π) Circumference Perimeter — or distance around — is a measurable property of simple, closed curves and shapes. When the figure is a circle, we use the term circumference instead of perimeter. Because the perimeter of an object is a length, we need to measure…

section: Expert Interview Transcripts: Gary H. Toenniessen, PhD.

Gary H. Toenniessen, PhD. Director, Agriculture Programs Gary Toenniessen was one of the original architects of The Rockefeller Foundation Rice Biotechnology Research Program initiated in 1984. He is currently the director of Food Security at the foundation. Since 1985, he has had responsibility for the development and implementation of the Foundation’s International Program on Rice…

section: Put It Into Practice | Creating a Literate Community

Choose Activities In this section, you will apply what you have learned to your own teaching. The three activities are designed to assist you in developing resources for your word study instruction. Choose one or more from the list below to practice in your classroom. Activity #1 Add Literacy Routines Develop additional literacy routines to…

Lens on Literacy

We all agree that learning to read is a critical step in a child’s education. But teaching children to read is controversial. In classrooms, legislatures, universities, school districts — even courtrooms — there is debate about what makes a good literacy program. Is phonics the answer? Whole language? A mix of both? Amid the controversy,…

video: The Sixties

Professor Scharff weaves the story of the Civil Rights movement with stories of the Vietnam War and Watergate to create a portrait of a decade. Lyndon Johnson emerges as a pivotal character, along with Stokely Carmichael, Fanny Lou Hamer, and other luminaries of the era.

lesson: Royall Tyler (1757-1826)

…course of his long life, Tyler composed several more plays, as well as a number of essays and a novel. Literature was not a lucrative profession in the early nation, however, and he continued to support himself and his family by practicing law. He settled in Vermont in 1791, married in 1794, and rose to…

section: Online Textbook

video: Facilitating Discussion

About This Video Clip “I like kids to write their own questions because…they’re more involved. If I always come up with the questions…[we] wouldn’t get to what is important to them.” Tanya Schnabl, Teacher Sherburne-Earlville Middle School Sherburne, New York Questions are at the center of classroom discussion for Tanya Schnabl’s students. Because they are…

video: Discussion Strategies

“The genuine foundation is a love and passion for story and the knowing that story brings about a place for kids to find their way in, a way of expressing themselves… So I read good books and share them, and I listen to kids tell me about them. That’s the natural element for a good…

video: Borrowing From the Arts To Enhance Learning

Fifth-grade students designed visual representations of their own personal histories at Browns Mill Elementary School in Lithonia, Georgia. Teachers use arts-based techniques to engage their students’ minds, bodies, and emotions, adding vitality and context to day-to-day learning experiences: At Maria Mitchell Elementary School in Denver, Colorado, Penny Suazo raises achievement in her class of active…

section: Homework

Problem H1 Look at this table: Input Output 1 6 2 10 3 14 4 18 5 22 6 26 ? ? ? ? Find and describe several patterns in the table. If you used a variable in your description, explain its meaning. What is the 100th entry in the table? Is 102 ever an…

video: Thinking Like a Mathematician (video)

Constantina “Dina” Burow walks her students through logarithmic functions by breaking down a word problem from a mathematics textbook and then showing them how their previous knowledge of exponential functions helps them graph and solve logarithmic functions. Teacher: Constantina “Dina” Burow School: Health Sciences High and Middle College, San Diego, CA Grade: 11 Discipline: Mathematics…

video: Bringing Artists to Your Community

Visiting musician Michael Stanwood works with third-grade teacher Sandi Waitman at Idalia School in Idalia, Colorado. In rural Idalia, Colorado, 150 miles from Denver, two visiting artists work with teachers to enhance learning at tiny Idalia School: Theatre artist Birgitta De Pree involves a kindergarten class in a storytelling activity that engages the imagination while…

section: Part B: Reasoning About Number and Operations (40 minutes)

In This Part: Exploring Standards The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics has identified number and operations as a strand in its Principles and Standards for School Mathematics. In grades pre-K through 12, instructional programs should enable all students to do the following: • Understand numbers, ways of representing numbers, relationships among numbers, and number…

video: Collaborative Talk About Mathematics

In Constantina “Dina” Burow’s classroom, developing discussion skills within team practice scenarios helps to not only work through the mathematics content at hand, but to also build the very important 21st- century skills of collaboration. Teacher: Constantina “Dina” Burow School: Health Sciences High and Middle College, San Diego, CA Grade: 11 Discipline: Mathematics (Algebra 2)…

lesson: Homework

Problem H1 Draw any triangle on your paper. Find the three midpoints and connect them in order. Explain why the four triangles created are all similar to the original. Problem H2 In Problem H1, how do the sides of the new triangles compare to the sides of the original? How do their areas compare? Problem…

video: Using Gradual Release of Responsibility

Karen Hohimer shows students how to break down word problems in algebra by using the BUCKS annotation method. Teacher: Karen Hohimer School: Health Sciences High and Middle College, San Diego, CA Grade: 7 Discipline: Mathematics (Pre-Algebra and Geometry) Lesson Topic: Problem solving using the BUCKS strategy Lesson Month: March Number of Students: 37…

video: Mathematical Modeling

Mathematical Modeling Mathematical models are useful tools for engineers who study the effects of traffic on a bridge, telephone companies that want to know the best price to charge for long distance service, and social scientists who wish to predict trends in population and disease….

section: Lesson Plan 1: Left Hand, Right Hand – Solving Systems of Equations

…of best fit for both sets of data. Determine the three different types of possible solutions to a system of two equations with two unknowns. Interpret the meaning of the intersection of two lines as a solution to a system of equations. Standards: Principles and Standards for School Mathematics, National Council of Teachers of Mathematics…

section: Assignments + Projects

section: Teaching Strategies

Asking: Finding Inquiry Topics and Questions Investigating: Collecting and Working with Information Creating: Making Presentations Reflecting and Transforming: Writing, Thinking, and Acting on the Inquiry Process Resources…

video: My Brother’s Keeper

…that your neighbor is having an affair, and that everyone on the block knows about it except his wife. Will you confront the neighbor? Tell his wife? Get involved in any way? And will this knowledge of your neighbor’s personal life affect your vote when he runs for president of your school’s PTA? Should it?…

video: Starting Out

“My job is to circulate and re-motivate kids when they stall [and] challenge them to take further steps in the discussion. Hopefully…I can keep them discussing and enjoying a poem; it helps push them to a higher level of understanding.” Jonathan Holden, 4th-Grade Teacher Nathan Hale Elementary School Roxbury, Massachusetts Students often don’t know how…

session: French: Performing With Confidence

CLASSROOM AT A GLANCE Teacher Yvette Heno Language French IV-V, Advanced Placement Grades 10-12 School Westside High School, Houston, Texas Lesson Date April 10 Class Size 15 Schedule Block schedule, 90 minutes every other day Video Summary In this lesson, students participate in activities that improve their oral proficiency and prepare them for the AP…

video: The Firm (Microeconomics)

In 1980, renowned soda company Coca-Cola replaced sugar with high-fructose corn extract in order to lower production costs. In 1963, Studebaker closed its plant, unable to increase sales and take advantage of economies of scale. In the 21st century, printing and publishing company PrintPOD, Inc. avoided increasing domestic labor expenses by tapping into the workforce…

workshop: Valuing Diversity in Learners

When learners come into the classroom, they don’t divest themselves of their cultural experiences or their linguistic background. They bring all of that with them to the classroom. So it’s incumbent upon the teacher to accommodate that wide array of learners. – Marjorie Hall Haley, Ph.D., Associate Professor, George Mason University Learning Goals How do…

workshop: Engaging With Communities

Our goal is to prepare students to not only take what they have learned in the classroom and use it outside the classroom, but to take the love of that language and the interest in the culture that has happened in the classroom and take it into a community where they can continue learning it….

video: Close Reading of a Primary Source

Ann Pember’s students discuss the meaning and role of the USA Patriot Act after reading an article from the New York Times. Teacher: Ann Pember School: Malden High School, Malden, MA Grade: 9 Discipline: History (U.S. History 1/U.S. Social Studies) Lesson Topic: The constitutionality of the Patriot Act Lesson Month: December Number of Students: 30…

video: The Metallic World: Electrochemistry and Coordination Compounds

Metals allow the transfer of electrons through a process called oxidation-reduction, or “redox,” when one species gains electrons while another loses them. Chemists take advantage of this process by using electron transfers to power the batteries in our flashlights, phones, or cars. In biochemistry, trace metals, such as cobalt in Vitamin B12, often drive chemical…

section: Expert Interview Transcript: Eleanor Sterling, PhD

Eleanor Sterling, PhD Director, Center for Biodiversity and Conservation Sterling has over fifteen years of field experience studying biodiversity from Madagascar to Vietnam. She is also an adjunct professor at Columbia University, where she now serves as the Director of Graduate Studies for the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology….

