Learn about the role of the US Congress, how it works, its history, and the principles behind its creation and operation. Wonderful set of resources including FAQs, short articles and video clips, "interactive learning modules" (i.e., a video presentation where you can follow a member of congress through the day or try a federal budget allocation activity), commentaries, teacher professional development materials, and more. The entire site, including video materials, is also available in Spanish.

Very scholarly article that looks at the role literature helps teach us about the diversity of our culture. The author looks at various aspects of literature and then gives teacher resources and a helpful bibliography.

Discussion of providing students with a purpose for reading from a college class site entitled "Advanced Study of the Teaching of Secondary School Reading." Along with discussion and background on the topic, some specific strategies are presented including Anticipation Guides, DRA, DR-TA, KWL, Semantic-Feature Analysis, SQ3R, and Think Alongs.

In this lesson, students will compare types of candy to learn about geological classification. Students will classify and sort different materials by their composition and physical properties.

This page defines the thesis statement and tells how to develop one when the topic is assigned and when the topic is not assigned. Also gives guidelines for determining whether the thesis statement is strong or weak.

Uses examples to explain the right and wrong way to use reference material. Shows how a rewrite can still be plagiarism. Briefly discusses common knowledge and paraphrasing.

Plants grow and change on a time scale that is too slow for us to observe in real time. Time-lapse photography is a simple technique that allows us to see the movements of plants and clearly demonstrates that plants are living and capable of some extraordinary things. This site is full of Quick-time movies that show various aspects of plant growth with textual explanations accompanying each movie and topic. Movie topics include Germination, Photomorphogenesis, Tropisms, Circadian Responses, General Growth, and more. Within each topic are more choices.

Explains how outlines can be used at different stages in the writing project. Covers outlines developed during research, prewriting, and drafting. Also discusses the formal outline, which may be required with a finished paper. Gives examples of each type of outline.