LAFS.910.RST.1.2Archived Standard

Students trace the latitude of the Everglades and different locations around the world, comparing the weather, climate, and other environmental factors of the K-O-E watershed with those of other land masses on or near the 28th parallel. 

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will analyze an informational text intended to support reading in the content area. The article discusses the interactions of many different species of organisms in Yellowstone National Park. Specifically, the text focuses on the importance of not only the interactions that wolves have with the ecosystem, but how important beavers are to the stability of the whole ecosystem. This lesson includes a note-taking guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson plan, students will analyze an informational text intended to support reading in the content area. The National Science Foundation article discusses research on the effects of the Sea Star Associated Densovirus, a virus devastating sea star populations. The article further explains the implication of the virus for the tidal ecosystems of the Pacific West Coast. The lesson plan includes a note-taking guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will analyze an informational text intended to support reading in the content area. The article addresses an innovative possible treatment for diabetes using cone snail venom. The venom contains a form of insulin that is faster acting than human insulin. Further research shows that the cone snail insulin requires no prep before it is used, therefore explaining its quick response time. The lesson plan includes a note-taking guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric. Numerous options to extend the lesson are also included.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will read a National Science Foundation article that discusses a 200-year study into the mortality of forests. The process of decomposition and the importance of decaying wood in a forest are explained in great detail. The research described has altered and changed the management plans for forest ecosystems worldwide.

