Character Motivation - Sapelo Island Culture

Students write a poem (using simile and flashback) about the culture of Sapelo Island. They read their poems for an audience.

City Horses Part II

In this video segment from Wild TV, riders discuss the benefits of coming to the Cedar Lane Stables in New York City.

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Collecting and Organizing Facts From Multiple Sources - Flowering Plants

Students take notes on two videos about flowering plants and organize the information to write a cohesive essay about the topic.

Collective Improvisation

In this video segment from Jazz at Lincoln Center, jazz musicians perform an example of collective improvisation.

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The Columbian Exchange

In this lesson designed to enhance literacy skills, students explore the movement of plants, animals, and diseases that characterized the Columbian Exchange and learn how it changed the world.

Community Garden

Orville Edwards describes how community gardens help improve the quality of life in the city in this video segment from WILD TV.

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A Community of People Now

In this video segment from the documentary American Masters: Bill T. Jones: A Good Man, Bill T. Jones struggles to find meaning and relevancy for the life of Abraham Lincoln in today’s social and political landscape.

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Compare and Contrast Information from Multiple Sources - Wolong's Pandas

Students compare and contrast information from three sources to determine the reasons that contributed to panda population decline.  They draw conclusions from these sources by writing their own paragraphs.

Comparing and Contrasting - Explorers of Yesterday and Today

Students write essays that compare and contrast two explorers of Yellowstone National Park, Tom Murphy, a modern day explorer and photographer and John Colter, an explorer who traveled across the same area almost 200 years ago.

Comparing and Contrasting Information and Forming an Opinion - Santiago and Morris

Students use a T-Chart to take notes and then write a compare/contrast paragraph about a therapy dog.

Condense, Combine or Categorize New Information - Your Brain and Moral Decision-Making

Students watch a video showing an experiment on how the brain responds when making moral decisions. They then synthesize information to create a summary paragraph that describes the experiment and the conclusions presented.

Conflict Over Western Lands

In this lesson designed to enhance literacy skills, students explore how the differing worldviews of white settlers and Native Americans led to conflicts over land when Americans surged westward in the 1860s.

Connections Between Texts - Maya Lin and Jane Jacobs

Students write and perform a Readers’ Theater script in which two characters, Maya Lin and Jane Jacobs, talk to each other about their ideas about architecture and life.

Connections to Personal Experiences - Bees? Yikes!

Students make connections between a video about bees and their own personal experiences through a poem written for two voices.

Continental Drift: What's the Big Idea?

In this lesson designed to enhance literacy skills, students learn how the theory that explains the position of Earth's continents was established and later modified, and gain important insights into how science and the scientific community operate.

Creating a Hypothesis - The Intelligent Robot

Students watch a video segment that discusses developing intelligent robots, and then write paragraphs that provide detailed hypotheses of results that could come from this endeavor.

Creating Literary Texts - Finding Homes for Pets

Students write and illustrate a persuasive book to convince readers to adopt a pet.

The Cuban Crab Migration

In this video segment from Nature, crabs face numerous obstacles in their migration from their forest home to the Caribbean Sea.

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Debate Begins

A third grade class in Wuhan province, China holds debates for the election of class monitor in this segment from Independent Lens. 

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Describing Characters - Cloud Grows

Students learn about characterization by studying and taking notes on the growth of a white stallion.