video: Sharing the Text

…School Honolulu, Hawaii Ms. Namba understands that her students are lifelong envisionment builders, and her goal during the year is to help them become increasingly independent. By year’s end, she wants them to be completely responsible for their own literature discussions without needing her facilitation. Throughout the year, Ms. Namba uses a variety of “engagements”…

video: Reading and Responding Like a Historian

LeRoy Votto’s students discuss their thoughts on Wendell Phillips’s speech “The Philosophy of the Abolitionist Movement.” Teacher: LeRoy Votto School: The Urban School of San Francisco (Private), San Francisco, CA Grade: 10 Discipline: History (the Civil War) Lesson Topic: The abolitionist movement and its message Lesson Month: January Number of Students: 14…

video: Building Community

“One thing I really liked… [was] the fact that all of the groups were working together, and that’s really an important thing when you get in literature discussion groups. [They have to] appreciate and accept other people’s opinions and ideas, and at this age that’s a challenge. It helps us get closer… It builds community…

video: The Modern Presidency: Tools of Power

section: Online Textbook

video: Overview

video: Finding Common Ground

“I have chosen reading to be the venue by which these children will find a voice. I believe that if they are able to connect with the characters in books, where authors have written about the feelings of these characters and [if they] make these strong connections, they will get hope.” Bileni Teklu, 5th-Grade Teacher…

video: Thalia Learns the Details: A Student Case Study

Student Case Study: Thalia Student: Kindergarten, age 5, August Birthday School: Amigos, Cambridge, MA Teachers: Jim St. Clair and Maria Castro Class Size: 36 students in two classes “Thalia’s very interested in the idea of literacy and she’s interested in books. It’s the details she’s a little bit fuzzy on. That’s a big part of…

video: Promoting Readers As Leaders

Valerie Kostandos’s First-Grade Class Teacher: Valerie Kostandos Years Teaching: 20 School: Decius Beebe School, Melrose, MA Grade: First Class Size: 20 Students Lesson Dates: November 5 and 6 “What I would like my students to get by the end of this year is to become independent readers and writers — to want to take risks…

video: Citing Evidence from Primary Sources to Support Arguments

In LeRoy Votto’s classroom, students read, annotate, write about, and discuss Wendell Phillips’s speech “The Philosophy of the Abolitionist Movement.” Teacher: LeRoy Votto School: The Urban School of San Francisco (Private), San Francisco, CA Grade: 10 Discipline: History (the Civil War) Lesson Topic: The abolitionist movement and its message Lesson Month: January Number of Students:…

section: Teaching Strategies: Cooperative Learning

Cooperative Learning: The process of cooperative learning involves students working together in small groups on a structured activity. The members of the groups learn to work as a team to accomplish a specific goal, to solve a problem, to complete a project, or to develop a product. Teachers hold students accountable individually, but also assess…

session: Arabic: People Who Help Us

CLASSROOM AT A GLANCE Teacher Khamael Alaloom Language Arabic Grades: 1 School William Ford Elementary School, Dearborn, Michigan Lesson Date April 7 Class Size 21 Schedule 45 minutes, once a week اضغط هنا للترجمة باللغة العربية   Video Summary In this lesson, Khamael Alaloom introduces her first-grade class to people who help in the community…

unit: Bringing It All Together – Science

Integrating Reading and Writing The previous units highlighted ways in which reading and writing can be integrated into different aspects of science instruction. Because reading and writing form part of a broader literacy experience, speaking, listening, viewing/observing, and importantly thinking and inquiry are also essential elements. In this unit, the emphasis is on helping students…

lesson: Activities and Discussion

Costumes lead to inquiry about the arts and social studies in a fifth-grade class at Lusher Elementary School in New Orleans, Louisiana Suggested Activities and Discussion Use the following questions to focus your ideas: What value do you see in arts education? What is your school’s attitude toward arts education? What steps can you take…

video: Thinking About Thinking: Metacognition

“We can teach children to think about their thinking in ways that help them understand what they know and what they don’t know and what they’d like to learn, and to help them reflect on their learning and to evaluate their work against a continuum that they’re on. All of those kinds of thinking actually…

section: Public Policy and the Federal Budget — Student Perspectives

Leslie Martin’s Students At the time these students were interviewed, they were ninth-graders at West Forsyth High School in Clemmons, North Carolina, which is a suburb of Winston-Salem. They were near the end of an honors-level two-semester course on U.S. government, civics, and economics, taught by Leslie Martin. The students discuss their experience creating a…

video: Can Frogs Dance?

PROGRAM AT A GLANCE School Mineral Springs Middle School Location Winston-Salem, NC Grade 7 Disciplines Dance Science Language Arts Description Students study dance and anatomy and debate a frog’s admission to a ballet company. The Integrated Instruction Noël Grady-Smith, Dance Teacher Students at this age are beginning to understand that the body is not just…

video: Responding to Literature

“I see my role in two ways. One is as a reader, responding just like the kids while having a watchful ear on how their reading and thinking are going and how they are growing through the story and learning. [While] I’m helping kids make connections, at the same time I want to be involved…

video: Expanding the Role of the Arts Specialist

Dance teacher Kathy DeJean with members of the Dance Troupe at Lusher Alternative Elementary School in New Orleans, Louisiana. Three arts specialist teachers practice in their own art forms with students and share their skills and ideas with teachers in other subject areas: Kathy DeJean, a dance teacher at arts-based Lusher Alternative Elementary School in…

unit: The Fundamental Interactions

This unit takes the story of the basic constituents of matter beyond the fundamental particles that we encountered in unit 1. It focuses on the interactions that hold those particles together or tear them asunder. Many of the forces responsible for those interactions are basically the same even though they manifest themselves in different ways….

unit: Writing: Big Ideas

Introduction Reading and writing are intricately related and are often viewed as “two sides of the same coin” (Graham & Perin, 2007; Tierney & Pearson, 1983). According to Langer and Flihan (2000), “Because writing and reading involve the development of meaning, both are conceptualized as composing activities in the sense that both involve planning, generating,…

video: Leadership Team

The Leadership Team at Lusher Alternative Elementary School in New Orleans, Louisiana, includes classroom teachers, an arts specialist teacher, the principal, and the assistant principal. At Lusher Alternative Elementary School in New Orleans, Louisiana, principal Kathleen Hurstell Riedlinger works closely with a team of classroom teachers and arts specialists on curriculum and policy decisions. She…

lesson: Part B: Parallel Lines (45 minutes)

In this part: Properties of Angles Reasoning About Properties of Angles Properties of Angles Parallel lines are two lines in the same plane that never intersect. Another way to think about parallel lines is that they are “everywhere equidistant.” No matter where you measure, the perpendicular distance between two parallel lines is constant. With dynamic…

section: Homework

How Large Is It? This table shows the height to the shoulder and the weight of several species of buffalo. Which is the largest (i.e., one that is both tall and heavy)? The guar is the tallest, and the water buffalo and the American bison are the heaviest, but how might we determine which is…

section: Lesson Plan 2: Curses and Re-Curses! It’s Happening Again.

…be able to: Write a Now-Next equation to describe a mathematical sequence. Use different equations to determine the type of model needed for a given situation. Standards: Principles and Standards for School Mathematics, National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), 2000. NCTM Algebra Standard for Grades 6-8 http://standards.nctm.org/document/chapter6/alg.htm NCTM Algebra Standard for Grades 9-12 http://standards.nctm.org/document/chapter7/alg.htm…

lesson: Part B: Proving the Pythagorean Theorem (65 minutes)

In this part What Is a Theorem? Constructing a Proof More Proofs What Is a Theorem A theorem in mathematics is a proven fact. A theorem about right triangles must be true for every right triangle; there can be no exceptions. Just showing that an idea works in several cases is not enough to make…

section: Teaching Strategies: Worthwhile Mathematical Tasks

The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) has defined worthwhile mathematical tasks as those that: Are based on sound and significant mathematics Use knowledge of students’ understandings, interests, and experiences Develop students’ mathematical understandings and skills Stimulate students to make connections and develop a coherent framework for mathematical ideas Promote communication about mathematics Promote…

section: Part D: Bias in Sampling (20 minutes)

In This Part: Population and Sample In data analysis, we use graphs, tables, and numerical summaries to study the variation present in our data. Often, we want to extend our interpretation to a larger group beyond the particular group studied. Such generalizations are only valid, however, if the data we examine are representative of that…

section: Part C: Problems That Illustrate Measurement Reasoning (55 minutes)