This lesson is designed to support reading in the content area. It includes a note-taking guide, a vocabulary guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will read an article from the National Science Foundation that discusses how extended droughts have affected salt marsh ecosystems found in the Southeastern part of the United States. The article then describes the mutualistic relationship that was discovered between ribbed mussels and salt marsh grasses and how this relationship is helping the marshes survive and recover from the droughts. This lesson is designed to support reading in the content area. The lesson plan includes a note-taking guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will analyze an informational text that addresses a new method for measuring the amount of mercury in the environment that is formed as a byproduct of human activities. The text describes how scientists were able to develop a method for measuring mercury by using data about phosphate and carbon dioxide levels. This lesson is designed to support reading in the content area. The lesson plan includes a note-taking guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will analyze an intended to support reading in the content area. The article addresses how the United States is addressing the discovery of E.coli that is resistant to colistin, an antibiotic used only as a last resort. The text describes steps to take now that this superbug has reached our country. Scientists from the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine explain why it is so easy for bacteria to share their "knowledge" about antibiotic resistance and discuss how concerned the U.S. citizens should be, as well as what we can do to slow the spread of superbugs.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will analyze an intended to support reading in the content area. The article addresses an innovative way to determine the age of the nitrogen in corn and soybean fields. Determining nitrogen's age could help make agriculture more precise, because when farmers over-fertilize their fields, the excess can leak into water supplies. Research scientists from the University of Illinois believe they can use this new technology to identify areas that are specifically deficient in nitrogen and therefore eliminate the need to apply it uniformly. This would benefit agriculture and the environment. The lesson plan includes a note-taking guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric. Numerous options to extend the lesson are also included.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will analyze an informational text that addresses the release of genetically modified mosquitoes in Brazil to reduce the transmission of dengue fever. The male mosquitoes were modified so that when they reproduce, their offspring die before they can transmit the disease. The article contains a data table that shows a drastic reduction in the number of dengue cases in places where GM mosquitoes were used in addition to conventional control methods. This lesson is designed to support reading in the content area. The lesson plan includes a note-taking guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will analyze an informational text intended to support reading in the content area. The article addresses the possibility that antibiotic resistance is spreading through ecosystems in Botswana because resistance in humans has been shared with many other organisms. Researchers found that antibiotic resistance is significantly higher in water-associated species and carnivores. Scientists believe they can use this information to increase their understanding of why and how species are becoming antibiotic-resistant, with the end goal of stopping the spread of antibiotic resistance in humans. The lesson plan includes a note-taking guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric. Numerous options to extend the lesson are also included.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will analyze an informational text that addresses how scientists are mapping the dust of the Milky Way. The text describes how interstellar dust can tell astronomers where stars and planets are forming, where a supernova could have occurred and provide other clues to the history of our galaxy and its formation. Using a newly created 3-D mapping tool, astronomers hope to integrate data from this tool with data from other sources in order to learn more about our galaxy than ever before. This lesson is designed to support reading in the content area. The lesson plan includes a note-taking guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will analyze an informational text that addresses the consequences of climate change on living organisms in snow ecosystems, particularly those who live in the subnivium beneath the snow's surface. The text describes a new field of researchers called winter ecologists and their findings that show how climate change is causing lighter snows in some areas, diminishing the amount of insulation in the subnivium that many living organisms need to survive the winter. This lesson is designed to support reading in the content area. The lesson plan includes a note-taking guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will analyze an informational text that presents information on a year-long space mission aboard the International Space Station. This lesson is designed to support reading in the content area. The text describes the mission of studying the long-term effects of microgravity on human health. Astronaut Scott Kelley and Cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko were used in the year-long study, along with Kelly's identical twin brother, Mark Kelly, who remained on Earth and was used as a control subject. The lesson plan includes a note-taking guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric. Options to extend the lesson are also included.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will analyze an informational text intended to support reading in the content area. The article informs readers about the ozone layer and why it was larger and lasted longer in 2015 than in previous years. Although it was unusually large, the practices that have been followed since the Montreal Protocol was enacted have actually resulted in a long-term decrease in the size of the ozone hole. The text explains the aberration and also provides general information about the ozone layer and its function in protecting human life. The lesson plan includes a note-taking guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric. Numerous options to extend the lesson are also included.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will analyze an informational text addressing two issues, climate change and evolution. This informational text (designed to support reading in the content area) describes how the changing climate in the Arctic is contributing to evolutionary changing in populations of animals that live there. The lesson plan includes text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric along with ideas for extending the lesson.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will analyze an informational text that presents the major discovery of a nearly-intact cranial fossil of an ancient mammal from the Southern Hemisphere. The article discusses the significance of the discovery of this previously unknown mammal, a mammal scientists have named Vintana sertichi. This lesson plan is designed to support reading in the content area. The lesson plan includes a note-taking guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will analyze an informational text that describes the impact that local ibises have on their environment and the impact that humans have on the birds. The study examines how humans are changing the lifestyles of white ibises, which in turn causes the interactions between birds and humans to lead to a greater spread of disease. The author analyzes the positive and negative effects of interactions between organisms in an ecosystem. The lesson plan includes a text coding strategy, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, sample answer keys, and a writing rubric. Numerous options to extend the lesson are also included.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson is designed to support reading in the content area. In this lesson, students will analyze an informational text that addresses innovative research to aid in the understanding of how certain clays can be responsible for the killing of some bacterial pathogens. The lesson plan includes a note-taking guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will analyze an informational text that explains how climate change is leading to the melting of tropical glaciers in Peru and how this is negatively impacting the residents there. Students will examine how the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is assisting the Peruvians in developing strategies to deal with the impact. The lesson plan includes a note-taking guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric. Numerous options to extend the lesson are also included.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will analyze an informational text examining scientists' studies of freshwater mussels in an attempt to develop methods for saving threatened species. Students will learn of the researchers' hope to be able to use other species that cohabitate local ecosystems to restore the threatened species. The lesson plan includes a note-taking guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric. Numerous options to extend the lesson are also included.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will analyze an informational text intended to support reading in the content area. The text explains how scientists worked with the National Science Foundation (NSF) to try and better understand the phosphorus cycle in marine ecosystems. The author points out that although the phosphorus cycle has been studied in the past, the work chronicled in the article has greatly expanded that understanding. The lesson plan includes a note-taking guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric. Numerous options to extend the lesson are also included.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will examine how ecosystems change due to seasonal variations as they analyze an informational text explaining the process scientists used to collect data on daily changes in grasslands. Students will learn of the usefulness of this data in creating a model that allowed the scientists to predict how seasonal variation will change the grassland ecosystem. The lesson plan includes a note-taking guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric. Numerous options to extend the lesson are also included.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson plan uses an informational text intended to support reading in the content area. The article describes a research project undertaken by Tulane University students, who collected rodents from neighborhoods affected by Hurricane Katrina. The text describes how a mathematical model can be used to simulate how environmental changes affect the populations of rodents that carry pathogens harmful to human health. The lesson plan includes a note-taking guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will analyze an informational text that seeks to answer the question "Why do we yawn?" Students will learn that while many claims regarding the social and physiological functions of yawning have been presented from Hippocrates, 17th and 18th century scientists, and experts today, scientists have yet to reach a consensus about the answer to the title question. All the while, this frequent challenge and re-examination of scientific claims helps to strengthen scientific knowledge. This lesson plan includes a note-taking guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric, as well as options to extend the lesson.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson uses an NSF article to inform the reader about the influence of parasites on damselfish, a coral reef species. The author explains how his team determined the reason for the consistent behavior of damselfish leaving their aggressively guarded territory each morning to go to a cleaning station. He also explains how more questions arose throughout his investigation, questions like "Do these parasites carry other parasites that infect fishes?" and "Do these gnathiid parasites infect other species of fish?" This first-person account creates an interesting view of how marine research is done, including field work, lab work, and collaborating with other scientists. This lesson is designed to support reading in the content area. The lesson plan includes a note-taking guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will analyze an informational text that addresses the issue of releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from carbon sink sites located in coastal habitats. This informational text is designed to support reading in the content area. The text describes how carbon that has been stored for potentially thousands of years is getting released into the atmosphere due to coastal habitat destruction of mangrove forests, salt marshes, and sea grass beds. The lesson plan includes text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will analyze an informational text that addresses cellular waste. The article students will read explains the different ways a cell gets rid of waste, including how proteasomes and lysosomes break down cell waste. The article covers another method of letting the waste "pile up." This informational text is designed to support reading in the content area. The lesson plan includes a note-taking guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students work together to understand an article describing how genes cause eye color (and it probably doesn't match what's in your textbook!)

