Students research the three tenets of cell theory and describe the scientific evidence that supports this theory. After students complete their research, they will engage in all steps of the writing process, including prewriting, outlining, revising, and editing. At the conclusion of the lesson, students will create a three-paragraph argumentative essay to examine the cell theory and the scientific evidence that supports this theory.

In this lesson, students will review information comparing Mars and Earth and a timeline outlining the study of Mars and the possibility of life on Mars. Students will develop questions on the topic and then research and investigate answers to their questions.

This resource is a guideline to citing sources and parenthetical documentation for a research paper.

In this lesson, students will read letters written during the Civil War. Referring to their knowledge about the Civil War, they’ll develop a clear understanding of the message of the letter. They will edit the letters for mechanics and create a dramatic reading based on their letter. Then students will create their own Civil War dramas, using a fictional letter they create.

Students will create a travel brochure for either their home town or a city they would love to visit or move to as soon as possible. This activity will help them learn to research and document information in appropriate spaces.

This series of lessons focuses on two biological ocean communities - hydrothermal vents and seamounts. Students will learn about the organisms within these communities, the ecological relationships among them, and the impact of physical factors on distribution and abundance. In Lesson Plan 22, "Who Promised You a Rose Garden," students will conduct research to discover what types of organisms live near hydrothermal vents. In Lesson Plan 23, "Biological Communities of Alaska Seamounts," students will infer why biological communities on seamounts are likely to contain unique or endemic species and will use species occurrence data to calculate and index of similarity between two biological seamount communities. In Lesson Plan 24, "Would You Like a Sample?" students will test the advantages and limitations of several sampling techniques to study biological communities.

Students become familiar with the similarities and differences between electronic and printed text by comparing the textual aids included in a textbook with those of an educational website.

In this lesson, teachers scaffold student reading of websites that highlight science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers. Then the teacher models a close reading with students, setting a purpose and asking text-dependent questions before, during, and after to help students find evidence, use inferencing skills, and peer edit.

In this lesson, students are introduced to the effects of cultural diffusion that is found from country to country, and using the Internet as a research tool, find concrete examples of cultural diffusion.

Working in small groups, students will work produce sections of an historical newspaper or journal for publication in democratic Athens. Using the resources of this Web site (as well as books and other resources listed in the Research Links & Resources Page) pick an approximate date and research stories for your newspaper. This section has been tailored for a newspaper about Athens during the time of Pericles, because of the greater amount of information available for that period. However, with some adaptation and additional research it would be possible to compile newspapers for early or later periods.

This unit is designed to teach about the causes and effects of the Great Depression, and provide an introduction to the use of primary sources in the study of history. This historical discovery approach will emphasize the role of the historian as detective using such skills as observation, discrimination, analysis, and synthesis to research and record history. Students will explore primary sources including photographs, poems, song lyrics, documents, maps, cartoons, as well as, secondary source texts in print and online.

In this lesson, students pinpoint and list specific problems of the Great Depression using what they have learned from analyzing a variety of primary sources. They will then form research groups to learn about President Frankling Roosevelt and New Deal Legislation using internet sources.

In this lesson, students continue working in their research groups (formed in previous lesson) to learn about additional New Deal programs.

In this lesson, students learn about the draft lottery during the Vietnam War, and how it affected the lives of young men during that time. Students are introduced to the Selective Service’s lottery system through a bell-ringer that asks them to locate their “number” and then segregates the class into the drafted and undrafted. They then read a short description of the Selective Service’s lottery system. The key points from the reading are summarized through a teacher-directed discussion. Finally, students view the oral histories of veterans who discuss the ways the draft impacted their perspectives on the Vietnam War.

In this lesson, students use information and graphics to prepare digital presentations that teach others about energy topics.

E-book readers, or digital readers, are devices that can host thousands of electronic books and allows readers to interact with digital texts through the use of e-book tools and features. In this lesson, students will read e-books and use digital tools (dictionaries and notes) to support their development of vocabulary. Specifically, students will assume roles of “word detectives” as they look up words in digital dictionaries and use other strategies to identify the meaning of vocabulary words.

Students will become engaged learners through this unit that prepares students for studying ancient Greece with digital storytelling skills. First students develop a list of questions to research Greek gods, heroes, and creatures. Then with a partner, they choose the topic of their research and divide the questions between themselves. After conducting research, the partners write scripts for their digital story using the online tool PowToon.

As a way to support teachers with English Language Arts (ELA) instruction during the pandemic, the NCDPI ELA team created choice boards featuring standards-aligned ELA activities.The intended purpose of these choice boards is to provide a way for students to continue standards-based learning while schools are closed. Each activity can be adapted and modified to be completed with or without the use of digital tools. Many activities can also be repeated with different texts. These standards-based activities are meant to be a low-stress approach to reinforcing and enriching the skills learned during the 2019-2020 school year. The choice boards are to be used flexibly by teachers, parents, and students in order to meet the unique needs of each learner.Exploration activities are provided for a more self-directed or guided approach to independent learning for students. These activities and sites should be used as a way to explore concepts, topics, skills, and social and emotional competencies that interest the learner. 

In this lesson, teachers set up an e-mail system whereby students in different classes or schools can communicate research-based questions and answers on a given topic.

In this lesson, students research using computers to gather information on wildlife management and use the information to write a letter to an agency.