…to consider and understand? What prior knowledge is required? What later content does it prepare students for? How does the content in this problem relate to the mathematical ideas in this course? What other questions might extend students’ thinking about the problem? What other instructional activities or problems might you use in conjunction with this…

section: Patriotism and Foreign Policy — Teacher Perspectives

Alice Chandler teaches U.S. government to seniors at Duke Ellington High School of The Arts in Washington, D.C. She was interviewed in relationship to her lesson on patriotism and foreign policy in which the students worked in committees to design a Museum of Patriotism and Foreign Policy.

video: Teaching Dance

Second-graders at P.S. 156 in Brooklyn, New York, learn a West African dance called “Sunu.” Two teachers with contrasting training and teaching approaches bring rich dance experiences to students at their arts-based schools: At Lusher Alternative Elementary School in New Orleans, Louisiana, lifelong dancer and dance educator Kathy DeJean works with an auditioned troupe of…

unit: Reading In Science

section: Teaching Strategies: Appropriate Use of Technology

“Technology is essential in teaching and learning mathematics; it influences the mathematics that is taught and enhances students’ learning.” The above quote comes from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics’ (NCTM) discussion of the Technology Principle in the Principles and Standards for School Mathematics (PSSM). NCTM also states: Electronic technologies – calculators and computers…

section: Teaching Strategies: Affective Domain

…words describe the affective domain: defend, appreciate, value, model, tolerate, respect. In the mathematics classroom, the affective domain is concerned with students’ perception of mathematics, their feelings toward solving problems, and their attitudes about school and education in general. Personal development, self-management, and the ability to focus are key areas. Apart from cognitive outcomes, teachers…

video: What Is Geometry?

In This Session Part A: Quick Images Part B: Building from Directions Part C: Folding Paper Part D: Basic Objects Homework In this session, you will use mathematical communication and geometric thinking to solve problems. You will use paper folding as a construction tool because of its visual and kinesthetic properties. (Paper folding is more…

section: Online Textbook

…in his or her area of research and the potential impacts of those advances on everyday life. The classical physics related to each new topic is covered briefly to help the reader better understand the research, its effects, and our current understanding of physics. Click on “Content By Unit” (in the menu to the left)…

section: Homework

Problem H1 If the area of each of the smallest two triangles in the tangram below is equal to 1 unit, find the area of each of the other pieces, and then find the area of the entire tangram:   Problem H2 The formula for the area of a trapezoid is A = , where…

section: Part B: Exploring Area With a Geoboard (50 minutes)

In This Part Subdividing Area The Rectangle Method Formulas The Triangle Formula Subdividing Area Let’s further examine the concept of area, using a geoboard. The unit of area on the geoboard is the smallest square that can be made by connecting four nails: We will refer to this unit as 1 square unit. On the…

video: Systems of Equations and Inequalities

Part 1: Systems of Equations A system of equations involves the relationship between two or more functions and can be used to model a number of real-world situations.   Part 2: Systems of Inequalities Students can investigate systems of inequalities by solving linear programming problems. These systems can be used to model a number of…

Part A: Observing a Case Study (25 minutes)

To begin the exploration of what topics in number and operations look like in a classroom at your grade level, watch a video segment of a teacher who took the Number and Operations course and then adapted the mathematics to her own teaching situation. When viewing the video, keep the following questions in mind: Note…

section: Reflect on Your Learning | Writing

What Did You Learn?   Assignment Consider what you have learned about effective writing instruction from Professor Ruiz’s statements and the classroom examples. Write a summary of what you have learned. Use the questions below to guide your thinking. When you have finished, save your written work to submit as an assignment and, if you…

video: Teaching Theatre

A fifth-grade student’s mask reveals an inner vision of herself, at Barney Ford Elementary School in Denver, Colorado. Two specialist teachers work on basic theatre skills with children of various ages and use theatre education as a gateway to other kinds of learning: At Lusher Alternative Elementary School in New Orleans, Louisiana, theatre teacher Amanda…

video: Introduction: The Art and Science of Teaching

video: Deconstructing Word Problems

Students in Kelly Gay’s class work together in specific roles (reader, translator, annotator, double-checker) to solve mathematical word problems. Teacher: Kelly Gay School: Centennial Campus Magnet Middle School, Raleigh, NC Grade: 6 Discipline: Mathematics Lesson Topic: Translating real-world scenarios into algebraic equations Lesson Month: November Number of Students: 19 Other: School uses Sheltered Instructional Observation…

session: German: Sports Stats

CLASSROOM AT A GLANCE Teacher Amy Garcia Language German Grades 5 School Brockett Elementary School, Tucker, Georgia Lesson Date March 26 Class Size 16 Schedule 30 minutes, four days per week Video Summary In this lesson, students talk about their sports likes and dislikes. They begin by reading their personal journal entries to review the…

video: Collaborating to Extend Mathematical Understanding

Derek Boyd explains how he differentiates activities to teach specific mathematical concepts. Teacher: Derek Boyd School: MetWest High School, Oakland, CA Grade: 9 Discipline: Mathematics (Geometry) Lesson Topic: Angle-side-angle (ASA) and angle-angle-side (AAS) triangle congruence theorems Lesson Month: January Number of Students: 16…

video: Individualized Instruction as a Formative Assessment Tool

Kelly Gay gives students an opportunity to explain their thinking, or a line of learning, about mathematical word problems as a type of formative assessment. Teacher: Kelly Gay School: Centennial Campus Magnet Middle School, Raleigh, NC Grade: 6 Discipline: Mathematics Lesson Topic: Translating real-world scenarios into algebraic equations Lesson Month: November Number of Students: 19…

section: Part B: Exponential Growth (40 minutes)

In This Part A Salary Situation Population Growth A Salary Situation Suppose you are given two different options for salary at a temporary job. Note 5 Plan A: You can earn $2,000 each week, or Plan B: You can earn 1 penny the first week, 2 pennies the next week, 4 pennies the next week,…

section: Homework

Problem H1 Invent a number game like the one from Problem D1. Draw a network that lets you figure out the output for any number. Draw another network that lets you find someone’s original number if you know his or her final result. Try out your game on someone else. Here’s a number game: Pick…

section: Part B: False Position and Backtracking (30 minutes)

In This Part False Position Backtracking False Position The solutions to mathematical problems often involve writing and solving equations. We generally think of solving equations by representing quantities with variables. Early Egyptians did not have symbolic notation, however, so they invented a technique called false position to solve mathematical problems. Note 4 The Egyptians used…

section: Part A: Number Sets (35 minutes)

In This Part: Relating Number Sets We will continue our focus on the number line and the relationships among the various types of numbers that make up the real number system. The following exercises will help you further understand the properties that hold true for each of the sets of numbers and the relationships among…

video: Bureaucracy: A Controversial Necessity

video: Watch the Video | Using Assessment To Guide Instruction

Lecture In this section, you will watch Dr. Paratore’s lecture on using assessment to guide instruction. Print Dr. Paratore’s Assessment Lecture Poster (PDF). Use the poster to take notes on the lecture. In this video segment, Dr. Paratore presents the principles of effective classroom assessment. The lecture emphasizes the importance of ongoing assessment to plan…

video: Gothic Undercurrents

What was haunting the American nation in the 1850s? The three writers treated in this program — Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Emily Dickinson — use poetry and prose to explore the dark side of nineteenth-century America.

video: Journey to the West

This video introduces you to the Stone Monkey King, a whirlwind of willful energy, egomaniacal pride, and zany humor who is forced by Buddha himself to pair up with a humble, peaceful Buddhist monk and get him safely to India. The wide range of art that Monkey’s story has inspired is on display in this…

session: Chinese: Exploring New Directions

CLASSROOM AT A GLANCE Teacher Haiyan Fu Language Mandarin Chinese II-IV Grades 9-12 School Northside College Preparatory High School, Chicago, Illinois Lesson Date January 15 Class Size 19 Schedule Block schedule, 96 minutes twice a week Video Summary In this lesson, students in Chinese II-IV work on the theme “directions.” The class begins by reviewing…

section: Controversial Public Policy Issues — Lesson Plan

The Lesson Plan section contains everything you will need to fully understand the featured lesson. It has the following sections: Context presents background information on the teacher, the school, and the course in which the lesson was taught; Lesson-Specific Standards identifies the national standards from the Center for Civic Education and the National Council for…

video: Signposts

“In envisionment-building classrooms, students’ ideas are right in the center of the discussion, so the role of the teacher is to help students find new and more complex ways to grapple with both the content and the ways of thinking about the content.” Judith A. Langer, Director National Research Center on English Learning & Achievement…

video: Analyze the Video | Assessment and Accountability

Video Summary In this video, Professor Kathryn Au discusses standards, benchmarks, rubrics, portfolios, and high-stakes tests. You will also see classroom examples that illustrate the strategies and research Professor Au describes. As you watch the video, consider the following questions: How do standards and benchmarks inform assessment? What role can students play in their assessment?…

