When war breaks out in Mulans land and her father is drafted into the army, Mulan makes a great sacrifice when she disguises herself as a male to take her fathers place.

Diphtheria has broken out in Nome, Alaska. Teams of sled dogs carry medicine 800 miles over snow and ice to prevent an epidemic. Everyone was brave but one dog, Balto, made the difference between failure and success.

There is lots of flexibility with this unit. Although it may seem small, this unit allows teachers and students explore topics in greater depth in a lecture/small group discussion format, online discussions, or student led lessons. This resource covers the role of cash management in personal financial management; types of financial institutions; FDIC/NCUA; and cash management products such as savings and checking accounts, bank services, and electronic banking services.

The strength of this unit is the flexibility it provides for teachers and students. The structure of this unit allows for a variety of instructional strategies to be utilized.

Note: this resource was contributed by Todd Williams and authored by Michelle Gibson Herman.

Comprehensive K-12 lesson plans, activities, and classroom materials to teach students the environmental impact of school lunch. Transform your cafeteria into a classroom and protect the planet for future generations! Includes toolkits with activities and lessons by grade level and classroom/teacher resources for teaching about food waste.

Students will identify an area of improvement for a product and attempt to sell their idea and/or prototype to potential (mock) buyers.

A Prince must find a girl who will love him, in spite of his frightening curse.

This series of 5 high-quality, standards-aligned, inquiry-based activities have been field-tested by first grade students and families of Wequiock Children's Center for Environmental Science during Safer At Home orders. These activities encourage students to use natural areas around their homes and in their neigbhorhoods as they improve their science observation skils. The materials used are ones generally available at home and the activites require little preparation on the part of caregivers.Created as a part of a WISELearn OER Innovation project, Connect, Explore, and Engage: Using the Environment as the Context for Science Learning was a collaboration of the Wequiock Children's Center for Environmental Science and the Wisconsin Green Schools Network. One of the goals of the project was to create standards-aligned lessons that utilize the outdoor spaces of the school (as well as those of the students' homes).  Each section of this resource is an individual activity. While each activity builds on the previous ones, it is possible to use them individually.The observation protocol "I Notice, I Wonder, It Reminds Me Of, I Think Maybe" has been adapted from that of the BEETLES Project.The title image was used with permission and is courtesy of Joe Riederer.

This unit introduces students to the purpose and practice of media literacy. It includes pre- and post-visit activities designed to bracket the Believe It or Not? ED Class ( The activities also can be done independent of a visit to the Newseum.) Students will come to understand why not all information is trustworthy and how to differentiate the good from the bad. They practice using a set of tools – the consumer’s questions – to deconstruct and evaluate information sources.

The goal of this unit is for students to gain an awareness of several potential ways to mitigate climate change. Many climate solutions exist, are in use, and can be expanded in scale. Students will examine solutions from Bending the Curve, explore carbon sequestration by trees, coastal wetland restoration, and food waste reduction in more detail. They will propose three (3) realistic solutions that could happen at an individual, school, or community scale that would assist in mitigating climate change.

The resources and project outline are the collaborative efforts of the Chain Exploration Center Grades 5 & 6 teachers and a FIELD Edventures educator. The goals of the project were for students to take civic action on environmental issues of local importance. Additionally, the teachers wanted students to become familiar with the four habitat areas, and observable species present in each area.  It was decided that conducting a bioblitz across 4 days–one in each area–would provide students with data that would be the basis for individual and small group investigative questions, issue definition and investigation, and a proposal for conservation, protection, and/or restoration of natural resources, habitats, or species of Wisconsin. Students then presented their proposals to their state senator in a visit to the Wisconsin State Capitol.

My Career-Connected Learning project goal was to improve my curriculum for the Biotechnology Career Seminar credit portion of my dual-credit Biotechnology Course.  For the last five years, I have been using resources provided by Madison College to teach the Career Seminar portion of the course; however, I have found that their resources are best suited for current technical college students, not necessarily for students at the high school level.  I have modified and updated the Biotechnology Career Seminar curriculum to make it more applicable to high school students.  I focused on several curriculum components including a resume and cover letter writing project.  Students will use a resource called Xello for resume writing.  They will receive written feedback on their resumes and cover letters from their peers, myself, and an industry professional.  Additionally, throughout the semester, I will invite at least four guest speakers with careers in biotechnology to talk to students about their companies, job positions, and career paths.Here is a link to a 2-minute video overview of the project.

The three teachers of the third and fourth grade team joined forces to create these standards-aligned resources. We discussed a middle-school curriculum unit, Birds & Flight, that one of us had written about fifteen years ago regarding using math to study and understand birds in different ways. As a team, we translated some of those concepts into middle-elementary activities.We discussed that the lessons could be taught in any order, but recommend using the Actual Size lesson as a fun capstone project.

