This cluster includes the following access points.
Vetted resources educators can use to teach the concepts and skills in this topic.
| Name |
Description |
| Discovering the Culture of Gullah: | In this lesson, students will learn about the Gullah culture through the vivid paintings of Jonathan Green. Students will rotate in activity stations that provide opportunities to observe, reflect, and create movement inspired by Green's art. The lesson culminates in a writing exercise prompting students to describe significant aspects of the Gullah people and culture in an essay. |
| Gr. 5 Lesson 2-Invasive Species: | Students will play an interactive game depicting the interactions in a habitat and the problems that occur with exotic species introduction. |
| Gr. 5 Lesson 1-Incredible Shrinking Habitat: | Students will become Florida panthers, white tailed deer, and motor vehicles in an active, tag-like game to simulate the disappearance of Everglades habitat. |
| Which Weather Would You Rather?: | During the activity, student’s will organize, analyze, and draw conclusions about the weather in a particular place and time to assist 4cast Engineering and Development to choose a seminar location. Students will use their understanding of how air temperature, air pressure, humidity, wind speed and direction, and precipitation to determine a location for the seminar. They will also create a blueprint of an object appropriate to the climate which they will submit to be manufactured and sold at the seminar locations. Students will accurately label the length, width, height and angles of the object as to have an accurate blueprint. |
| Catch Me If You Can: Engineering Design Challenge: | In this lesson, 5th grade students work in small groups on a STEM challenge that involves science and math standards related to the water cycle, as well as learning the engineering design process. |
| Weathering Weather: | This is a design challenge lesson allowing students to utilize their understanding of climate zones to design a tropical roof that would withstand the wind and water generated by a hurricane. This lesson also allows you to assess students understanding of operations with decimals to create their design under a given budget. |
| One of These Days… Right to the Solar System!: | In this MEA, students have been asked by Space R Us to evaluate other planets in the solar system for possible human population. Students have to rank the planets in order and defend their choices. Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom. |
| Separating Solid Mixtures: | Have you ever considered that toys in a toy box are a mixture? In this lesson, students will explore how to separate solid mixtures based on observable properties such as particle color, shape, size, and magnetic attraction. |
| Banana Bonanza: | The students have been hired as consultants to analyze data and recommend a new farm location for a fruit company. The students will learn about climate, weather changes, and develop a proposal for the Organic Inc. company. Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom. |
| Calling All Student Leaders: | In this lesson, students will observe a speaker and analyze a piece of informational text (an excerpt from Bill Clinton's 1993 Inaugural Address) to further develop their knowledge of summarizing, identifying central ideas and relevant details, and identifying claims and supporting reasons with evidence. Students will then play the role of the speaker and create their own writing on a topic they think would be important to kids, why they would be a good candidate for president, or how they might motivate other kids. At the lesson's end, students will present their speech to the class. A graphic organizer, student handouts, and rubrics are provided for the writing and speaking activities. |
| Clean Dat "SPACE" Inc.: | This Model Eliciting Activity (MEA) is written at a 5th grade level. Clean Dat "SPACE" MEA provides students with an engineering problem in which they must work as a team to design a procedure to select the best space junk cleanup company for the purpose of keeping the International Space Station safe while in orbit. Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom. |
| Not that Hot Anymore: | The students will rank companies offering canopies to a school for their Physical Education area.
Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. MEAs resemble engineering problems and encourage students to create solutions in the form of mathematical and scientific models. Students work in teams to apply their knowledge of science and mathematics to solve an open-ended problem, while considering constraints and tradeoffs. Students integrate their ELA skills into MEAs as they are asked to clearly document their thought process. MEAs follow a problem-based, student centered approach to learning, where students are encouraged to grapple with the problem while the teacher acts as a facilitator. To learn more about MEA’s visit: https://www.cpalms.org/cpalms/mea.aspx |
| Getting the Top Mini-Fridge not a Small Deal: | In this MEA, students will create a procedure to rank five mini-refrigerators to determine which one should be purchased for the school by the PTA based on size, type, features, energy usage, and cost. In the process, students will solve real-world problems involving the multiplication of multi-digit numbers with decimals to the hundredths, including using money. Students will also determine the volume of a rectangular prism using a formula. |
| Workouts That Work: | Students will create a rating system for workout DVD's according to weight loss, muscle toning, and increased physical condition.
Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom. |
| Keeping Your Cool With Your Lunch Bag: | On this MEA activity, students will create a procedure to rank five lunch bags as to which one is the best in keeping food and drinks at a safe temperature and appealing to the taste, while keeping design and price on target.
Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom. |
| Evan's Family Vacation: | Evan needs your help convincing his parents to rent a car for their family's vacation to Washington D.C. His parents are thinking of traveling in the family's old SUV that has no air and horrible gas mileage. Students will be asked to estimate each rental car's gas costs along with the weekly rental fee to rank the choices. In the twist, the students will be given safety information and must decide how to change their procedure with the new information. Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom. |
| Buy Buy Toy Store is Relocating: | This is a Model Eliciting Activity in which students are asked to assist a toy company in ranking several cities for them to consider where they will open their next store. They also read data and apply multiplication skills. Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom. |
| When Weather is Right…We Camp!: | This exciting MEA requires students to review data and rank travel dates from best to worst in terms of weather conditions, to help the Neely Family decide what the best dates would be to go camping in Madison Fl. Students will consider wind speed, air pressure, humidity, air temperature by analyzing the given charts which include these data week by week. Students will work as a groups and create a model for ranking these dates. Students have fun, use problem solving and collaborative strategies while learning about the properties of weather. Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom. |
| Museum Dilemma: | In this MEA, students evaluate the contributions of various explorers to help a museum select the subject who provided the most impact on Western development for a new exhibit. Students will need to convert units to have the necessary information to help come up with a solution to the problem. |
| Pounds to Ounces: MEA: | The client, Twi N. Key Bakery, wants your students to help them determine which product to sell in your school. Along the way your students will have to convert pounds to ounces as well as survey their peers. Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom. |
| Wildlife Refuge MEA- Feeding the Animals: | Students use mathematical practices to recommend food packages for the Wildlife Refuge of North America to order.
Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom. |
| Pendulum Inquiry - Wrecking Balls: | In this lesson, students will mimic a wrecking ball by manipulating the variables of a pendulum in order to move objects with different masses. It is recommended this lesson follow Pendulum Inquiry (see Related CPALMS Resources), which will build students' content knowledge on pendulums. Students can apply their understanding of pendulums gained from the lesson Pendulum Inquiry to assist them in designing wrecking ball pendulums in this lesson. |
| The Tiger Rising: A Book Study Using Literature Circles: | The Tiger Rising, written by the award winning author Kate DiCamillo, is an engaging story of two children whose lives are thrown together in a small town in Florida. Even though their personalities are in sharp contrast, they become friends who support each other through life's challenges of grief, pain, acceptance and their adventures with the tiger. Kate DiCamillo works her magic through her skilled use of figurative language to develop the characters in a way that engages readers in her character's adventures. Short chapters make this a perfect choice for literature circles. In this lesson, students will answer text-dependent questions as they analyze the two main characters in the story. |
| Build Your Own Water Cycle Model: | In this lesson, students will investigate the steps of the water cycle. They will describe each step of the water cycle and the state of matter that the water is in during each step. Students will recognize that the sun is a crucial part of the water cycle and that the water's state of matter can go back and forth. Students will demonstrate their understanding of the water cycle by designing and building their own water cycle model. |
| Pendulum Inquiry: | Pendulums are a fun and engaging way for students to learn about physics and the nature of science. In this lesson, students will investigate the effects of gravity, mass, changing variables and energy transfer through building their own pendulums as well as teacher demonstration. |
| Let It Flow: | Have you ever wondered how a light turns on? In this lesson, students will explore how electricity flows through a complete circuit in order to light a light bulb. |
| Human Rights and Discrimination: Analyzing how a Narrator's Point of View Influences a Story: | Students will begin to learn about discrimination by analyzing how a narrator's or speaker's point of view can influence the way events are described in a story. Students will create a KWL chart, Venn diagram, and Character web, and then write an essay, all while working collaboratively to explore this important cultural issue. |
| Inventions and Innovations MEA: | Inventive minds have persisted throughout history. Inventors have improved our lives with inventions created out of a desire to solve a problem or make the quality of peoples' lives better. Our president is concerned that we are not keeping up with other countries in the area of engineering and inventive thinking. Why is this? As students explore famous inventions from around the world throughout history, they will decide what the best inventions of all time are and support their opinion with strong reasons. |
| Family Preparedness Plan - Natural Disasters: | In this lesson, students will research various natural disasters. They will then create a family preparedness plan and identify key items to include in a survival kit in the event of a natural disaster. Students will specifically study tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, wildfires and severe thunderstorms in this lesson. |
| What's in a Name? Where am I in the Universe? Researching the Planets: | In this lesson, students will be challenged to use their knowledge of planets and the solar system to write a comparison paper. The intent of this lesson is not necessarily to be the initial introduction to the aligned science standard, but as more of a demonstration of knowledge gained through writing. |
| Which Sweets for the Bakery?: | This MEA gives students the opportunity to use real world data to rank proposed product lines from most likely to be profitable to least likely to be profitable. There are two sequential tasks; the second task adds a component of complexity to the original task. Students will apply multiplication and division skills in problem solving, write a procedure with grade-appropriate organization and conventions, and participate in group collaboration to complete this task. Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom. |
| The Dazzling Painting Co.: | ResourceID: 49826 Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom. |
| Kelly's Cafe - Mixing It Up!: | In this 5th grade MEA, students will work in groups to develop a procedure to rank which self-made, children's drink would be best to add to a current coffee shop menu. Students will consider factors such as flavor appeal, temperature of drink , costs, time required to mix drink, special equipment needed and nutritional value. Students will apply knowledge of how temperature and stirring can affect dissolving time. Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom. |
| Building a Better Baseball Team: | In this MEA activity, students will be comparing and contrasting whole and decimal numbers in order to recruit a baseball player(s).
Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom. |
| Are You Ready for a Hurricane?: | This activity allows students to determine the types of items that should be in a hurricane survival kit, use a budget and calculations to determine the items to include in the kit and gain an understanding of hurricanes and the need to prepare for them. Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom. |
| Are You Pulling My Leg!? A Lesson On Idioms: | In this lesson, students will practice recognizing and explaining the meaning of common idioms through poetry. As a summative assessment, students will complete an Idiom Art Project demonstrating an understanding of the difference between the literal and figurative meanings of the idiom they selected. Students will also mark and recognize rhyme scheme notation. |
| Balls Galore: Evaluating Playground Ball Companies: | This MEA gives the students the opportunity to evaluate and rank several playground ball companies based on their use in a summer camp program. Students should use multiplication to determine the total cost of the balls for each company. Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom. |
| Stand Up and Cheer: | This MEA asks the students to compare items to be given to fans attending a college homecoming football game.
Students will use multi-digit multiplication and measurement conversion while comparing data on the items. They will also take into account fan reviews of the items which should create interesting student discussions. Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom. |
| Blow Me Away: | This MEA asks the students to decide which hand dryer model would be the "best and the worst" for Blow Me Away Incorporated to sell.
The students will consider company's cost; selling price; whether hand dryer turns on when hands are placed near it; whether hand dryer stays on when hands are near it; whether hand dryer turns of when hands are moved away; appearance and energy efficiency.
Students will provide "top choice" to Blow Me Away Incorporated and explain how they arrived at the solution.
LEGO Education WeDo Robotics extension activity can follow should a school have the WeDo program. Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom. |
| Soccer Team Uniform Decision: | Students will learn about energy from the sun and how it is transformed into heat energy. Students will use this information to decide on a manufacturing company to order team shirts from. Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom. |
| How Many Gigabytes Does Lathan Really Need?: | Students will be comparing quantitative and qualitative aspects of technology devices in order to rank them for a particular student's needs. Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom. |
| Cereal Box Volume Varying Predicament: | Students will review rectangular prisms and the formula for finding the volume of rectangular prisms. Once students have determined the volume of a number of rectangular prisms (cereal boxes), the students will use that information to help a fictitious company in determining which cereal box they should use for their new product. Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom. |
| Telescope Tally: | Students will read a passage about Asteroids, Comets and Meteors and discuss the material within their groups. Students will then read an article about telescopes and features of telescopes. As a group, students will rate a list of telescopes by deciding which features they feel are most important. Students will be assessed on their writing skills as well as the science material they learned during the supplemental reading. Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom. |
| Come Sail Away!: | In teams, students will determine which sailboat the Leeward Family should purchase. They will use their knowledge of multiplying decimals to assist in their problem solving. The criteria will be based on air conditioning, swim out, auto helm, recent bottom job, condition of sails, condition of upholstery, and other twists!
Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. MEAs resemble engineering problems and encourage students to create solutions in the form of mathematical and scientific models. Students work in teams to apply their knowledge of science and mathematics to solve an open-ended problem, while considering constraints and tradeoffs. Students integrate their ELA skills into MEAs as they are asked to clearly document their thought process. MEAs follow a problem-based, student centered approach to learning, where students are encouraged to grapple with the problem while the teacher acts as a facilitator. To learn more about MEA’s visit: https://www.cpalms.org/cpalms/mea.aspx |
| Black Out in an Ice Cream Shop!: | This Model Eliciting Activity (MEA) asks students to develop a procedure for choosing a back-up energy source (generator) for an ice cream shop. Students will need to consider Cost of unit, wattage output, size of fuel container, length of time this machine will run, auto turn on, and the number of outlets it can receive. In the second portion of the problem statement, the students will need to prepare and compare the cost of use for 24 hour period. They will need to determine if they have still made the correct choices while adding three more generators for consideration, and make a cost analysis for 24 hours of use. In the culminating activity, the students will write a proposal for the client for the generator of their choice and include the 24 hours cost analysis. Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom. |
| Pick A Pet: | This Model Eliciting Activity (MEA) asks students to develop a procedure for choosing a reptile or amphibian to place in a school reception area. Students will need to consider safety, price of animal, cost by week to feed animal, size and cost of the enclosure, and the life span of the animals they are considering. In the second portion of the problem statement, the students will need to prepare a budget and cost analysis for the year to consider if they have still made the correct choices while adding three more animals for consideration. The culminating activity for this MEA will have the student write a proposal for the Principal to state their choice of animal, give a year's budget for cost and care for the animal. Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom. |
| Getting Dry: | This MEA asks the students to compare hand drying products based on: initial cost, replacement cost and absorbency. Students will provide the "top choice" to the principal of the school and explain how they arrived at the solution. In the twist, students will be asked to consider the environmental impact of the products and reevaluate their conclusions. Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom. |
| New Frozen Yogurt Store: | This MEA asks students to decide which factors are important in developing a successful frozen yogurt (froyo) store in order to compete with and become the best store in the area. Students will provide feedback to an entrepreneur who is looking to open a frozen yogurt store. They will rank order their choices of the most successful to least successful store. Students will provide a detailed written explanation for how they decided to rank factors and their solution rating existing stores from best to worst. Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom. |
| Transformation of Electrical Energy: | This lesson helps students learn that electrical energy can be transformed into: sound, heat, and light energy. In this lesson, students will participate in a hands-on lab to explore what forms of energy electrical energy will be transformed into. This lesson can be completed in one 60 minute science block. |
| To Dissolve or Not To Dissolve, Part 1: | This lesson uses the 5E model as students explore how various substances will dissolve. This is the first in a two part lesson. In the second lesson, students will compare how a substance will dissolve in varying temperatures. Students will learn about dissolving, mixtures, solutions and solubility. |
| Storage for Storage: | In this MEA, 5th Grade students will work in teams to determine a procedure for ranking Storage Sheds for a construction company that is moving to a new facility to purchase. Students will need to calculate the square feet and cubic feet of space for the Storage Shed, make decisions based on a table of data, and write a letter to the client providing evidence for their decisions. Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom. |
| Jay Wilder's Snorkeling Adventures MEA: | This Model Eliciting Activity (MEA) is written at a 5th grade level. Jay's Wilder Snorkeling Adventures MEA provides students with an engineering problem in which they must work as a team to design a procedure to select the best snorkeling equipment company for their customers. Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom. |
| Caladocious Skate Parks: | This Model Eliciting Activity (MEA) is written at a 4th-5th grade level. In this open-ended problem, students must consider how to rank skate board wheels based on factors like types of surfaces, price, and durometer. In teams, students determine their procedures and write letters back to the client. Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom. |
| Exploring Forms of Energy: | This lesson helps students explore and learn about different forms of energy: mechanical, chemical, electrical, sound, light and heat. This lesson works students through the Engage, Explore, and Explain sections of the 5E model. This lesson can be completed over one or two 50-minute science blocks depending on time you give students for each activity. During this lesson students will work in groups to sort pictures according to different forms of energy. After sorting the pictures, the teacher and students will come together to discuss and define the different forms of energy and where each picture should be sorted and why. |
| Pop Goes the Balloon, a Rube Goldberg Design Project: | The students will work in small groups in order to build a "Rube Goldberg" machine. A "Rube Goldberg" machine is modeled after a famous cartoonist who tried to make more difficult ways to accomplish simple tasks, such as popping a balloon. The students will build one machine, made from many simple machines working together, to perform their task. The machine is only permitted to be touched at the beginning and must work independently from that point on. |
| Body Swatter: | Students work in cooperative groups to research and write questions for an active game designed to review the major organs of the systems of the human body (digestive, respiratory, circulatory, and excretory system). |