video: How People Learn: Introduction to Learning Theory

“Teaching is not simply random, and ad-hock and haphazard; there are some ways to actually shape your work that are likely to be more effective, because they respond to what learners are actually doing, thinking, and experiencing.” Linda Darling-Hammond Key Questions How do people learn? How can learning inform teaching practice? Learning Objectives History of…

section: Put It Into Practice | Building Comprehension

Choose Activities In this section, you will build on what you have learned and develop strategies you can use in your own classroom. The following activities are designed to help you develop instructional practices for developing students’ comprehension. Choose one or both of the activities from the list below. Activity 1 – Develop a Home…

section: Art: Paris Street; Rainy Day

» Gustave Caillebotte (French, 1848–1894) Paris Street; Rainy Day Artist / Origin: Gustave Caillebotte (French, 1848–1894) Region: Europe Date: 1877 Period: 1800 CE – 1900 CE Material: Oil on canvas Medium: Painting Dimensions: H: 83 ½ in. (212.2 cm.), W: 108 ¾ in. (276.2 cm.) Location: Charles H. and Mary F.S. Worcester Collection, The Art…

video: Cultural Psychology

Interview Excerpt: Hazel Markus on the Emergence of Cultural Psychology Dr. Hazel Markus explains how the inextricable factor of one’s own cultural perspective led to the development of the subfield of cultural psychology. Cultures are not new, but cultural psychology is a relatively new force in the field of psychology — for a variety of…

section: Examine the Topic | Differentiating Instruction

Differentiate Instruction in a Class In this section, you will explore an activity to better understand how to group students and differentiate instruction to meet the needs of all students. Children in early grades demonstrate a wide range of skills, experiences, and interests. Many teachers use grouping strategies to differentiate their instruction to address their…

lesson: Activities and Discussion

All of the students at Harmony Leland Elementary School in Mableton, Georgia, study the violin. Here they work with music teacher Barrett Jackson. Suggested Activities and Discussion Consider these questions for reflection: How can music be used to teach your students about other subjects? How can music be combined with the study of other art…

video: Different Audiences

This session begins by examining the “self” most writers address, showing how the concept of writing for an audience is threaded throughout the dynamic and nonlinear processes of writing. From there, the session looks to a wider range of audiences, examining the demands the student writer encounters in addressing audiences in language arts and other…

session: Chinese: Communicating About Sports

CLASSROOM AT A GLANCE Teacher Jie Gao Language Mandarin Chinese Grades 6 School Bigelow Middle School, Newton, Massachusetts Lesson Date February 4 Class Size 12 Schedule 50+ minutes, four times during a six-day schedule   Video Summary In this lesson, students talk about sports. While their classmates learn the names and characters for eight sports,…

video: Poetry of Liberation

For many, the 1960s mark the true end of modern America. Whereas the modernists remained serious about the transcendent nature of art, the artists of the 1960s wanted an art that was relevant. They wanted an art that not only spoke about justice, but also helped create it. This program explores the innovations made in…

session: Arabic: Making Sales Calls

CLASSROOM AT A GLANCE Teacher Eric Bartolotti Language Arabic I Grades 9 and 11 School Watertown High School, Watertown, Massachusetts Lesson Date April 13 Class Size 10 Schedule 1 hour, 4–5 days per week اضغط هنا للترجمة باللغة العربية Video Summary In this lesson, high school students demonstrate their ability to use basic greetings and…

video: Watch the Program

(60 Minutes) While you watch, consider these focus questions: Lesson 1: Influences of the Past What historical references might have influenced Quidam? What role does history play in the ideas that artists have? Lesson 2: The Power of Costume What do costumes symbolize or represent in various works of art? How is a costume a…

section: Put It Into Practice | Using Assessment To Guide Instruction

Choose Activities In this section, you will apply what you have learned to your own teaching. The three activities are designed to assist you in developing resources for assessing your students’ literacy development. Choose one or more from the list below to practice in your classroom. Activity 1. Use Assessment To Plan Instruction Analyze a…

video: Writing in the 21st Century

Evolving technology has expanded the tools available to all writers. It has also opened new venues — with new requirements — for their work. How can teachers make the best use of these new resources? The teachers show some beginning steps they have taken to integrate technology into their instruction and their professional lives, and…

section: Teaching Strategies

Political Poems Performance and Publishing Roundtable Discussion Found Poems…

video: Conflict and Resistance

Throughout history, groups and individuals have sought not only to maintain control over their own lives, but also to assert their power over the lives of others. Visual art has played an important role in documenting such conflict and resistance. It also has served as a means for expressing personal views on politics, war, social…

video: Cultural Studies: Ishmael Reed and Graciela Limón

section: Expert Interview Transcript: Stuart B. Levy, M.D.

Scientist, Environmental Defense Dr. Levy is a professor of Molecular and Microbiology and a professor of Medicine at Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts where he researches the Tetracycline Efflux Protein. He is also the President of the Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics, which is an organization that aims to promote responsible and appropriate…

video: Cultural Studies: N. Scott Momaday and Russell Leong

unit: Emergent Behavior in Quantum Matter

This unit takes an approach to physics that differs markedly from much of what we have encountered in previous units. Rather than cataloging the elementary components of matter, we look at what happens at the macroscopic scale when the interactions of these components with one another and their environment lead to entirely new—emergent—behavior. After introducing…

video: Critical Pedagogy: Octavia E. Butler and Ruthanne Lum McCunn

video: Critical Pedagogy: Abiodun Oyewole and Lawson Fusao Inada

section: Assignments + Projects

section: Put It Into Practice | Fluency and Word Study

Choose Activities In this section, you will apply what you have learned to your own teaching. The following activities are designed to assist you in developing activities to teach word analysis and vocabulary. Choose one or both of the activities from the list below. Activity 1 – Teaching Word Parts In this activity, you will…

unit: Ultimate Recycling Machine

MIDDLE SCHOOL – LEVEL 2 The Ultimate Recycling Machine is an interactive learning experience that teaches principles of engineering. The aim is to get kids thinking about structures and devices they can build to meet the goal, three points of contact, and the bottle ending in the bin. MATERIALS NEEDED FOR BINS: ❏ Cardboard tubes…

unit: Teachers & Lesson Plans

video: Landmark Supreme Court Cases

Video Summary: Is flag burning an acceptable expression of free speech? Should evidence obtained without a search warrant be admissible in court? What constitutes a “clear and present danger” in wartime? Wendy Ewbank and her students use two simulation exercises to examine the nature of individual rights and the role of the Supreme Court in…

video: Book Buddies

“The whole purpose of Book Buddies is the interaction among the kids and for them to help each other learn to read better and learn to look more deeply into literature.” Tim O’Keefe, 3rd-Grade Teacher The Center for Inquiry Columbia, South Carolina Exciting things often happen when two teachers merge their classes for literature discussion….

video: Working With Local Artists

At P.S. 156 in Brooklyn, New York, visiting dance artist Ca This program looks at a successful, ongoing collaboration between P.S. 156, The Waverly School of the Arts, in Brooklyn, New York, and two local organizations — Lotus Music & Dance and the Teachers & Writers Collaborative. Artists from both organizations collaborate with the school’s…

video: Guided Instruction for Independence

Jennifer Roberts asks students to compare two characters from The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe using evidence they have gathered from the text. ​Teacher: Jennifer Roberts School: Point Loma High School, San Diego, CA Grade: 9 Discipline: English Lesson Topic: Compare two characters from The Cask Of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe Number…

section: Put It Into Practice | Word Study and Fluency

Choose Activities In this section, you will apply what you have learned to your own teaching. The three activities are designed to assist you in developing resources for your word study instruction. Choose one or more from the list below to practice in your classroom. Activity 1. Match Rimes With Books Identify common rimes in…

video: Revealing Character

PROGRAM AT A GLANCE School Mineral Springs Middle School Location Winston-Salem, NC Grade 8 Disciplines Visual Art, Language Arts Description Students create ceramic place settings based on literary characters. The Integrated Instruction Kathy Adams, 8th-Grade Language Arts Teacher Cindy and I had been looking for a way that we could create a fairly complex unit…

unit: String Theory and Extra Dimensions

This unit continues our movement from an experimentally proven understanding of nature’s four fundamental forces to the theoretical effort to develop a “theory of everything” that brings all four forces under the same conceptual umbrella. The most prominent aspect of that effort is the family of string theories that envision the basic units of matter…

section: Assignments + Projects

video: Making Writing Explicit in Social Studies

In teaching disciplinary writing strategies, Steve Lazar has his social studies students use a personal experience to practice using cause and effect language and then applies the language to content. Teacher: Steve Lazar School: Harvest Collegiate High School, New York, NY Grade: 10 Discipline: History/Social Studies Lesson Topic: Writing about complicated things (“It’s Complicated”) Lesson…

video: Blended Learning: Acquiring Digital Literacy Skills

Jennifer Roberts discusses the ways in which she incorporates the use of computers into her classroom. ​​Teacher: Jennifer Roberts School: Point Loma High School, San Diego, CA Grade: 9 Discipline: English Lesson Topic: Compare two characters from The Cask Of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe Number of Students: 34…

unit: Energy Challenges

video: The Energy in Chemical Reactions: Thermodynamics and Enthalpy

The phrase “chemical reaction” conjures up images of explosions, bubbling gases, flames, and smoke. So many chemical reactions have visible results because energy is being transferred from one form to another—the realm of thermodynamics. Thermodynamics provides rules for predicting the progress of a reaction and for harnessing the energy released. It is key to solving…

workshop: The Role of Assessment in Curriculum Design

Workshop Leader Susanne Burgess engages the Learner Teams in a discussion of assessment strategies. In Program 6, Learner Teams develop performance tasks and scoring guidelines to evaluate students’ performance on those tasks. You also will create assessment tools. The assessment practices discussed here can be used in designing curriculum for virtually any subject area….

