This lesson and resource engages students in a metacognition exercise about critical thinking and also practice research and informational writing skills using a collection of critical thinking quotes.

The past is often neatly partitioned in time periods and eras with generalized names meant to characterize what life was like during that time. In this multi-day lesson, students question the validity of using ?Dark Ages? to describe Europe from the fall of the Roman Empire to the Renaissance. In the process, students examine a variety of primary and secondary sources highlighting different social, political, economic, cultural, and environmental facets of life in Europe during this period.

Students will play the role of White House advisers, exploring policy options and recommending the best strategy for preventing war in East Asia.

In this lesson, students research and discuss real-world chemical issues. Students will either participate in a debate or write and essay in which they compare and contrast several points of view.

In this lesson, students will work collaboratively to create a presentation featuring an electrostatics demonstration. The demonstration should deal with some aspect of the three basic principles of electrostatics. Each group will also submit a written descripton of their demonstration.

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.

This lesson draws a connection between the threat of smallpox during the Revolutionary War and the influenza pandemic during World War I. In this lesson, students will utilize educational technology to consult primary, secondary, and tertiary sources in the completion of a webquest. Writing across the curriculum is a large focus of this lesson.

Students design and conduct research to discover firsthand what type of fish is being sold in their community, where this fish comes from, and whether that fish is an overfished species. This lesson gives students a chance to do their own market research and discover first-hand what type of fish is being sold to the public. It also provides an introduction to fish as an important food source and as an industry controlled partly by supply and demand. The results that emerge from this lesson will likely lead your students to question the role of public education in seafood choices for sustainable fisheries.

Students explore the qualities that make a classic writer"™s work special and then compose newspaper articles celebrating the works of different authors.

By closely reading historical documents and attempting to interpret them, students consider how Arthur Miller interpreted the facts of the Salem witch trials and how he successfully dramatized them in his play, "The Crucible." As they explore historical materials, such as the biographies of key players (the accused and the accusers) and transcripts of the Salem Witch trials themselves, students will be guided by aesthetic and dramatic concerns: In what ways do historical events lend themselves (or not) to dramatization? What makes a particular dramatization of history effective and memorable?

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. 

Students will explore the first five settlements during the colonization of North America. In groups, students will research an assigned settlement then prepare a skit to teach classmates important information about that settlement. Students will culminate the lesson by creating either a letter to the King/Queen requesting a colony charter or a poster for recruiting settlers to their existing colony.

Students will learn how the field of war correspondence has evolved. Through reading chapters of Edith Warton's book, "Fighting France From Dunkerque to Belfort," students will cite examples of wartime reporting. FInally, students will create and present their own correspondence report.

In this lesson, students will work on evaluating sources and honing inquiry in order to conduct effective and efficient research.

Students will reserach various colleges of their choosing in order to best prepare for post-secondary endeavors. The research will be conducted using a handout with specific questions for students to answer about each college. Students will present findings in a Microsoft Publisher brochure.

Prezi video is a great resource for students to use to create original content. The planning and execution of content represents levels 3 and 4 of Webb's Depth of Knowledge (DOK).

This series of lessons focuses on the impacts - both positive and negative - that humans have on the oceans. In Lesson Plan 25, "Seals, Corals and Dollars...," students will study the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands ecosystem and research the environmental issues surrounding monk seals and precious corals of the region and the management of these species. In Lesson Plan 26, "Polar Bear Panic!" students will graphically analyze data on sea ice cover in the Arctic Ocean and discuss possible causes and effects of the trends in the data.

This follow-up assignment to the reading of Chaucer's General Prologue gives students the opportunity to work in a collaborative setting with technology while explicating text and researching historical infromation. Aditionally students will work as a team to create group wikis.

August Wilson's play "The Piano Lesson" readily invites students to ask a number of questions--big and small--about the characters, setting, conflict, and symbols in the work. After reading the first act students learn how to create effective discussion questions and then put them to use in student-led seminars after act one and again at the end of the play.

In this lesson, students will learn about beach processes and complex beach systems. By participating in a role-playing activity, students will also learn that human efforts to stabilize an unstable environment can lead to complex problems. Students will conduct research to prepare materials for their part of the role-playing activity.