| Fantastic Fable for Teamwork: | In this lesson, students will read, analyze and determine the lesson learned in the Aesop fable "The Four Oxen and the Lion" to set the focus for two subsequent lessons on the importance of teamwork. Students will discuss their findings in whole-and small-groups using a K-W-L chart, concept of meaning maps, marginal notes, making personal connections to the text, writing in a reading response journal, and illustrating the lesson learned. Close-reading will culminate in a position paper in which students answer the question: "Why didn't the oxen work together and how could they have changed their behavior in order to do so?" |
| What’s New at the Zoo?—an Engineering Design Challenge: | This Engineering Design Challenge is intended to help fifth grade students apply the concepts of plant and animal life cycles and physical characteristics, as well as animal behaviors in a compare and contrast situation. It is not intended as an initial introduction to this benchmark. |
| I Will Survive! - An Engineering Design Challenge: | This Engineering Design Challenge is intended to help fifth grade students apply the concept of how changes in an ecosystem can affect the survival of an animal species. Some suggested background building lessons are included, but it is not intended as an initial introduction to this benchmark. |
| Shoe Closet MEA: | In this open-ended problem, students will work in teams to determine a procedure for ranking shoe closets for a company to purchase. Students will need to calculate the cubic feet of space for the closet, make decisions based on a table of data, and write a letter to the client providing evidence for their decisions. Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom. |
| Sail Away - An Engineering Design Challenge: | This Engineering Design Challenge is intended to help students apply the concepts of forces from SC.5.P.13.1 and SC.5.P.13.2 as well as energy and its ability to cause motion from SC.5.P.10.1 and SC.5.P.10.2 by designing a boat and racing it. It may also be used as introductory instruction of the content. |
| Amazing Adaptations!—An Engineering Design Challenge: | This Engineering Design Challenge is intended to help fifth grade students apply the concept of how structural and behavioral adaptations contribute to the survival of an animal species. Some suggested background building lessons are included, but it is not intended as an initial introduction to this benchmark. |
| Be very, very quiet... Hunting MEA: | This activity has students getting a request from a client asking them to pick the best new breed for hunting moles. Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom. |
| Close Reading Exemplar: "The Making of a Scientist": | The goal of this two to three day exemplar is to give students the opportunity to use the reading and writing habits they've been practicing on a regular basis to absorb deep lessons from Richard Feynman's recollections of interactions with his father. By reading and rereading the passage closely, and focusing their reading through a series of questions and discussion about the text, students will identify how and why Feynman started to look at the world through the eyes of a scientist. When combined with writing about the passage, students will discover how much they can learn from a memoir. |
| Informational Texts: Analyzing Relationships and Points of View Across Multiple Texts: | This lesson is an instructional routine for informational text in which teachers provide guided practice and students practice mapping details from multiple texts. Mapped details are used to analyze relationships and points of view from texts on the same topic.
Culminating activity options for this lesson include having students work in teams to create detailed geographical maps or write interactive dialogue to be performed for the class using props. |
| Property Picking Pickle: | Students will graph points on a coordinate plane to help them to determine which property would be best suited for a recreational building. This lesson has students practice graphing points, as well as challenging their critical thinking skills with a real world problem. Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom. |
| Summarizing and Defending the Theme of Aesop’s Fable "The North Wind and the Sun": | This lesson will engage students in discussions that involve conceptual understanding of vocabulary, theme, and summarizing. After reading a short fable, "The North Wind and the Sun" by Aesop, students will complete activities that require them to think deeply, make inferences based on textual evidence, and defend their interpretation during discussions. Students will use context clues, word relationships, and/or figurative language to determine word meaning and unfamiliar phrasing. Students will participate in a class discussion evaluating conceptual understandings, examining themes, and making inferences. Students will engage in student-to-student discourse and partner work throughout the lesson. For the summative assessment, students will write a summary to convey understandings presented in the text and the discussions with their peers. |
| Sunshine Beach Restaurant: | This Model Eliciting Activity (MEA) asks students to develop a procedure to select a hurricane shutter company based on several data points.
Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. MEAs resemble engineering problems and encourage students to create solutions in the form of mathematical and scientific models. Students work in teams to apply their knowledge of science and mathematics to solve an open-ended problem, while considering constraints and tradeoffs. Students integrate their ELA skills into MEAs as they are asked to clearly document their thought process. MEAs follow a problem-based, student centered approach to learning, where students are encouraged to grapple with the problem while the teacher acts as a facilitator. To learn more about MEA’s visit: https://www.cpalms.org/cpalms/mea.aspx |
| To Dissolve or Not To Dissolve, Part 2: | This is part 2 of a lesson addressing solubility. Part 1 addresses how varying substances will dissolve in water. Part 2 addresses how temperature will effect solubility. The 5E lesson plan model will include a lab and is aligned with Florida ELA standards. |
| We're Curious!—An Engineering Design Challenge: | This Engineering Design Challenge is intended to help students apply the concepts of forces as they build containers to protect their eggs in an egg drop. It is not intended as an initial introduction to this benchmark. |