video: Organizing Atoms and Electrons: The Periodic Table

For centuries, chemists tried different methods to organize elements around patterns of chemical and physical trends, or regularities, eventually leading to the modern periodic table. Electron configuration is a powerful predictive tool, a simple extension from the periodic table. Physical characteristics, including atomic radius and reactivity, all depend on electron configuration and can be teased…

video: What Is Statistics?

unit: Water Resources

unit: Building a Community of Writers

How can you nurture and support the confidence of all students and help them forge unique writing identities? This workshop explores the essential characteristics of a successful writing community and shows examples of teachers who build community in their classrooms through a variety of ways. I think it’s amazing what kids can do at this…

video: Writing

Images and words are symbols that both denote actual things, like people, objects, and places, and connote more abstract ideas, feelings, concepts, and theories. Given this shared function, it makes sense that the boundaries between words and images often overlap and that the two are so frequently juxtaposed. Since the dawn of civilization the relationship…

video: International Trade (International)

The U.S. auto industry lost a lot of mileage in 1973 with the rise of the more efficient Japanese imports. In the 1970s, the “trigger/price mechanism” was developed in order to differentiate between fair and unfair trade practices. Debate over the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) included accusations that American jobs would suffer and…

video: Comparing the Language of Multiple Sources

Manny Martinez juxtaposes the preamble of the U.S. Constitution with Emma Lazarus’s poem The New Colossus to help students begin to tackle the question: What does it mean to be American? Teacher: Manny Martinez School: REALM Charter School, Berkeley, CA Grade: 8 Discipline: ELA Lesson Topic: The connection between The New Colossus and the preamble…

section: Expert Interview Transcript: Holly A. Ingraham, PhD

Holly A. Ingraham, PhD Professor of Physiology Ingraham is UCSF associate professor of physiology and obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive sciences at UC-San Francisco. She studies the development of endocrine and neuroendocrine organs using molecular biology and mouse genetics….

workshop: Rooted in Culture

I think the fruits of exploring [the appropriate ways to interact with native speakers] helps to lead the individual not only to learn more about the target language and its culture, but, through comparisons and reflection and introspection, to discover more about one’s own language and one’s own culture. — Alvino Fantini, School for International…

section: Assignments + Projects

section: Online Textbook

session: Arabic: Making Plans

CLASSROOM AT A GLANCE Teacher Belal Joundeya Language Arabic V/VI Grades 9-12 School Lincoln High School, Portland, Oregon Lesson Date March 8 Class Size 20 Schedule 92 minutes, 2–3 times per week اضغط هنا للترجمة باللغة العربية Video Summary In this lesson, high school students in Belal Joundeya’s Arabic V/VI class engage in authentic conversations…

section: Part B: Selecting the Sample (30 minutes)

In This Part: Fair Sampling You may have noticed that your estimates for the total penguin population vary quite a bit based on both the sample size and which sub-regions were sampled. The decision about how to select a sample, accordingly, is a critical one in statistics. It is important that each part of the…

video: Reacting to Students’ Work

“Success looks different to me with each student. For some students, just being able to talk about a book at all is a plus. And then other students are able to come up with questions that go beyond the book. They are able to talk about meanings, about interpretations…and that’s success.” -Latosha Rowley, 4th- and…

session: Russian: Russian Cities, Russian Stories

CLASSROOM AT A GLANCE Teacher Jane Shuffelton Language Russian I and IV Grades 9-12 School Brighton High School, Rochester, New York Lesson Date March 6 Class Size 20 Schedule 45 minutes; modular schedule* In this lesson, Russian I and Russian IV students meet to discuss Russian geography and the origins of Russian city names. Working…

video: Thinking and Communicating Like a Historian

Steve Lazar discusses how teaching his students the specific language of his discipline gives them the tools to better discuss and write about content. Teacher: Steve Lazar School: Harvest Collegiate High School, New York, NY Grade: 10 Discipline: History/Social Studies Lesson Topic: Writing about complicated things (“It’s Complicated”) Lesson Month: March Number of Students: 20…

section: Focus in on this Photo: Classroom in Sittwe, Myanmar, 2015

#10009 The focus of this photograph is a group of young children sitting tightly together on the floor in a dimly lit room reading from heavily worn books. The walls of the room are made of a woven material and sticks. There is a woven mat on the floor. In the background there are clothes…

video: Research and Discovery: Edwidge Danticat, An Na, Laurence Yep, and more

In Clayton, Missouri, Kathryn Mitchell Pierce’s sixth-grade students read works that explore issues of historical and contemporary immigration. Pierce uses “text sets” of multicultural picture books, poetry, and nonfiction to introduce the students to a wide range of perspectives and to set the stage for their novel study. The Students choose, and then discuss in…

video: Students Making Choices

Becky Pursley’s First-Grade Class Teacher: Becky Pursley Years Teaching: 14 School: Barton Hills Elementary School, Austin, TX Grade: First Class Size: 18 Students Lesson Dates: November 12 and 13 “I hope all first graders learn how to unlock words, use all parts of literature to make connections to their own lives, and make meaning from…

video: Search for Identity

American Prose Writers Even as the poets covered in Unit 15, Poetry of Liberation, were fostering a rebellion, contemporary prose writers began creating a new American tradition comprised of many strands, many voices, and many myths about the past. This program explores the search for identity by three American writers: Maxine Hong Kingston, Sandra Cisneros,…

section: Expert Interview Transcript: Jonathan Eisen, Ph.D.

Assistant Investigator, The Institute for Genomic Research An investigator at the Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR). His research interests include DNA repair, extremophiles, and phyogenomics….

lesson: Anzia Yezierska (1880-1970)

…most European Americans to pronounce. In 1910, Yezierska married attorney Jacob Gordon and annulled the marriage almost immediately. She then married businessman Arnold Levitas, with whom she had a daughter, Louise, in 1912. Yezierska soon found herself stifled by the demands of domestic life, and the couple had frequent disagreements. In 1915 she left her…

video: View & Analyze the Video

As you reflect on these questions, write down your responses or discuss them as a group. Before You Watch Respond to the following questions: What are some strategies you use to differentiate learning and accommodate the needs of different types of heritage learners and nonheritage learners? What is the main role of a teacher in…

video: Responding to Writing: Peer to Peer

video: Cosmology and Belief

In all cultures, people strive to understand their reason for being and their place in the universe. Art can be an instrument for not only recording spiritual beliefs, but also for creating myths, defining the realms of mortal and immortal, communing with ancestors, channeling forces of good, and repelling those of evil. All Video on…

section: Examining Common Attitudes and Perceptions of Refugees Through Photographs

Learning Targets I can identify similarities and differences of displaced people and groups across the earth. I can describe the role that community and culture play for all people. I can explain how a sense of community and culture is threatened for displaced persons. Background Note: Sections of this background are taken from the Collection…

section: Art: Burning Man Effigy

» American artist Burning Man Effigy Artist / Origin: American artist Region: North America Date: Early 21st century Period: 1900 CE – 2010 CE Material: Wood, nails Medium: Video, Installation, and Performance Dimensions: H: approx. 40 ft. (12.19 m.) (without plinth) Location: Black Rock City, Nevada (temporary community) Credit: © C. Lyttle/CORBIS In June of…

section: Teaching Strategies

News Groups / Public Letters Cultural Exchange Group Persona / Tea Party Personal Essay…

section: #4048

section: Controversial Public Policy Issues — Essential Readings

Academic Controversy by David Johnson and Roger Johnson, University of Minnesota Center for Cooperative Learning Johnson and Johnson have pioneered research on cooperative learning. In this article they provide further guidance on the debate method used by JoEllen Ambrose in this lesson… read more below…

section: Part A: Probability in Statistics (20 minutes)