Type: Lesson Plan

The purpose of this lesson is to allow students to understand what drives ocean currents. Part of this process will include the developing of a testable hypothesis, designing a model, and formulating a conclusion based on observations. Students will further make a connection with how currents have influenced and can influence human behavior, both individually and collectively.

Type: Lesson Plan

This MEA gives the students an opportunity to learn about sustainability and then apply that knowledge to help EcoAthletica determine the location for their next sustainable tourism resort. The students will use a variety of criteria and the definition of sustainability and sustainable tourism to create a model for choosing locations.

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.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson deals with understanding how non renewable resources are being depleted. It emphasizes the urgent need to discuss and implement the use of renewable resources since its much cheaper. A total appreciation of what the earth supply us with.

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.

Type: Lesson Plan

Ocean Camouflage Colors explores the concept of light-wave absorption by ocean water and how it alters color perception and consequently the appropriate choice for protective coloration in the ocean. After exploring the students' prior knowledge of concepts like color perception, absorption and reflection, the class watches a video clip of a diver who takes a red apple ( and some colorful plastic) diving in the Caribbean. After some further discussion and the creation of a set of notes, students are given a more formal reading activity with 5 questions to complete independently (in most cases). This reading activity can be used in class or possibly as a homework exercise if time is short. Ocean Camouflage Colors was intended as an extension activity to support the 2 mini-labs in Ocean Camouflage. The reading portion can be used alone to bring students who were absent the day of the mini-labs "up to speed" OR it can be used as a review exercise prior to a test OR a homework activity for further practice.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will analyze an informational text that addresses the effects of overfishing on coral reef systems. The text explains how scientists have found that overfishing removes many of the algae-eating fish, and this causes an increase in algae growth, which leads to a microbial increase, and finally leads to coral mortality. This lesson is designed to support reading in the content area. The lesson plan includes a note-taking guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric.

Type: Lesson Plan

Learn how to identify the central idea and important details of a text, as well as how to write an effective summary in this interactive tutorial. This tutorial is the second tutorial in a four-part series that examines how scientists are using drones to explore glaciers in Peru. 

This tutorial is part two of a four-part series. Click below to open the other tutorials in this series.

• Drones and Glaciers: Eyes in the Sky (Part 1)
• Drones and Glaciers: Eyes in the Sky (Part 2)
• Expository Writing: Eyes in the Sky (Part 3)
• Expository Writing: Eyes in the Sky (Part 4)

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Learn how to identify explicit evidence and understand implicit meaning in a text.

You should be able to explain how different types of scientific evidence support the theory of evolution, including direct observation, fossils, DNA, biogeography, and comparative anatomy and embryology.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Explore how environmental changes at different time scales affect living organisms within ecosystems in this interactive tutorial.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Click "View Site" to open a full-screen version.

By the end of this module, teachers should be able to:

• Name the key instructional shifts in English Language Arts and Literacy
• Label the College and Career Readiness, also known as CCR, anchor standards for Reading
• Use the language of the Reading Standards for Literacy in Science and Technical Subjects to identify what students should know and be able to do
• Arrange and sequence the Reading Standards for Literacy in Science and Technical Subjects
• Distinguish the changes in rigor as a Reading standard progresses from one grade band to the next

This is Module 1 of 4 in the series, "Literacy across the Content Areas: Reading and Writing to Build Content Knowledge."

