In this lesson plan that takes one class period to complete, high school students explore how political systems influence economic activity by comparing 1991 and 2012 agricultural patterns around the Serbian capital of Belgrade. This lesson provides an insight into the model of transformation of agriculture in Serbia, but a comparison of the…

In this article, Helen Wilson, Bridget Holligan, and Pam Hanley share outcomes from the "Thinking, Doing, Talking Science" (TDTS) project, which encourages children's learning and engagement with science through simple and effective activities. The article contains the following prompts used to facilitate discussion during "The…

This paper presents a checklist that scaffolds teachers' professional decision-making with regard to differentiated instruction. It discusses the way the concept of differentiated instruction may be applied in an evidence-informed way by presenting a checklist for high-quality differentiated instruction (DI). We tried to tackle the question of how…

Alison Stephen, who has wrestled for many years with the challenges of teaching emotional and controversial history within a multiethnic school setting, relished the opportunity to link her school's teaching of the Holocaust with a comparative study of other genocides. As she reports, her aim was to not create a hierarchy of suffering or…

Many instructors in subjects such as economics are frequently concerned with how to teach technical material to undergraduate students with limited mathematical backgrounds. One method that has proven successful for the authors is to connect theoretically sophisticated material with actual data. This enables students to see how the theory relates…

This study compared the efficacy of 3 approaches to professional development in middle school Earth science organized around the principles of Understanding by Design (Wiggins & McTighe, 1998) in a sample of 53 teachers from a large urban district. Teachers were randomly assigned to a control group or to 1 of 3 conditions that varied with…

Reading with an awareness of intertextuality helps students respond in a dynamic manner to multicultural literature. Students explore themes of liberation and racism as they examine the connections, as well as the disjunctions, between two award-winning children's books. During the four 45-minute lessons, grade 3-5 students will: read and discuss…

The materials in this unit include a teacher manual and student book for an 18-day English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) unit in measurement and comparisons. The teacher manual contains a list of instructional objectives for the unit, daily lesson plans, vocabulary chart, metric conversion table, a series of class activities, signs for labeling…

This lesson seeks to sensitize students to the similarities and difference between cultures by comparing the Shakespearean and the Bunraki/Kabuki dramas of Japan. In the lesson, the focus of this comparison is the complex nature of revenge explored in "The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark" and "Chusingura," or "The…

Presents a learning activity in which students compare their state constitution's bill of rights with the federal Bill of Rights. Provides a chart for identifying comparisons of enumerated rights. Includes background information and explains objectives and procedures. (CH)

Activities for teaching about law in social studies classrooms are presented. Six generalizations have been identified to enable students to conceptualize law and justice and consider the ways in which law and order have been interpreted by different societies at different times in history: (1) society is organized rather than formless, (2) social…

This guide is intended for use in teaching a course in human and product transportation systems. The purpose of the course is twofold. First, students are introduced to the design process and the steps used to analyze various solutions to basic problems. Second, the course focuses on the application of the design and evaluation process to review a…

Using selected passages from Japanese and U.S. social studies textbooks, this booklet presents contrasting views and interpretations of historical events or circumstances. The textbooks, review, and supplementary materials collected or developed in conjunction with the Japan/U.S. Textbook Study Project provides much of the basic material for the…

Student activity pages, teacher background information, and lesson ideas for teaching about the law in social studies classrooms are provided in this supplementary packet. An introductory section provides a rationale for the unit, a guide to bringing law-related resource persons into the classroom, a teacher checklist for helping resource persons…

This global approach to teaching high school students about international law uses existing curriculum materials from a variety of social studies disciplines to present five major perspectives. Perspective I, "Global Links," focuses on the meaning of citizenship in a global age and the interconnectedness between individuals and the…