In This Part: What Is Probability? Problem A1 Make a list of the topics and ideas that come to mind when you think of probability, including both everyday uses of probability and mathematical or school uses. Problem A2 What does probability have to do with statistics? Think about ways that statistics might use probability, and…

video: Creating a Community of Writers

lesson: Activities and Discussion

Fifth-grade students designed visual representations of their own personal histories at Browns Mill Elementary School in Lithonia, Georgia. Suggested Activities and Discussion Consider these questions for reflection: How can you use techniques from the arts to reach students who have difficulties with reading and spelling? Are there other ways you can incorporate the arts into…

section: Assignments + Projects

section: Examine the Topic | Creating a Literate Community

Extend Your Knowledge In this section, you will expand your understanding of a literate classroom community by comparing the ideas from the workshop video with passages from various publications. Read and respond to the ideas presented as they relate to your own teaching practices. Primary reading teachers have two challenges: designing a classroom environment that…

video: Transmission: Learning Music

video: Introducing Our Literary Community

Introduction “There is power in the written word. There is power in learners finding their own voices.” Tanya Schnabl 6th Grade Teacher, Sherburne/Earlville Middle School Sherburne, New York Imagine driving down the highway, faced with flashing emergency vehicle lights and slowing traffic. Immediately, you begin to develop a hunch about what is happening around you….

lesson: Charles W. Chesnutt (1858-1932)

…both his black and his white audiences. Despite the decline at the end of his career, Chesnutt’s contributions to African American letters were foundational and significant. In recognition of his efforts, the NAACP awarded him the Spingarn Medal in 1928 for his groundbreaking realist representations of the “life and struggle of Americans of Negro descent.”…

video: Social Justice and Action: Joseph Bruchac and Francisco Jiménez

This program begins with profiles of the featured authors, then moves on to Chicago, Illinois, where Lisa Espinosa’s seventh-grade students explore themes of representation through literature, documentary film, and photography. The students look critically at past and current media depictions of African Americans, Latino/as, and Native Americans, and examine ways in which artists and writers…

video: Analyzing Complex Text

…Michelle Brenner School: North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, Durham, NC Grade: 11 Discipline: ELA/History (American Studies) Lesson Topic: Chapters 21–30 of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain Lesson Month: November Number of Students: 16 Other: This is a two-year school that focuses on the intensive study of science, mathematics, and technology…

section: Online Textbook

section: The Odyssey – Getting Started

The Long Journey Home The Odyssey may be familiar to you — almost every high school English teacher in the United States assigns some part of the epic for students to read. You may have read a few episodes—Cyclops, Circe, the Sirens, Odysseus killing the suitors—or you may have read the whole thing. If you…

section: Electoral Politics — Lesson Plan

The Lesson Plan section contains everything you will need to fully understand the featured lesson. It has the following sections: Context presents background information on the teacher, the school, and the course in which the lesson was taught; Lesson-Specific Standards identifies the national standards from the Center for Civic Education and the National Council for…

video: Introduction to Probability

video: Using Resources

video: Writer’s Journal

  Classroom Profile Teacher: John Sinnett Years Teaching: 23 School: Collins Elementary School, Houston, TX Grade: Kindergarten Class Size: 16 Students Lesson Dates: November 14 and 1 “I want them to start thinking in kindergarten about how they need to make some kind of plan in their head for their writing. I have them draw…

video: Building Oral Language

Classroom Profile Teacher: Cindy Wilson Years Teaching: 25 School: Josiah Quincy Elementary School, Boston, MA Grade: Kindergarten Class Size: 24 Students Lesson Dates: February 6 and 8 “Many of the people who come into my classroom — casual observers — do not notice that many of my children have lots of learning and behavior issues….

section: Electoral Politics — Other Lessons

Voting Isn’t Enough Voting Is Essential  …

video: Form: The Shape of Music

lesson: Activities and Discussion

A kindergartner explains the costume he created to be a “Fantastical Creature” in an original performance piece at Lusher Alternative Elementary School in New Orleans, Louisiana. Suggested Activities and Discussion Consider these questions for reflection: How would you create a multi-arts, multigrade performance as a culminating event for a unit of study in your curriculum?…

section: Teaching Strategies: Patterns

Educator Marilyn Burns describes algebra as “the generalization of arithmetic.” The same definition is given in The Mathematics Dictionary (4th edition) by James & James. The University of Cambridge Maths Thesaurus defines algebra as “The noticing of patterns and describing them in words and pictures … It is the branch of elementary mathematics that generalizes…

unit: Reading in Mathematics

video: Watch the Program

(60 minutes) While watching, consider these focus questions: Where do your curriculum topics originate? Once you select a topic, what design process do you follow? What is the value of considering the “why” as well as the “what” of instruction? What are essential questions and how can they help clarify unit objectives?…

unit: Learning Challenges

Each session of The Learning Classroom generally concentrates on a single learning theory and describes how it might be applied in a classroom. We all know that teaching is much more complicated than that, because learning theories overlap and work together. The Learning Challenges here will help you integrate the ideas presented across different sessions….

section: Part B: The Role of Ratio (45 minutes)

In This Part Ratio and Scale Constant Ratios Using the Pythagorean Theorem Ratio and Scale Measurement is the process of quantifying properties of an object by comparing them to some standard unit. Thus, a measure is a ratio. When we state that an object is 8 in. long, this is in comparison to the unit…

unit: Disciplinary Literacy: Big Ideas

Introduction Adolescent students are expected to develop knowledge and understanding of each discipline in school through very focused instruction that includes attention to related reading and writing practices, collaborative discussions about ideas, and ongoing assessment of learning. Within each discipline, these practices differ due to the nature of the content, the structure and language of…

video: Exponential Functions

Exponents An exponent is mathematical shorthand that means a number is multiplied by itself repeatedly. An exponential function is a function in which the variable is an exponent….

video: Expectations for Success: Motivation and Learning

“A lot of times people think about motivation as something that the student has – she’s either motivated or un-motivated. But we actually know that motivation is a function of what happens in classrooms. The way teachers construct tasks, the way they let students know about their competence, the way they scaffold and support developing…

section: Commentary

section: Lesson Plan 1: The X Factor – Trinomials and Algebra Tiles

…factors. Identify the relationships that exist between b, c, m, and n when x2 + bx + c is factored as (x + m)(x + n). Standards: Principles and Standards for School Mathematics, National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), 2000. NCTM Algebra Standard for Grades 6-8 http://standards.nctm.org/document/chapter6/alg.htm NCTM Algebra Standard for Grades 9-12 http://standards.nctm.org/document/chapter7/alg.htm…

unit: Writing Across the Curriculum

Writing throughout the day gives students opportunities to practice the craft they learn during a writing workshop and exposes them to the authentic writing of multiple disciplines. This workshop — focused on practices that integrate writing into all areas of the curriculum — illustrates that writing can take many forms and serve many purposes. Our…

video: First Steps

This session provides an overview of the first steps teachers should take when working with student writers. The educators, researchers, and writers featured in the video programs talk about specific goals they share with their students, recognizing the local, state, and national standards that serve as a floor, not a ceiling, for their work. They…

section: Civic Engagement — Essential Readings

Standards of Quality for School-Based and Community-Based Service Learning prepared by the Alliance for Service Learning in Education Reform The Alliance for Service Learning in Education Reform is affiliated with the Close-Up Foundation in Alexandria, Virginia. In this article, the Alliance sets out a variety of key principles schools should consider prior to starting a…

video: How We Organize Knowledge: The Structure of the Disciplines

“When we want to learn something new, we have to figure out what are the main guideposts in the terrain of a body of knowledge. And that’s what we call the structure of the disciplines – the big ideas, the big modes of inquiry that are used in history, mathematics, science and so on. And…

section: Public Policy and the Federal Budget — Essential Readings

The following readings can be found below: From Behaviorist to Constructivist Teaching Creating Effective Citizens  …

section: Teaching Strategies: Listening to Students

According to veteran teacher Steve Reinhart, students can sometimes be the best instructors. In an April 2000 article in Mathematics Teaching in the Middle Schooltitled “Never Say Anything a Kid Can Say,” he wrote the following: When I was in front of the class demonstrating and explaining, I was learning a great deal, but many…

video: Foundations

“When we read something, we build envisionments that help us make sense of the text. Our ideas grow and change and become more full or complex over time. In the classroom, we want our students to do the same thing.” -Dr. Judith Langer, Director, National Research Center on English Learning & Achievement (CELA), State University…