Type: Professional Development

This resource is designed to support reading in the content area. The text describes how for the first time bees have been declared endangered in the United States. Seven species of Hawaiian yellow-faced bees have been decimated by invasive species and habitat loss and are now federally protected. The text goes on to describe an innovative way scientists want to help the bees.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is designed to support reading in the content area. The article describes a recent study that allowed researchers to prove the benefits of releasing GM mosquitoes in Brazil in order to decrease disease transmission. At first, research showed that the mosquito population had dropped, but then the research also showed that diseases like dengue fever had dropped dramatically in comparison to areas with conventional mosquito control.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is designed to support reading in the content area. The article describes a recent study that helped researchers prove a link between overfishing to increased growth of fleshy algae to microbialization. This increase in microbes causes a depletion of the amount of oxygen dissolved in the water. In addition, the increase in microbial growth can spread disease. In conclusion, microbialization is found to be a major contributing factor to the destruction and decline of coral reef health.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is designed to support reading in the content area. The text provides information about 2015's ozone hole, showing why it is larger this year and lasted longer than previous years. The article shows how the protective ozone layer changes with the seasons and is different each year. Although the hole is large this year, the practices that have been followed since the Montreal Protocol was enacted have allowed the ozone hole to slowly decrease, and it should be back to 1980 levels by 2070.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is designed to support reading in the content area. The article describes the process the researchers use to develop a detailed model of how they predict climate change will occur in the future and what effect this will have on North American grasslands. The author explains how climate change impacts ecosystems while also providing an example of using models in science to predict future events/outcomes.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is designed to support reading in the content area. The article seeks to answer the question, "Why do we yawn?" Scientists have yet to reach consensus about the function of yawning. Social and physiological claims about why we yawn are presented from Hippocrates, 17th and 18th century scientists, and scientists today.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is designed to support reading in the content area. The text focuses on cellular waste and describes different ways a cell gets rid of waste. The text also briefly addresses how further study of the ways cells dispose of waste could lead to new approaches for preventing or treating disease.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. In 1996, a team of scientists discovered a species of rodent in Laos that was new to science. In a recent study, DNA analysis places the rodent in a mammal family that was previously thought to have gone extinct over 10 million years ago. Therefore, the rodent is a "living fossil."

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. Wastewater is being dumped into rivers, streams, and oceans, affecting not only the marine environment but also water quality in general. Better treatment processes are needed before this contaminated waste reaches our waterways. The article points out the problems faced by specific countries and their need for better management.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. Polar bears are highly specialized to living on sea ice in the Arctic including their dependence on two species of seals. Therefore, scientists expect polar bears to be greatly affected by climate changes due to their habitat (reduced sea ice) and prey availability. These effects include increased movement, fewer den areas, and decreased prey access, which are predicted to have a variety of negative consequences on polar bears in the future.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. The article describes new research suggesting that human ancestors, particularly males, evolved stronger jaws that were resistant to punches. (Females, perhaps less prone to fighting, do not show this same adaptation). This contradicts earlier hypotheses, which suggested that larger jaws evolved to better consume food resources.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. Scientists have been able to create a synthetic functioning chromosome (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) found in yeast. With this breakthrough, they might be able to create customizable bio-fuels, vaccines, or even synthetic organisms in the future.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text is intended to support reading in the content area. The article describes the composition and workings of fireworks. Details are also given as to how the colors, lights, sounds, and propulsion are produced by fireworks' components.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. The article explains what molecular clocks are and how they are used to calculate evolutionary divergence and other evolutionary events.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. This article discusses the discovery of "Skull 5" and the traits that have led scientists to the conclusion that early Homo was a more diverse genus than realized before.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. The text describes the development of floor tiles that provide a green, alternative energy source. These tiles work on the principle that pressure (footsteps) generates an electric current from certain crystals in an application of the piezoelectric effect.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. This text describes the open cycle method of converting the energy of warmed, surface seawater into electricity and the benefits of using this method.

Type: Text Resource

Click "View Site" to open a full-screen version. This tutorial is designed to help secondary science teachers learn how to integrate literacy skills within their science curriculum. The focus on literacy across content areas is designed to help students independently build knowledge in different disciplines through reading and writing. This tutorial will demonstrate a series of steps that teachers can use with students to help them determine the central ideas of a science text. It will also demonstrate how students can trace a text's explanation or depiction of a complex process. Finally, it will explain what an effective summary contains.

Type: Tutorial