In honor of African-American History Month, Gettysburg University in Pennsylvania is sponsoring a production of flow theater's iconic choreopoem, "Our Young Black Men Are Dying and Nobody Seems to Care," written by my late brother in 1983. First performed at the Castillo Theatre in New York''s Theatre District in 1990, this series of vignettes addressing the violent deaths of black youth has been staged across the nation in colleges and universities, as well as other venues. I am offering this series of five units based on the themes presented in OYBMADANSTC free of charge to high school and college/university teachers. These materials are also suitable for advanced middle school students. The subjects addressed include history, civics, English and composition, and social problems. One of the units includes research projects specifically for students interested in service careers. These materials will be offered free of charge through March 2016. (c) 2016, Geneva J. Chapman. All rights reserved.

In honor of African-American History Month, Gettysburg University in Pennsylvania is sponsoring a production of flow theater's iconic choreopoem, "Our Young Black Men Are Dying and Nobody Seems to Care," written by my late brother in 1983. First performed at the Castillo Theatre in New York''s Theatre District in 1990, this series of vignettes addressing the violent deaths of black youth has been staged across the nation in colleges and universities, as well as other venues. I am offering this series of five units based on the themes presented in OYBMADANSTC free of charge to high school and college/university teachers. These materials are also suitable for advanced middle school students. The subjects addressed include history, civics, English and composition, and social problems. One of the units includes research projects specifically for students interested in service careers. These materials will be offered free of charge through March 2016. (c) 2016, Geneva J. Chapman. All rights reserved.

In honor of African-American History Month, Gettysburg University in Pennsylvania is sponsoring a production of flow theater's iconic choreopoem, "Our Young Black Men Are Dying and Nobody Seems to Care," written by my late brother in 1983. First performed at the Castillo Theatre in New York''s Theatre District in 1990, this series of vignettes addressing the violent deaths of black youth has been staged across the nation in colleges and universities, as well as other venues. I am offering this series of five units based on the themes presented in OYBMADANSTC free of charge to high school and college/university teachers. These materials are also suitable for advanced middle school students. The subjects addressed include history, civics, English and composition, and social problems. One of the units includes research projects specifically for students interested in service careers. These materials will be offered free of charge through March 2016. (c) 2016, Geneva J. Chapman. All rights reserved.

In honor of African-American History Month, Gettysburg University in Pennsylvania is sponsoring a production of flow theater's iconic choreopoem, "Our Young Black Men Are Dying and Nobody Seems to Care," written by my late brother in 1983. First performed at the Castillo Theatre in New York''s Theatre District in 1990, this series of vignettes addressing the violent deaths of black youth has been staged across the nation in colleges and universities, as well as other venues. I am offering this series of five units based on the themes presented in OYBMADANSTC free of charge to high school and college/university teachers. These materials are also suitable for advanced middle school students. The subjects addressed include history, civics, English and composition, and social problems. One of the units includes research projects specifically for students interested in service careers. These materials will be offered free of charge through March 2016. (c) 2016, Geneva J. Chapman. All rights reserved.

In honor of African-American History Month, Gettysburg University in Pennsylvania is sponsoring a production of flow theater's iconic choreopoem, "Our Young Black Men Are Dying and Nobody Seems to Care," written by my late brother in 1983. First performed at the Castillo Theatre in New York''s Theatre District in 1990, this series of vignettes addressing the violent deaths of black youth has been staged across the nation in colleges and universities, as well as other venues. I am offering this series of five units based on the themes presented in OYBMADANSTC free of charge to high school and college/university teachers. These materials are also suitable for advanced middle school students. The subjects addressed include history, civics, English and composition, and social problems. One of the units includes research projects specifically for students interested in service careers. These materials will be offered free of charge through March 2016. (c) 2016, Geneva J. Chapman. All rights reserved.

Quizlet provides practice for learning or practicing skills. This Quizlet written for middle school students provides both learning and practice in defining literary terms and testing understanding of those terms in alignment with CCSS. Combined with activities using familiar stories as examples, this lesson provides numerous technology-based learning assessment that scaffolds learning and understanding literary terms through a variety of methods. Collaborative learning and Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) also make learning cooperative and engages students in uses of a variety of instructional strategies that are in engaging and theoretically proven.

This lesson on black holes is aligned with ELA standards in regards to reading, researching, and writing about science. Independent learners will research information about black holes and discuss their findings with peers. There are online tests, Kahoot and Socrative, a student-produced podcast, and a number of videos and online reading assignments that offer opportunities to engage independent learners in using technology throughout the leason. While this is an ELA lesson, students with scientific minds and/or interests will be motivated to investigate the scientific information provided in the lesson. This lesson may be completed in a day by highly intelligent students if a flipped classroom component is included. However, average students may need up to a week to complete all tasks. Discussion groups should be formed and guided by students with teacher support. Parts of the lesson can be used to teach an entire class with independent learners acting as group leaders and mentors to other students. Collaborative learning and Vygotsky's. Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) are the learning teaching upon which strategies in this lesson - cooperative learning, nonlinguistic representations, and technology-based learning.

This inquiry-based STEM unit aligned with standards takes students of all abilities into natural and/or virtual settings to observe flight. Watching butterflies, an albatross, and a dragonfly, students learn the science of flight and apply it to engineering designs for paper airplanes. Formative assessment is used to assess prior knowledge and what students learn from experiential learning and inquiry. After completing the unit, typical and gifted students are challenged to design a paper airplane unlike any previously designed. Gifted students are also encouraged to investigate how observing flight in nature is being used to create robotics and drones

The second half of this standards-based unit involves reading classic novels, "BookCircles" for discussion and presentation, book-to-movie critiques and personalized "locker book spine" displays. Using a variety of tech tools students will learn about figurative language and connotations, and story structure, among other literary devices using familiar stories and fables. Short videos and group discussion provide a less formidable introducion to these concepts and give eighth grade students a foundation on which to build their interest in classical literature.