video: Writing to Deepen Mathematical Understanding

Laura Mourino assesses formative understanding by having her 10th graders write letters answering four key questions about a unit circle. Teacher: Laura Mourino School: Harvest Collegiate High School, New York, NY Grade: 10 Discipline: Mathematics (Algebra 11) Lesson Topic: Unit circle Lesson Month: March Number of Students: 26…

section: Expert Interview Transcript: Capt. Daniel Carucci, M.D., PhD

Director, NMRC Malaria Program Dr. Carucci is the Director of the Malaria Program at the Naval Medical Research Center where he oversees Navy research efforts on malaria, focusing on vaccine development and novel approaches to protecting individuals from the disease. He is also the Department of Defense coordinator for the Malaria Genome Project, where he…

unit: Design a Lunar Thermos

Grade 3-5 learners will be guided through a series of challenges that follow the engineering design cycle. Join NASA on an adventure through solving an engineering challenge to design a thermos to keep water warm in space. Each step of the engineering design cycle will be performed by the learner. OBJECTIVE To demonstrate an understanding…

video: Real World Mathematics Collaboration

Students in Stephanie Brown’s class work together in teams to problem solve and develop a system of equations for a trigonometry proof. Teacher: Stephanie Brown School: Point Loma High School, San Diego, CA Grade: 10 Discipline: Mathematics (Geometry) Lesson Topic: Proofs of the Pythagorean theorem Lesson Month: January/February Number of Students: 34…

section: Part C: Bags, Blocks, and Balance (30 minutes)

In This Part Balance Scale Activity Balance Puzzles and Equations Here are 3 balanced scales. Use your intuition about balance to determine, for each case, how many blocks have to be in the bag. What would happen if you removed a block from the left? What would happen if you added a block to the…

video: Watch It, Do It, Know It: Cognitive Apprenticeship

“A cognitive apprenticeship sort of takes off from where candle-makers and cloth-makers left off in the days gone by, and says ‘How do we teach someone by modeling and demonstrating a way of thinking, a way of “working in our minds?” ” Linda Darling-Hammond Key Questions How can students learn to think strategically? How can…

unit: Arts Education

Every child has a right to expect an education rich in knowledge of the arts, as have students in societies dating back to ancient civilizations. We know that arts education provides avenues to crucial modes of thinking and learning. It helps students on many levels with all academic subjects as well as developing an understanding…

video: Fostering Student Engagement

Laura Mourino discusses her commitment to engaging students in a variety of tasks by acknowledging individuality in learning and making simple accommodations based on differences. Teacher: Laura Mourino School: Harvest Collegiate High School, New York, NY Grade: 10 Discipline: Mathematics (Algebra 11) Lesson Topic: Unit circle Lesson Month: March Number of Students: 26…

section: Reflect on Your Learning | New Literacies of the Internet

What Did You Learn? Assignment Consider what you have learned about teaching new literacies from Professor Leu’s comments, the classroom examples, and the readings and activities in this session. Write a summary of what you have learned. Use the questions below to guide your thinking. When you have finished, save your written work to submit…

video: View & Analyze the Video

As you reflect on these questions, write down your responses or discuss them as a group. Before You Watch Respond to the following questions: What are some of the premises of content-based instruction in foreign language classes? How can content from the general curriculum be integrated into a foreign language lesson? What kinds of writing…

section: Commentary

section: Lesson Plan 1: Mathematical Modeling, Circular Movement and Transmission Ratios

Overview: In this lesson, students will learn to use mathematical models to represent real life situations. In particular, they will use tables and equations to represent the relationship between the number of revolutions made by a “driver” and a “follower” (two connected gears in a system), and they will explain the significance of the radii…

section: Part B: Undoing Algorithms (20 minutes)

An algorithm is a recipe or a description of a mechanical set of steps for performing some task. For example, you can have an algorithm for making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Mathematical algorithms are increasingly important in the computer age. Computer programs are essentially algorithms written in a language that computers understand. Here’s…

section: Homework

Think back to the finite system of units digits that you explored in Part A and answer the following questions about that system. Problem H1 a. The commutative law for multiplication states that (a • b) = (b • a). Does this law hold for the finite number system in your table? Why or why…

section: Teaching Strategies: Questioning Techniques

Educational philosopher John Dewey said: “What’s in a question, you ask? Everything. It is a way of evoking stimulating response or stultifying inquiry. It is, in essence, the very core of teaching.” Effective questions are an integral part of the successful mathematics classroom. Some research suggests that as much as 50 percent of classroom time…

timeline: The Fifties – Key Events

section: Part C: Absolute and Relative Reasoning (30 minutes)

Rational numbers or fractions can be used in many different ways. One source of confusion, especially with fractions, is the difference between absolute and relative reasoning. In Part A, we used a rational number to compare a part to a whole. It’s important to understand, however, that there is more than one way to make…

video: Writing for Mathematics Understanding

Stephanie Brown’s students first work individually and then in groups to construct viable mathematical arguments by critiquing each other’s reasoning. Teacher: Stephanie Brown School: Point Loma High School, San Diego, CA Grade: 10 Discipline: Mathematics (Geometry) Lesson Topic: Proofs of the Pythagorean theorem Lesson Month: January/February Number of Students: 34 Full Details…

unit: Learning To Revise

How can you help your students understand the value of revision and use what they know to improve their own writing? In this workshop, you will discover why students in the middle grades can be reluctant to revise, help them better understand the purpose of revision, and teach revision strategies they can use. A lot…

video: Three Leaders at Arts-Based Schools

Assistant Principal Rory Pullens of Smith Renaissance School of the Arts in Denver, Colorado. Administrators of three successful arts-based schools share their insights and practical management strategies: Principal Martha Rodriguez-Torres leveraged her approach to arts-based learning to transform the low-performing P.S. 156 into The Waverly School of the Arts, a source of pride and accomplishment…

lesson: Part C: The Midline Theorem (55 minutes)

In this part The Midline Cut Some Geometry Facts Proving the Midline Theorem The Midline Theorem In this part, we will begin to use segment notation. Optional: About Segment Notation (see below). Let’s look again at how we solved Problem B3, in which we dissected a triangle to form a parallelogram. Note 4 Find the…

section: Part B: An Example for Developing Algebraic Thinking (25 minutes)

The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics’ Principles and Standards for School Mathematics (2000) identifies algebra as a strand for grades Pre-K-12. The Standards identify the following concepts that all students should cover and be able to: Note 4 • Understand patterns, relationships, and functions • Represent and analyze mathematical situations and structures using algebraic…

section: Part E: Critiquing Student Lessons (20 minutes)

…answer the following questions: Note 8 a. What algebraic ideas are in this problem? b. How are patterns used in this problem? c. What mathematics do you think students would learn from this problem? d. How would you modify the problem, or what additional questions might you ask, to incorporate the framework for analyzing patterns?…

section: Part C: Patterns That Illustrate Algebraic Thinking (25 minutes)

Many students find that a context or situation helps them think about algebraic ideas. In the next problem, we’ll look at different representations of a situation that lead to a solution. Note 6 In this section we’ll analyze problems at the grade 6-8 level for their algebraic content. For each problem, find a mathematical solution,…

section: Part B: An Example for Developing Algebraic Thinking (25 minutes)

The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics’ Principles and Standards for School Mathematics (2000) identifies algebra as a strand for grades Pre-K-12. The Standards identify the following concepts that all students should cover and comprehend: Note 4 • Understand patterns, relationships, and functions • Represent and analyze mathematical situations and structures using algebraic symbols •…

section: Expert Interview Transcript: Laurie Garret

Journalist, Newsday Garret is the author of the books The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance and Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health. She is also a medical and science writer for Newsday, in New York City. For her work, she has been awarded The Peabody, The…

section: Part C: Scaling the Area (35 minutes)

…we only explored similar triangles, but in this section we will use a variety of shapes. When we enlarge or reduce a figure, we are using an important mathematical idea: similarity. Similar figures have the same shape but are not necessarily the same size. More formally, we state that two figures are similar if and…

section: Part C: Patterns That Illustrate Algebraic Thinking (25 minutes)

Many students find that a context or situation helps them think about algebraic ideas. In the next problem, we’ll look at different representations of a situation that lead to a solution. Note 6 In this section we’ll analyze problems at the 3-5 grade level for their algebraic content. For each problem, find a mathematical solution,…

section: Part B: An Example for Developing Algebraic Thinking (20 minutes)

