In this lesson, students will learn that building a snowman is one way to provide food for birds and animals during the winter. Students begin by listening to a book about snow. Students are then introduced to a K-W-L chart and discuss what they know about how animals find food in the winter. As students listen to Henrietta Bancroft's Animals in Winter, they listen for details about how some animals survive during the winter and record those details in the last column of the chart. To continue to build students' knowledge of the topic, they listen to additional fiction and nonfiction books and view a website about animals in winter. As a culminating activity, students use their charts to write and illustrate a story.

In this unit, students will research insects and dive into writing juicy paragraphs with main ideas and supporting details. They will create their insect out of various materials to get ready for the gallery opening.

Before reading a complex informational text in a differentiated second grade group during the science unit about states of matter, AIG students will work collaboratively to complete a metacognitive dictionary to predict, explain their thinking, and determine the meaning of unfamiliar words. After reading, the AIG students will apply knowledge of the new vocabulary through writing an original informative text on the same topic. This lesson was developed by NCDPI as part of the Academically and/or Intellectually Gifted Instructional Resources Project. This lesson plan has been vetted at the state level for standards alignment, AIG focus, and content accuracy.

The NC Kids' Exploration Journals are a fun educational tool to help youth explore their communities and natural surroundings! Each journal contains: 18 multidisciplinary activities with guided prompts, 6 lined journal pages for recording observations and reflections, and 4 blank pages for individual creativity.

The digital versions of the journal are designed to be printed out for students either as individual activities or in its entirety so that they can explore their school yard, local park, or own backyard. Though designed for 1st - 5th-graders, older audiences may enjoy them too! They are also available in both English and Spanish languages.

While supplies last, hard copies of the journals are currently available for free to teachers by contacting karen.ipock@ncdcr.gov.

In this lesson, students create a name tag using information about themselves. Each student's name tag, while being similar, will visually represent personal information. These name tags will help the teacher learn students' names, but they will also help the students get to know each other and practice a visual, contemporary literacy when they interpret glyphs made by others. Students learn that communication is symbolic on a very fundamental level in this lesson.

In this unit, students will develop an understanding of nonfiction through peer interaction and hands-on experiences with books. They use graphic organizers to record their thinking and new learning.

This is a remix of Animal Research by Amy Hartman.This Remix was modified for a remote learning platform. It contains the research of an animal, completion of a graphic organizer, writing an informative story/paragrpah OR creating a slide presentation.It doe include enrchment activities, as well as differentiated story frames.The attached documents & slide presentation were created on the Google platform. To upload them to this platform they had to be downloaded into Word & Powerpoint. Some changes and alterations may be necessary.

This unit was created by the Rethink Education Content Development Team. This unit is aligned to the NC Standards for 2nd Grade ELA. 

This teacher's curriculum guide presents strategies for engaging readers before, during, and after reading the book. It also provides extension strategies to further students’ understanding through response to writing prompts.

With this unit, students learn how specialization creates interdependence and that exchanging goods and services creates interdependence. Students describe examples of specialists in a community and the interdependence which exists between them. They also analyze a situation where interdependence exists between countries and explain what might happen if one of those countries chooses to become independent of the others.

In this unit, students begin by evaluating book reviews written and read aloud by other children. Next, students discuss the effectiveness of, what components are included in, what they learned from, and what they might change about the book reviews. Once students have a foundation for book review components and structure, they choose a favorite book and write a review. Finally, students publish their reviews by videotaping them or posting them online.

Students listen to a read-aloud of the Eric Carle picture book The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Then they watch a time-lapse video of the monarch butterfly life cycle and create their own picture books.

This inquiry leads students through an investigation of economic systems by focusing on the context of trade among world communities. Trading is one of the oldest forms on economic interaction among humans, yet it is also among the most complex. In examining the reasons for international trade and the exports of world communities, students should be able to develop an argument supported by evidence to answer the compelling question "Why do countries need each other?"

In this lesson, beginning writers use electronic communication as a tool for literacy learning. E-mail is well-suited to teaching audience awareness—recognizing what readers need to know to understand a reply message and using the reply function as a way to contextualize a reply and help readers make sense of it. Although the lesson states K-2 for appropriate grades, it can be used for grades 3-5.

In this activity, students will create a “How To” piece of writing and read it to their audience on SeeSaw.

In this activity, students write an informational piece of writing and read it to their audience on SeeSaw.