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Learning Activities

This section of the Design Lab houses more than 200 activities strategically selected to support young people in learning key skills. Most of the activities can be used in classrooms across multiple content areas (including math!). The Learning Strategy Buttons and Search Filters will provide you with many different ways to explore the collection, allowing you to quickly identify activities for specific instructional plans.

Lesson Plan Stages

Common Core Instructional Shifts

Content Areas

Learning Strands

Skills

Showing 12 of 218 results:

Gallery Walk

  • Investigation
  • Reflection
  • Synthesis
In this activity student work is posted and the students walk around and look at their classmates’ work. The purpose of this activity can vary depending on the assignment. In its simplest form a gallery walk...

Generative Summarizing

  • Investigation
  • Synthesis
This small-group activity helps students to encode and extend content presented in direct teaching or a text. Students are guided to work cooperatively to use their own words, experiences, and connections to...

Generative Syllables

  • Investigation
This activity guides students to segment words into syllables, and then to identify additional words that contain each of the component syllables. Students create a chart with a syllable at the top of each...

Giant Word Analysis

  • Investigation
In this fun activity, students analyze the structure of a very long and complex word. They identify both the syllable structure and the morphological structure, and they hypothesize about the word’s meaning...

Grids

  • Investigation
Grids can be used to organize a large quantity of information along two parameters. Students can create and complete grids to visually structure content in order to further both their learning and studying.

Guided Peer Questions

  • Investigation
This group questioning activity helps students to learn effectively from a teacher presentation or a text. When engaged in Guided Peer Questioning, students are able to process, clarify, and extend the content...

Guided Self-Questioning

  • Investigation
This individual questioning activity helps students to learn effectively from a teacher presentation or a text. When engaged in Guided Self-Questioning, students are able to process, clarify, and extend the...

Haiku and Limerick

  • Synthesis
In this activity students will synthesize information about a character and then write a haiku or limerick. The purpose of this activity is for students to summarize a character and then analyze, evaluate, or...

Heading Guiding Questions

  • Investigation
This activity helps students to use a text feature of many textbooks and other nonfiction texts to aid comprehension. Students identify headings and subheadings, and convert each into a guiding question that...

Highlighting Strategy to Determine Importance

  • Investigation
  • Launching Into New Content
This activity helps students to closely analyze each line of a text, and to distinguish between those points that are central to the main idea and those that are more peripheral. A consideration of author...

Holden Meets Hamlet

  • Investigation
  • Synthesis
Through this fun activity students develop a rich understanding of characters by imagining an interaction between characters from different texts. Variations of this activity include writing a scene from a...

Hotseat

  • Investigation
  • Reflection
  • Synthesis
This activity encourages deep engagement with a text by asking students to take on the role of a character, historical figure, or other entity, and to respond to questions as this alternate persona. It...

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