From dirt to dinner
This lesson serves as an introductory study of the plant world. The lesson allows students to study seeds, parts of plants, microclimates, and how to grow seeds into vegetable plants for harvest. Parents are encouraged to assist at home.
The Earth rotates through days
The students will be a part of a model showing how the Earth's rotation creates what we see as a sunrise and sunset every twenty-four hours.
Dance of the times: African-American expression of jazz
Explores jazz dance as a social dance form and a uniquely expressive art of African-American culture from the 1920's and 1930's. Students will learn about the complexity of African-American experiences that generated the dance and musical style. The activities develop students' understanding of jazz dance while integrating visual, audio, and kinesthetic learning styles.
Time-light and shadow (pre-visit)
Students examine the interplay of the earth and the sun by studying shadows. Students construct a sun clock and record shadows several times during a school day in order to use the earth and the sun to measure time.
The problem with parallax
Students will increase their understanding of astronomical measurements by using parallax to measure distances on their school campus. They will also gain an appreciation of the difficulties with such measurements by statistically analyzing the class' results.
Is it a duck? Is it a chick?
Students will compare and contrast the characteristics of a chick and a duckling by using a Venn Diagram.
Zoo integrated unit
The unit uses the North Carolina Zoological Park as a teaching tool rather than as a nice place to visit. It can be used by a single teacher or multiple teachers of different subjects, and it is aimed at 7th and 8th graders.
The Wolf in Children's Books: Part 1 of 2
Students will explore the ways wolves are represented in children's stories. They will decide if the wolf is a protagonist or an antagonist in the story. They will decide if the wolf is a protagonist or an antagonist in the story. They will also attempt to determine if these representations are scientifically accurate. The first in a two-part lesson.
Ingredients for Life: Carbon
This video segment adapted from NOVA illustrates why carbon is at the center of life on Earth. It also asks whether carbon-based life might exist on other planets.
Ike and Little Rock
This video segment, adapted from American Experience: "Ike", profiles the president's controversial response to the Little Rock school desegregation crisis in 1957.
Government Philosophy
An examination of the primary philosophies that have dominated government towards the end of the 20th century. To follow up look at the economic philosophical base of government creates different strategies that are followed.
Applied Business Question
An applied business question is presented with the suggested solution encompassing entrepreneurship, management and the implementation of technology and change.
Deaf and Unemployed in Dubuque: The DiMarcos Remember the Great Depression
The New Deal launched a series of federal employment programs, including the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which not only provided jobs but also initiated many important studies of the depression's human toll. One such study, published by the WPA Division of Research in 1939, included transcripts of interviews by WPA workers with Dubuque, Iowa, families. The DiMarcos interview revealed that the disabled faced a double challenge during the depression: finding employment while competing for
"A Less Reliable Form of Birth Control": Miriam Allen deFord Describes Her Introduction to Contracep
Despite major cultural, legal, and medical impediments the use of birth control, including abortion, by American women was widespread at the turn of the century. In their quest to control unwanted pregnancies, American women could be surprisingly resourceful in the methods they used. In this audio excerpt from a 1974 interview with historian Sherna Gluck, Miriam Allen deFord described methods of birth control in vogue in the 1910s, including spermicides, douches, the Dutch pessary (an early diap
"Drug Him Through the Street": Hughsey Childes Describes Turn-of-the-Century Sharecropping
The sharecropping system that emerged in the South in the last three decades of the 19th century afforded southern black families a certain measure of control over their daily lives and labor. But the white landowners were able to use the legal mechanisms of sharecropping to assure control over the largely African-American workforce that toiled on the farms. Here Hughsey Childes, interviewed by historian Charles Hardy in 1984, described what seems like a matter of fact exchange in which the whit
"I Always Had Pads with Me": A G.I. Artist's Sketchpad, 1943-1944
In the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor and the declaration of war, thousands of Americans enlisted in the U.S. armed forces. Among them was twenty-year-old Bronx resident Ben Hurwitz. Like many of the men and women who entered military service, Hurwitz (who changed his name to Brown after the war) kept a record of his experiences. But his "journal" was a sketchpad, and, during his two years in North Africa and Italy, Corporal Hurwitz drew and painted at every opportunity. Hurwitz's pictures a
"Cast Down Your Bucket Where You Are": Booker T. Washington's Atlanta Compromise Speech
In 1895, Booker T. Washington gave what later came to be known as the Atlanta Compromise speech before the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta. His address was one of the most important and influential speeches in American history, guiding African-American resistance to white discrimination and establishing Washington as one of the leading black spokesmen in America. Washington's speech stressed accommodation rather than resistance to the racist order under which Southern Afric
"Organize among Yourselves": Mary Gale on Unemployed Organizing in the Great Depression
The Communist-led Unemployed Councils were the first and the most active of the radical movements that sought to mobilize the jobless during the Great Depression. In this interview, which is taken from the radio series "Grandma Was an Activist," relief worker Mary Gale, who was sympathetic to radicals and the jobless, described how she worked behind the scenes to encourage her clients to organize and demand better treatment. The jobless and the poor had few advocates for them, and radicals like
"Eight Hours a Day and Better Conditions": Andrew Pido Explains His Support for the 1919 Steel Strik
In the dramatic 1919 steel strike, 350,000 workers walked off their jobs and crippled the industry. The U.S. Senate Committee on Education and Labor set out to investigate the strike while it was still in progress. In his testimony before the committee, Slavic steelworker Andrew Pido described the discrimination faced by some immigrant workers and how that discrimination - along with long pay and poor conditions--encouraged them to unionize and strike.
Cloud Observation
This lab activity is part of the Starting Point collection. In this short, serial basic-meteorology lab, students identify different cloud types and estimate cloud cover over a period of several days. This website details learning goals, context for the lab, and teaching notes. A list of teaching materials and links to further resources are also provided.
