ORC Resource Types

Discipline: Science

Professional Commentary: Scientists learn about animals by studying their footprints. Using this lesson, students begin to explore footprints and animal tracks....

Discipline: Science

Professional Commentary: How do your children feel about the dark? With a little light, they can have fun playing with shadows....

Discipline: English Language Arts

Professional Commentary: This resource introduces students to Chinua Achebe's first novel and to strategies of close reading and textual analysis. It can be used alone or in conjunction with the related lesson Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart: Teaching Through the Novel ....

Projects: Standards First

Discipline: English Language Arts

Professional Commentary: Although the Disney version is the most popular in America, hundreds of versions of the Cinderella story exist. This resource provides lessons, in which students define the major differences in the characteristics of the heroine (e.g., meek, assertive) in a variety of Cinderella tales....

Discipline: English Language Arts

Professional Commentary: Although Disney's version of Cinderella is most popular in America, hundreds of versions exist across many cultures. This resource provides lessons, which examine the similarities and differences in literary elements among many versions of this fairy tale....

Discipline: English Language Arts

Professional Commentary: The lessons featured at this website introduce children to folk tales through a literary approach that emphasizes genre categories and definitions. In this unit, students will become familiar with fables and trickster tales from different cultural traditions and will see how stories change when transferred orally between generations and cultures....

Discipline: English Language Arts

Professional Commentary: The elements and echoes of fairy tales are alive in plays, movies, and books for all ages. Reading fairy tales helps students to comprehend the structures of literature and recognize the emotions and feelings found within fairy tales that are common in all cultures....

Discipline: English Language Arts

Professional Commentary: This resource uses a traditional series of poems to teach some of the central terms and concepts of fiction and poetry. Lesson topics include rhyme and figurative language, as well as the analysis of concepts more commonly taught in the context of lessons on the short story: perspective and point of view, character and motivation, and...

Discipline: English Language Arts

Professional Commentary: In this unit, students will become familiar with fables and trickster tales from different cultural traditions and will see how stories change when transferred orally between generations and cultures. This resource provides lessons designed to help students understand and define the elements of fables and trickster stories, recognize narrative and thematic patterns that occur in fables...

Discipline: English Language Arts

Professional Commentary: This unit, which addresses key concepts of persuasion, is designed to teach students how to analyze and interpret media messages, so they can make informed choices based on well-reasoned decisions. A detailed outline guides teachers through the preparation and implementation of the unit, noting classroom instructional time, access to computers, and suggestions for student presentations....

Projects: Standards First