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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:

Interrupted Conversation

  • Investigation
  • Synthesis
In this activity, students read aloud in pairs and take turns interrupting the reading to have a conversation with a text. The paired oral reading format scaffolds students’ efforts to “talk with” a text by...

Jigsaw

  • Investigation
  • Reflection
  • Synthesis
In this activity students are divided into groups. Each group has a different focus related to a common theme or topic. Students are then regrouped so that one member from each of the original groups is able...

Jot Thoughts

  • Building Background
  • Launching Into New Content
  • Reflection
  • Synthesis
In this activity students will jot down responses to a teacher prompt in a specified period of time. The purpose of this activity is to brainstorm ideas, share prior knowledge, or review content. This activity...

Keyword Mnemonics

  • Investigation
  • Reflection
Through this activity students create an association with a familiar word and an image to assist in remembering sets of information. This process develops students’ metacognition, and helps them to become more...

KNWS

  • Investigation
  • Launching Into New Content
This activity helps to guide students through the process of solving a mathematical word problem. Students fill out a chart with the following columns as they complete a word problem: K: What do you know? N:...

KWL/KWHLAQ

  • Building Background
  • Investigation
  • Launching Into New Content
  • Reflection
  • Synthesis
K-W-L charts are graphic organizers that help students organize information before, during, and after a unit or a lesson. They can be used to engage students in a new topic, activate prior knowledge, share...

Labeled Setting

  • Investigation
Through this activity, students visualize and then draw the place a text describes. Using words from the text, they label their drawing with the descriptors and clues that guided their visualization. This...

Life Graph

  • Synthesis
In the Life Graph activity students will create a graph that shows the main events of a character’s life and assign a value to the importance of each event. The purpose of this activity is to synthesize and...

Listening Comprehension Strategies

  • Investigation
This activity guides students to practice a familiar set of comprehension strategies to a novel modality: listening instead of reading. Instead of reading and annotating a written text, students listen to an...

Loci Mnemonics

  • Investigation
  • Reflection
Through this activity students create an association with familiar physical locations to assist in remembering a process, list, or set of facts. This process develops students’ metacognition, and helps them to...

Making Acronyms

  • Investigation
  • Reflection
Acronyms are new words or phrases formed when we creatively combine information. Teaching students how to create acronyms is a fun and engaging way to activate schema: connecting known words and ideas to new...

Making Acronyms

Acronyms are new words or phrases formed when we creatively combine information. Teaching students how to create acronyms is a fun and engaging way to activate schema: connecting known words and ideas to new...

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