Wikipedia, while not suited for scholarly research, is considered appropriate for basic basic informational research by many educators. This online site is easily accessed by students and its interactive component that allows users to edit content provides students with possibly their first opportunities to contribute to a widely used source in a more educative and intellectual manner than posting on social media. This lesson's standards-based goal is to engage eighth grade students in determining research reliability based information published and sources used by Wikipedia. Another major part of the lesson is to develop a question that drives the research with a strong emphasis on using digital sources and tools. When students complete this lesson, which introduces research with a focus on credibility of sources, they will be prepared to start learning how to conduct more in-depth research. A follow-up project also encourages students with exceptional writing skills to become Wikipedia editors, either contributing research to the site or looking for and correcting inaccuracies.

Students learn how literature and history coincide as writers describe and immortalize historical events. The goal of this lesson is for students to understand how media like poetry and drama evoke emotional responses of historical figures, events, and their effect of those event.

The goal of this lesson plan for Christian Schools is for students at all grade levels, 1-12, understand how Biblical figures inspire creation of fictional characters and how these archetypes are depicted in literature. Younger children learn the similarities and differences in the stories of Jesus and Superman. Then students in upper elementary grades learn to identify literary techniques and allusions to characters in a book or movie. Students in middle and high school use these resources to identify archetypes in books and movies about heroic characters.

After watching dozens of adults totally miss the English contribution to this simple little game, I thought this would be a great way to teach students how to recognize the difference between what words describe and what numbers calculate. Toward that end, I created an exercise to show how “English vs Mathematics” solves the puzzle within this game. I’ve also listed activities that can be used at each grade level from PreSchool to grade eight to help students make the distinction between language usage and mathematical language using manipulatables in the lower grades, as well as more intellectual ideas about the differences in language and mathematics which they all unknowingly use every day (another resource to come).

Using classic fables and fairy tales to analyze themes that are easily identified, this two-part lesson prepares 8th grade Language Arts Students to read and analyze themes in classic children's literature.

Goal: Start the new school year establishing a relationship with each students' parents. Send a short text or email introducing your students' family to the teacher and permission to send or drop by with a short list of things students can do to get ready to start the school year, each of which relates to the nine activities planned for the first week of school. Objectives: 1. Students and parental figuers will get acquainted with teacher, expectations for students and PF's participation in class activities. 2. Students and PF's will learn things about each other and establish a rapport. 3. Students will be asked to complete specific simple tasks and to be sure to bring very specific items to them the first day of school. 4. Students and parents will be introduced to and experience flipped classroom activities right from the start of school, using fun activities for children and adults. 5. Students will engage in several mysterious activities that will have them anticipating the first day eagerly. 6. Parents will be provided with contact information and told they will be contacted by text or email regarding their children's progress and/or any issues that may arise. 7. Students will also have an opportunity to communicate with teacher before the first day of school.

Students in eighth grade are facing the end of middle or junior high school and in the not-so-distant future the start of high school. Between then and now they have a great deal of academics to learn, state tests to pass, and the pressures of being adolescents. So why not start the year celebrating their final year in middle or junior high school in classic Hollywood fashion? This first week of 8th grade ELA unit does just that! Show your students just how special they are while assessing basic language and writing skills. Roll out the red carpet, notify the paparazzi, and let your students have a great time watching movie trailers, writing reviews, looking back at summer, and getting the star treatment; while introducing collaborative learning and project-based activities. Start the school year with high expectations and watch your students soar.

This CCSS-based 8th grade lesson, which can be done in two lessons plus flipped classroom practice, helps to reinforce and remediate instruction in punctuation and capitalization with fun technology-based group and pair activities.

This science project for students interested in particle physics, specifically the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN Laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, can be investigated by one student or a group of independent learners and/or students who need support from expert peers. Although it is an ELA lesson that includes constructing an argument within a formal letter, this is primarily a science project using technology-based learning tools. Teachers' roles are as facilitators and resources of information, but mainly to provide assistance with writing the letters, the major artifact of this project. Letters should present and support an argument, in alignment with CCSS. They should also follow the protocols for well-written formal letters.

This Language Arts lesson provides students to 'compare and contrast' individual experiences at a Chili's Restaurant using various parts of speech, Students would then 'compare and contast" the experience two police officers had at a Chili's Restaurant in Kansas City, Kansas, to the experience a disabled vet had at a Chili's Restaurant in Dallas, Texas. Emphasize that the negative experience received more media coverage than the positive one. A good follow up to this Language Arts lesson might be to go to lunch at a nearby Chili's Restaurant with parents and see how many parts of speech could be used to describe the ambience, food, and service.

Bullying is a serious problems in schools requiring changes in school climate. This unit provides a proactive approach that helps students connect with and identify their roles in bullying incidents as the one bullied, the one bullying, joiners, or friends of the victim who either speak up or say nothing. Statistics are created by a survey identifying these characteristics anonymously to quantify students' actions in bullying incidents, which could expand to action research comparing students studying the unit with another class that participates in the introductory survey. A video telling the story of a middle-school student's life as a victim of bullying at school provides students in the treatment class with a tragic example of bullying and allows them to look at the sequence of events that led to the bullied child committing suicide to think about where things could have changed if someone had intervened. The unit ends with students agreeing to respect and value others and changing the climate in their classroom. This unit could also be taught at all grade levels in a school district with adjustments made for lower grades and students with special needs to foster change in an entire community's school climate.