A teaching resource for actiities, research assignments, writing prompts and cooperative activities for Ben Franklin including Poor Richard's Almanac.

Franklin’s widespread interests and numerous fields of endeavor make him the American epitome of the Age of Enlightenment. In this lesson, students will reflect on the parallels between our own age and the one in which Franklin lived and worked. After viewing a short video about Franklin, they will read some of Franklin’s adages through an Enlightenment lens and examine a symbol-rich portrait of Franklin. The lesson culminates with students imagining Benjamin Franklin’s present-day social media presence.

In this lesson, students will gather basic facts about tobacco addiction, including cigarette ingredients, physical effects, tobacco advertising, and how to quit. They will use their understanding of these facts to compose a letter to someone they love, asking them to quit smoking. Letters will present arguments based on the facts.

This video shows how Biltmore uses renewable energy through solar and biodiesel processes, in addition to sustainable forestry.

Students will investigate the DREAM Act and any current pending legislation, view clips from the POV film, discuss and write in groups, and explore the role of blogging as civic engagment.

In this lesson, students explore the mathematics of architecture by investigating the unusual shapes of some of the rooms in the White House, such as the Blue Room's elliptical shape. They use a graph to plot, draw and determine the equation of an ellipse.

In this unit, students will learn that improvisation is an acquired skill which will improve with practice. Students will use the 12 bar blues format as a vehicle to gain fluency with improvisation, creating a melodic line in the 12 bar blues structure. The lesson will culminate with students recording and transcribing their 12 bar blues solo.

This lesson examines both the content and form of lyrics in blues songs. In addition to highlighting the basic musical form of a blues song, it also addresses the use of floating verses in blues music, both within the context of the original era in which the songs were sung and also in relation to how this practice is perceived today.

Students will learn about Booker T. Washington’s struggle to become educated and his contributions to educating his fellow African Americans. After watching a short video, they will discuss the role that compromise played in Washington’s rise to power and fame. By examining a 1906 image of Washington and reading excerpts from his Atlanta Exposition speech, students will be able to recognize Washington’s contributions to the early Civil Rights movement and to assess his controversial philosophy.

Students will examine how the invention of the bot on social media websites like Twitter plays a role in influencing public opinion. Students will then invent their own bot to spread awareness about an issue they care about.

In this lesson, students calculate the rate of change between two points on a curve by determining the slope of the line joining those two points. They then extend this method to estimate the instantaneous rate of change at a given point by taking two points very close to and on either side of the given point. Although higher-level functions are used to illustrate situations, students are only calculating rate of change at specific intervals in this lesson.

Students explore the right to education and the battle that ensued to end centuries of unequal opportunities for African-Americans.

This lesson uses stories about individuals with disabilities, all conceived of, filmed and edited by middle and high school students, to explore empathy, common feelings of difference and how stories help us walk in another person's shoes.

In this lesson, students explore relationships between x-intercepts, factors, and roots of polynomial functions using the graphing calculator. Students also investigate rational functions, identifying the roots and the asymptotes as well as holes in the graphs. Students construct boxes of various dimensions using graph paper, collect height and volume data, and create a scatterplot in order to determine the height of the box with the maximum volume. Students can solve this problem using a graphing calculator or by using their own scatterplots drawn by hand. The use of questioning by the teacher, and the group work of the students are important features of this lesson.

In this lesson students learn to figure out elapsed time by counting, subtracting and regrouping in base 60. This activity is motivated by a Cyberchase episode in which Digit and Hacker compete in a cooking contest.

Students will explore creating moods with music. Students will assimilate this new knowledge through the analysis of a story and the creation of a musical composition that reflects and enhances it. This activity will culminate with the recording of their musical accompaniment and story to produce a book on tape.

In this activity, the students will demonstrate the ability to represent numbers in scientific notation and use geometry to solve problems about planets in the solar system.

Article on the role Fidel Castro played in the relationship between the US and Russia that influenced the Cold War.