In this lesson, students will gain knowledge about various birthday traditions from other countries around the world. The students will help the teacher make a chart of the most liked birthday traditions from the countries shared in the story.The students will also give similarities and differences they notice about birthday traditions around the world. This lesson was developed by LaToya Dawson as part of their completion of the North Carolina Global Educator Digital Badge program. This lesson plan has been vetted at the local and state level for standards alignment, Global Education focus, and content accuracy.

Students will understand that the resources humans need to survive and enjoy life generate waste. Students will also understand how humans dispose waste.Examples include: using landfills, dumps, dumpsters, burning, composting and recycling. Also, students begin to understand the some types of waste such as organic, recyclable and non-recyclable. This lesson was developed by Claudia Gonzalez Abi Saab as part of their completion of the North Carolina Global Educator Digital Badge program. This lesson plan has been vetted at the local and state level for standards alignment, Global Education focus, and content accuracy.            

This lesson will help students investigate the role a map plays in everyday lives at home, at school, around town or country and in the world. The students will explore how to use a map from a simple map of a room to a more complex map, such as a world map. This lesson will help students to better understand where the different countries they are exploring throughout this unit are on the world map in comparison to the United States. This lesson was developed by Leslie Montgomery as part of their completion of the North Carolina Global Educator Digital Badge program. This lesson plan has been vetted at the local and state level for standards alignment, Global Education focus, and content accuracy.

After reading about polar bears and other arctic animals,  students will use Keva planks to build a den that the polar bear can stand up in.

Students will explore the idea that they are interconnected to many larger communities (classroom, school, family, neighborhood, city, world, etc.) They will also explore the need for these communities to have systems in place where each person plays a role in making the systems function. We will specifically explore the need for, and create, systems that allow us to work, learn and play together in our kindergarten classroom. The creation of rules, jobs, and routines will be the core of this unit. Documenting and sharing these systems will be the product.

In this lesson, students will work on identifying physical features of landforms by using Logical Reasoning.  The higher level students will also think critically by creating their own Logic problems to identify landforms.  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.

After learning how people use positional words to describe their surroundings, the students will use the positional words to solve analogies to increase critical thinking skills. 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.

After learning how people use positional words to describe their surroundings, the students will use the positional words to solve logic problems to increase critical thinking skills. 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.

In third grade you learned about the geography of the state of Michigan. You may have studied the geography of Michigan by learning about what makes Michigan special. This year, in studying the geography of the United States, you will explore a similar question. It is centered around what makes the country in which we live special.

In this lesson, students listen to a story, then either draw a picture or write a new story about the benefits of trees and differing points of views about trees. Students then create a rhyme or song about how the trees make them feel. Finally, students consider how trees in rural forests are beneficial by comparing illustrations representing a tree in an urban forest and a tree in a rural forest.