ALEX Lesson Plan Resources

ALEX Lesson Plans  
Subject: English Language Arts (3 - 5), or Science (3 - 4)
Title: Animal Adaptions for Grades 3-5
Description: HyperSlides are digital lessons/units that help students learn the material in a way that is engaging and inquiry-based. Students will work together to complete a HyperSlides unit centering around animal adaptations for standards in grades 3-5. Students will work creatively and collaboratively with a variety of Course of Study standards that engage students through using Google Slides and Hyperlinks to assist in the understanding of animal adaptations. This project will take several class periods to complete. After an introduction to the Hyperslides, students are encouraged to work at their own pace, but Hyperslides can be assigned on a daily basis. This Lesson Plan was created in partnership with the Birmingham Zoo.

Subject: English Language Arts (3), or Science (3)
Title: Diverting Disaster With Lightning Rods
Description: Students will use a Venn diagram to compare lightning and static electricity. Then, students will experiment with static electricity and read nonfiction passages about lightning and lightning rods. Finally, they will apply their learning to construct a model of a lightning rod system that protects a house from a lightning-induced fire. This lesson results from the ALEX Resource Gap Project. 

Subject: English Language Arts (3), or Science (3)
Title: Can an Animal's Traits be Influenced by the Environment?
Description: The lesson will begin with the teacher leading a discussion related to animal traits and the environment using a T-chart graphic organizer. The students will have the opportunity to discuss their ideas with a partner, and then the teacher will introduce the essential question of the lesson: “Can an animal's traits be influenced by the environment?” Next, the teacher will show students a video clip and nonfiction text related to the arctic fox, which is an animal that experiences a seasonal change in its fur color, and record information about the fox’s traits and habitat on a T-chart graphic organizer. Then, students will research a different animal to determine how its traits can be influenced by its environment using digital or print sources and take brief notes. Lastly, students will develop an explanatory text in a claim-evidence-reasoning format that includes an illustration to help convey their scientific ideas clearly. This lesson results from the ALEX Resource Gap Project.

Subject: English Language Arts (3), or Science (3)
Title: Evaluating the Design of a Dam
Description: Students will be given the task to build a dam that will stand against water. Students will design and build a scaled model of a dam and test the model for the ability to reduce the impact of a flood. Students will build a scaled model dam and test the dam’s effectiveness in preventing flood waters. Students will evaluate the efficacy of the dam they constructed and built. Students will contemplate what actions can be taken and materials that could be used in order to create a more effective dam in the future. This unit was created as part of the ALEX Interdisciplinary Resource Development Summit.

Subject: English Language Arts (3), or Social Studies (3)
Title: Mapping the Travels of Paul Bunyan Through Alabama, Too!
Description: During this lesson, students will recount a Paul Bunyan tall tale, an entertaining way to identify bodies of water and landforms in the United States. Although Paul Bunyan's Tales did not focus on Alabama, students will create their own narratives after viewing photographs of major mountain ranges, rivers, and lakes throughout Alabama (ACOS 3.2). This lesson will utilize older maps of the United States and Alabama, which are used to remind us that this folk tale was handed down orally until the early 1900s when a newspaper printed several accounts of the tall tale. This lesson was created in partnership with the Alabama Department of Archives and History.

Subject: English Language Arts (3)
Title: Cause and Effect of Dams
Description: Students will discuss the definition of cause and effect, and the teacher will explicitly explain the definition of cause and effect as well as introduce keywords used in determining cause and effect. Students will be introduced to an informational text about dams. The teacher will model determining a cause-and-effect relationship found in the text. Next, the students will practice determining cause and effect in the same text. Students will use a cause-and-effect graphic organizer to identify cause-and-effect relationships within the informational text. This unit was created as part of the ALEX Interdisciplinary Resource Development Summit. 

Subject: English Language Arts (3), or Science (3)
Title: Exploring Nonfiction Texts to Determine How Climate Impacts Different Weather Phenomenon
Description: The lesson will begin with students accessing their prior knowledge of weather and climates by completing a warm-up writing prompt. Students will then move to reading texts on the subjects of tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, and droughts to determine if and how climate affects these weather phenomena. In groups, students will create a half-poster that describes their findings in text and pictures. At the end of the lesson, students will view a graph to extend their learning about tornadoes and hint at a future lesson while also completing an "exit ticket" as a means of summative assessment.  This unit was created as part of the ALEX Interdisciplinary Resource Development Summit.

Subject: English Language Arts (3)
Title: People Things- The Power of Personification in Literature
Description: This lesson teaches personification as a form of figurative language. Students will be introduced to characters and objects in stories, poems, and a movie clip that possess human characteristics. This topic can be used as a stand-alone lesson or with a unit on figurative language.

Subject: English Language Arts (3)
Title: The Other Side of the Fence: Point of View at the Zoo
Description: This third-grade English Language Arts project lesson is focused on point of view using the zoo as a theme. The lesson includes a zoo field trip or virtual zoo field trip, class discussions, a mini scrapbook point-of-view project, and a short presentation to the class. This lesson could be modified for upper or lower grade levels.