November 30th, 2022
Middle School Resource
Activity:
Using pattern blocks, students can discover the relationship between multiplication and division of common fractions by noting that 1/3 x 1/2 is equivalent to 1/3 ÷ 2. Using the commutative property, 1/3 x 1/2 = 1/2 x 1/3 or 1/2 of 1/3. If a yellow hexagon is 1, then the blue rhombus is 1/3 and 1/2 of 1/3 is the green triangle. The green triangle is 1/6 of the whole unit (yellow hexagon).
Related NY State Academic Standards: 4.NF.4, 4.NF.4.b, 4.NF.4.c, and more!
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November 23rd, 2022
Middle School Resource
Objective:
Students will construct a system, using basic mathematical computations that will notify students of a snow day.
Activity:
- Teacher introduces the task of designing a system for informing all of the students in class of a snow day in a timely manner.
- Students are divided into groups to work.
- Each group brainstorms ideas and methods to accomplish the task.
- Students design various phone trees (diagrams) or other means, using mathematical computations to complete the task in the fewest possible steps.
- Groups create displays of their plans and present them to the class.
- Class discusses the merits of each of the plans.
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November 16th, 2022
Middle School Resource
This three-minute video, from History.com’s archives, focuses on how Thanksgiving became an official national holiday and how some of the Thanksgiving traditions that we know today came to be.
Related NY State Academic Standards: SS.3.MOV.5.b.2, SS.SSP.3.3.3, SS.SSP.4.2.1, and more!
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November 9th, 2022
Middle School Resource
Objectives:
- Students will gain an awareness of various employment opportunities at a hospital.
- Students will become aware of the importance of veterans.
Activity:
- Students write letters to local veterans’ medical facilities, inviting them to send representatives to their class.
- Teacher works with hospital staff to ensure that representatives from various departments visit the class.
- Medical center representatives provide information on employment opportunities and educational requirements.
- Students write to patients at the veterans’ hospital to invite them to speak to the class.
- Invited veterans give oral presentations on military experiences and government programs for veterans.
- Hold a social following the assembly.
- Students conduct additional research on services or lack of services for veterans.
- Students write thank-you notes to visitors.
- Students write letters about veterans’ concerns to local, state, and national political leaders.
Related NY State Academic Standards: W.7.4, W.7.7, SL.7.1, and more!
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November 2nd, 2022
Middle School Resource
Artists are often particularly keen observers and precise recorders of the physical conditions of the natural world. As a result, paintings can be good resources for learning about ecology. Teachers can use these lessons to examine with students the interrelationship of geography, natural resources, and climate and their effects on daily life. These lessons also address the roles students can take in caring for the environment.
Related NY State Academic Standards: ARTS.VA.I.1.1.A, ARTS.VA.I.1.1.B, ARTS.VA.I.1.1.C, and more!
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October 26th, 2022
Middle School Resource
In this activity, students will identify the major physical features of New York State in the teaching language (TL).
Related NY State Academic Standards: LOTE.ML.1.1.A.A, LOTE.ML.2.1.A.A, LOTE.AS.1.1.A.C, and more!
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October 19th, 2022
Middle School Resource
In this activity, write an equation for the number of gallons of milk for any given number of students in the following situation:
Two out of every three students who eat in the cafeteria drink a half-pint of white milk. If 450 students eat in the cafeteria, how many gallons of milk are consumed?
Related NY State Academic Standards: 6.NS.2, MST3.5.PS.14, MST3.5.CN.6, and more!
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October 12th, 2022
Middle School Resource
Prime Factor Tree is an interactive whiteboard resource to use for demonstration or questioning purposes with a class. Select a number from 2 to 99. Clicking “Go” will generate a prime factor tree for that number. The numbers will be obscured by leaves which can be removed by clicking on the leaf. This allows discussion on what the numbers will be before they are revealed.
Once all of the leaves are removed the prime factors can be pointed out.
Related NY State Academic Standards: 3.NBT.3, 4.OA.4, 5.NBT.5, and more!
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October 5th, 2022
Middle School Resource
In this activity, students will explore how westward expansion increased the number of jobs available in the nineteenth century, including being a flatboatman through a painting by George Caleb Bingham. Working in pairs, students will write a letter to their partner from the standpoint of a person moving westward. Then they will construct a poem in the guise of Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing” about a modern-day job.
Related NY State Academic Standards: W.5.3, W.5.3.a, W.5.3.b, and more!
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September 28th, 2022
Middle School Resource
In a series of lessons, this unit explores a variety of literary concepts related to poetry using the texts “Leaf by Leaf: Autumn Poems” and “A Light in the Attic.”
Related NY State Academic Standards: RL.5.2, RL.5.4, RL.5.10, and more!
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