BizInnovator is the entrepreneurship curriculum toolkit that enables educators to teach the "entrepreneurial mindset" by encouraging creativity, innovation, critical thinking, and problem-solving - and also equipping students with the skills necessary to succeed and excel.

Info/Notes from the BizInnovator session at the 2019 MBA Conclave:
$99 for entire year
If you take the instructor training $299, your students can get credit and can transfer the credit
50 question exam for students
Take test, if pass, students have option to purchase the $150 credit (can do this a couple of years after as well)
relevant entrepreneurial projects
Thinking like an entrepreneur
Problem solving real situations
5 weeks, 2 classes per week for teachers
Curric Idea: You can set up your own class competition during the second half of the year
National Innovator Competition offered in the fall and spring
Online presentations
319-335-2204: Dawn
jacobson-institute@uiowa.edu
8 units: Semester course
Download unit plan
Pick and choose what you want students to do
Shows presentation materials needed
Interview an entrepreneur
YouTube vids

This lesson provides teachers with support for using text-dependent questions to help students derive big ideas and key understandings while developing vocabulary from the text Blue Willow. Janey's father is an immigrant worker and this forces Janey and her family to move around every few months, but Janey finds a friend named Lupe and a place she would like to call home permanently. Janey has to go to Camp Miller School for immigrant children like herself and she finds once again she must learn whether the new teacher will be a friend or just another teacher like the ones before her.

This video webinar (about integrating board game collections in libraries) was offered by David McHugh (a member of the Teaching Faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison iSchool; https://ischool.wisc.edu/staff/mchugh-david/) on Thursday, January 24th, 2024, as a part of the Wild Wisconsin Winter Web Conference (https://www.wildwiscwinterweb.com/) 2024.

Presentation Description: "Board games have never been so popular, with immense social, educational, and creative opportunities for libraries. Join us to learn the key practical considerations for choosing games and organizing game events. Get up to speed on the vast range of hands-on games, from cooperative problem-solvers to Dungeons & Dragons to Pokémon card tournaments. Let the games begin!"

Students examine an image produced by a cabinet x-ray system to determine if it is a quality bone mineral density image. They write in their journals about what they need to know to be able to make this judgment. Students learn about what bone mineral density is, how a BMD image can be obtained, and how it is related to the x-ray field. Students examine the process used to obtain a BMD image and how this process is related to mathematics, primarily through logarithmic functions. They study the relationship between logarithms and exponents, the properties of logarithms, common and natural logarithms, solving exponential equations and Beer's law.

A family moves into an unpopulated area. With the ingenuity of one young girl, a town is established and grows. The idea of supply and demand is evident in this story. The businesses in town grow to include a tanner, a cooper, a miller, a blacksmith and a laundry.

This lesson provides teachers with support for using text-dependent questions to help students derive big ideas and key understandings while developing vocabulary from the biographical text, Boss of the Plains. This biography relates the life of John Batterson Stetson as a hatting apprentice until he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and decided to explore the American West. During his time with the people of the West, he invents a better hat, nicknamed "Boss of the Plains," - the first real cowboy hat.

The Boston School Forest is a field trip destination for 6,000 students each year providing high quality outdoor environmental education programs that expand and authenticate classroom learning. Science education in our district is transitioning to provide greater opportunity for inquiry, and teachers are now searching for resources that can be used in either face-to-face or e-learning formats. The Backyard Habitat Series focuses on connecting kids to an outdoor place through use of sensory observation, exploring the natural features and animals, and engaging in the improvement of habitat for neighborhood wildlife species. Classroom teachers, preservice teachers, and families will discover straightforward instructions, few materials or background knowledge required, and a format that is easily adaptable to the e-learning environment.

The lessons in this issue of Smithsonian in Your Classroom introduce the work of botanists and botanical illustrators, specifically their race to make records of endangered plant species around the world. “Very little of the world’s flora has been fully studied,” says one Smithsonian botanist, “and time is running out.” In the first lesson, students gets to know six endangered plants. They examine illustrations, photographs, and dried specimens of the plants as they consider this question: If a scientist can take a picture of a plant, are there advantages in having an illustration? They go on to consider some of the big questions that botanists themselves must ask: Which of these species are most in need of conservation efforts? Are any of these plants more worth saving than others?In the second lesson, the students try their own hands at botanical illustration, following the methods of a Smithsonian staff illustrator. All that is required for the lesson are pencils, markers, tracing paper, and access to a photocopier.