The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics’ Principles and Standards for School Mathematics (2000) identifies algebra as a strand for grades Pre-K-12. The Standardsidentify the following concepts that all students should cover and comprehend: Note 4 • Understand patterns, relationships, and functions • Represent and analyze mathematical situations and structures using algebraic symbols • Use…

unit: Reading: Big Ideas

Introduction Reading is a complex process that involves interactions among the reader, the text, and the context. Meaning does not reside solely on a page of text, with the intent that the reader will extract meaning from that page. Rather, meaning is actively constructed by what the reader brings to the text and how this…

unit: Reasons for Writing

In this workshop you will explore practices that motivate students to write and help them develop into independent, motivated writers. These effective practices include allowing students to make their own choices about their writing, helping them keep a writer’s notebook in which to record their thoughts and draw inspiration, and providing opportunities for students to…

video: Identifying Evidence from Multiple Sources

Jesse Gore teaches students how to analyze evidence from primary and secondary sources in order to defend ideas. Teacher: Jesse Gore School: Dillard Drive Middle School, Raleigh, NC Grade: 7 Discipline: History Lesson Topic: Napoleon Bonaparte: A hero or a tyrant? Lesson Month: November Number of Students: 28…

section: Part A: Indirect Measurement With a Transit (40 minutes)

In This Part Similar Triangles Using Similar Triangles Measuring Distances Similar Triangles One way to measure indirectly is to use similar triangles. In similar figures, corresponding angles are congruent, and corresponding sides (or segments) are in proportion. In similar triangles, however, one or the other will suffice. In other words, if the corresponding sides alone…

lesson: Part B: Linkage-Strip Constructions (40 minutes)

In this part: Constructing Triangles Constructing Quadrilaterals Properties of Triangles. A triangle has three sides, but not just any set of three lengths will make a triangle. Use linkage-strips to answer Problems B1-B5. Note 3 Constructing Triangles Problem B1 Fill in the table below. Try to build triangles with the given lengths. Write “yes” or…

section: Assignments + Projects

lesson: Part C: Trigonometry (35 minutes)

In this part Right Triangle Ratios Trigonometric Functions Right Triangles Ratios The word “trigonometry” is enough to strike fear into the hearts of many high school students. But it simply means “triangle measuring.” A trigon is another name for a triangle — think pentagon and hexagon, for example — and “-metry” means “measuring,” just as…

section: Homework

Problem H1 The meter was originally based on the size of the Earth, with the distance from the equator to the North Pole being arbitrarily defined as 10 million m. What is another way to express the distance of 10 million m? The Earth is not quite spherical, but for practical purposes we can think…

timeline: The Redemptive Imagination – Timeline, 1876 – 1999

Revisit the events of 1876 – 1999…

section: Part C: Folding Paper (40 minutes)

In This Part: Constructions Constructing Triangles Concurrencies in Triangles More Constructions Geometers distinguish between a drawing and a construction. Drawings are intended to aid memory, thinking, or communication, and they needn’t be much more than rough sketches to serve this purpose quite well. The essential element of a construction is that it is a kind…

unit: Gravity

Although by far the weakest of the known forces in nature, gravity pervades the universe and played an essential role in the evolution of the universe to its current state. Newton’s law of universal gravitation and its elegant successor, Einstein’s theory of general relativity, represent milestones in the history of science and provide the best…

lesson: Part B: Classifying Polygons (40 minutes)

In This Part Properties of Polygons Grouping Polygons Polygon-Classification Game More Venn Diagrams Polygons can be divided into groups according to certain properties. Concave polygons look like they are collapsed or have one or more angles dented in. Any polygon that has an angle measuring more than 180° is concave. These are concave polygons: These…

unit: Conversations Among Writing Peers

How can peer conferencing help students in grades 3-5 become better writers? In this workshop, you will examine the various forms peer response might take in a writing workshop, the importance of an authentic audience for written work, and how peer conferencing can enhance writing skills in grades 3-5. You will also explore teaching strategies…

video: Explorers in North America

Video Summary: Who were the first Europeans to step foot in the New World? What were they hoping to find? And what impact did their arrival have on the people already living there? Rob Cuddi uses essential questions like these to teach his fifth-grade students about the early explorers in North America. Mr. Cuddi begins…

lesson: Part A: Tangrams (15 minutes)

In this part Exploring Tangrams Moving Tangrams Exploring Tangrams A tangram is a seven-piece puzzle made from a square. A typical tangram set contains two large isosceles right triangles, one medium isosceles right triangle, two small isosceles right triangles, a square, and a parallelogram. Use a set of tangrams, or print and cut out the…

unit: Macroscopic Quantum Mechanics

The fundamentals of quantum mechanics that we met in Unit 5 characteristically appear on microscopic scales. Macroscopic quantum systems in which liquids, or electric currents, flow without friction or resistance have been known since the early part of the previous century: these are the superfluids and superconductors of traditional condensed matter physics that are discussed…

unit: Conversations With Student Writers

All teachers understand the value of responding personally to student work. But how do you use that feedback to help students improve their writing? In this workshop, you will examine the practical issues of planning and conducting writing conferences. You will also see classroom examples of formal and informal writing conferences. I still find conferring…

unit: Teaching the Writing Craft

How can you target specific writing skills and strategies in your teaching? In this workshop, you will explore the role of whole-class instruction in the writing workshop and how lessons on particular writing skills can unfold over multiple days. Planning whole-class instruction begins with your required curriculum, what you know about writing, and what your…

section: Patriotism and Foreign Policy — Essential Readings

The following essential readings are available below: Cooperative Learning Multiple Intelligences: Gardner’s Theory  …

video: Making a Difference Through Giving

Video Summary: How do you teach students to become effective citizens? How can young children make positive contributions to their community? Darlene Jones-Inge challenges her fourth- and fifth-grade students to think of realistic solutions to some of the problems facing their school, community, country, and the world. Ms. Jones-Inge begins with a class discussion about…

section: Patriotism and Foreign Policy — Lesson Plan

The Lesson Plan section contains everything you will need to fully understand the featured lesson. It has the following sections: Context presents background information on the teacher, the school, and the course in which the lesson was taught; Lesson-Specific Standards identifies the national standards from the Center for Civic Education and the National Council for…

video: Celebrations of Light

Video Summary: Eileen Mesmer uses the theme of holidays to teach students about social studies. Throughout the year her class has read stories about different cultures’ holiday celebrations, prepared foods traditionally eaten during those holidays, learned holiday greetings in other languages, and studied artifacts related to the various holidays. Shifting the emphasis from how holiday…

section: Part C: Colored-Chip Models (35 minutes)

…black ones to represent positive values. You can find this segment on the session video approximately 19 minutes and 25 seconds after the Annenberg Media logo. One of the interesting things about using models in mathematics is that no one model works for everything. In this case, the colored-chip model worked for addition, subtraction, multiplication,…

section: Teaching Strategies: Building Understanding

People who have developed expertise in particular areas are naturally able to think effectively about problems in those areas. Understanding such expertise is important for teachers because it provides insights into the nature of how people think and solve problems. Research about how experts learn new things in their fields has identified several important factors…

section: Teaching Strategies: Manipulatives

Manipulatives: An old Chinese proverb states: I hear, and I forget; I see, and I remember; I do, and I understand. Manipulatives are hands-on tools that allow students to do mathematics. They provide physical representations of abstract concepts. As students often explain, “They help you see and touch the numbers” and “They let me see…

section: Part C: Problems That Illustrate Reasoning About Number and Operations (55 minutes)

As this course comes to a close and you reflect on ways to incorporate your new understanding of number and operations into your teaching, you have both a challenge and an opportunity: to enrich the mathematical conversations you have with your students around number and operations. As you are well aware, some students will readily…

section: Commentary

section: Part B: Slope (40 minutes)

In This Part Thinking About Slope Comparing Slopes Slopes and Architecture Thinking About Slope Slope is an important concept in mathematics, and in Part B we’ll explore how it is used to solve problems. Note 5   Problem B1 Take a minute to think about what you already know about slope. What does it mean?…

section: Lesson Plan 2: Hassan’s Pictures – Linear Programming and Profit Lines

…linear programming problem. Graph a family of profit lines for a given linear programming problem. Determine the optimum point or solution to a linear programming problem. Standards: Principles and Standards for School Mathematics, National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), 2000: NCTM Algebra Standard for Grades 6-8 http://standards.nctm.org/document/chapter6/alg.htm NCTM Algebra Standard for Grades 9-12 http://standards.nctm.org/document/chapter7/alg.htm…

video: Quantifying Chemical Reactions: Stoichiometry and Moles

Stoichiometry gives us the quantitative tools to figure out the relative amounts of reactants and products in chemical reactions. Balancing the number of atoms on each side of the equation, calculating the amount of each reactant, and figuring out which reactant will run out first are all fundamental principles when designing any chemical reaction. These…

section: Part B: Inverse Proportions (60 minutes)

In This Part Splitting a Prize Ms. Anwar’s Backyard Another Inverse Proportion Splitting a Prize Imagine that the teachers in your school decide to play the lottery together. If they win, the prize is $800,000. Problem B1 is a table that shows how much each teacher will get, depending on how many of them contribute…