Instructional Lessons for MEP & AIM

The following are all approved tutoring lessons for Migrant Education In-home instructors in the state of TN. All lessons taught through in-home tutoring need to be based on an approved lesson. Some of these lesson plans are for several units. Use them as you see appropriate with your students.

Reading/Language Art Lessons

Tall Tales

People have also always told stories about heroes and heroines that were bigger than life in order to explain why things are the way they are. In this lesson students get the chance to find out just what it is that makes a tall tale so tall by reading and learning about tall tales from around the world and then creating and illustrating some pretty amazing tall tales of their own.

Snowball Charades

Will you be a shivering elf? Or, maybe a snowy tree? With this fun game students get to practice their reading, writing, and acting skills as they expand their vocabulary and possibly shiver their way to a win.

I Bet You Think This Song Is About You

Students struggle with vocabulary but seem to learn the lyrics to the latest song effortlessly. If only there was a way to harness that power! There is, through music and lyrics students are able to practice a wide variety of language skills [reading, writing, listening, and speaking] in a fun manner. In this lesson we provide an easy formula for bringing music into the classroom and getting that tricky vocabulary into their brains. Included are some great sample activities to get you started with Carly Simon's infamous, "You're So Vain" And later they get to write some new and funky lyrics of their own

Eating with your Eyes- That Looks Good- Media Awareness

Are your students influenced by taste or by advertising? In this lesson they get to test their own tastebuds and the power of branding on their brains. See if they choose something because of its name or because of its taste with a Mystery Brand Taste Test that will keep them talking for days. As a picture-perfect hamburger flashes across a television screen, mouths water at the sight of the three-inch high handful. Has your hamburger ever actually looked like that? Just who are the miracle workers behind those amazing food advertisements? Students learn some tricks of the advertising trade before getting to make their own "faux-burgers" they'll actually want to eat and other fun advertising activities.

Word Slam

Great for kids of all ages who love games, need vocabulary practice, and don’t want to sit down and read. This is a high speed game where all players compete at the same time to change the word on the table using the cards in their hands. Excellent way for students to practice spelling and increase vocabulary and reading, while having fun! Just remember to keep a dictionary handy!

Chinese New Year NEW!

Chinese New Year is not only a time to dance with the dragon, it’s a time to welcome good fortune into our lives, a time for family and a time for tradition. And it’s also a thousand year old holiday with lights, noise, and fireworks and a 15 day party! Students learn the legendary origin of Chinese New Year, create flameless lanterns and erupt “fireworks” in a glass, change the outcome of the ancient calendar animal race, find out what their birth year says about them, discover dancing dragons, become a master riddler, earn ang pow for their courageous acts, and learn what’s wrong with white before receiving an interesting looking letter from a far off friend, bearing exotic stamps. And that’s just the beginning.

 

Science Lessons about the Body

I'm all Ears

Did you hear something? Maybe the sound you heard was quiet, like the click of a pencil. Or maybe it was loud, like a siren going by. Sounds are everywhere, but most of us don't pay much attention to those two cool parts on our bodies that let us hear them all: our ears! In this lesson students build models of their ears, experiment with their sense of hearing, learn tons of gross and cool things about those holes on the sides of their heads, come to realize they do alot more than just catch sounds, and learn about some crazy phrases we call idioms. So lend me your ears!

All About Blood

You may think that blood is only fun for mosquitos or vampires, but after this lesson we guarantee you'll change your mind. Students learn about all the amazing parts contained in those little red drops of liquid, get to build some rather tasty blood of their own, play games, and learn about their inner ninja defense team. It really is all about the blood!

Pump it Up

It's a bird, it's a plane....no it's Cardiovascular Kid! That's what your students will be by the time you finish this lesson, cardiovascular kids. They'll build models of veins, listen to the lub-dub of their own heartbeats, play with their pulses, diagram data, and compete to charge up their own Cardio Kids.

Stethoscope Science

What's that sound? It's your blood rushing around! Students learn that things haven't always existed, they have to be invented, even that seemingly simple doctor's assistant, the stethoscope. They learn how it came to be, find their heartbeats, and test out their own stethoscope designs to see if they too can find the best way to catch that good vibration.

Deep into the Eye, Lens, Action

It takes a lot to get the big picture and there are some big (and very tiny) helps that you can't see in your own eyes. Students dig deep into the eye structure and discover just what amazing things are going on inside their eyes through fun tests, games, and activities, before adding it all together to make their own inner eye.

Eye Didn't Know That

Have you ever had tired eyes? Well, no wonder! Your eyes are busily at work from the moment you wake up to the moment you close them to go to sleep. Students learn exactly what they're seeing when they look in someone's eyes while they create models, learn just how much they like their eyes during blind relays, and see if it's their eyes or brains being decieved when they gaze at some rather tricky illusions.

What's on your Mind

Brain Concentration Extension

Get your hands on a bag of brains, model the inner-workings of your mind, find out that wrinkles are great, learn what other animal's brains look like, and play match the brain with this in-depth and fun lesson. (New information has been added)

Bones Unit

Strong, light, supportive, and dependable. Sound like something you'd like to have around? Don't worry, you already do, 206 of them. In this lesson students get to make edible “bone biopsies," construct a complete skeleton, learn how baby bones grow, test the strength of hollow bones, build a spinal cord, a 3D skull, and more.

Tasting with your Nose

Want to find out just how bad it would be if the cat actually got your tongue? Try eating an ice-cream cone or singing your favorite song without it. Our sense of taste has led to great geographical discoveries, the founding of nations, and to wars between countries, and now, it's led to this lesson in which students get to follow their noses and test their taste buds and see just how they work together through some rather tasty experiments.

Science Lessons about Plants

Pass the Plant Parts Please

Did you know that at one time only kings and other wealthy people could afford such a delicacy as cinnamon and it was more valuable than gold? That people risked their lives traveling on wooden ships across uncharted oceans to find spices? That huge wars that lasted for years were fought over black pepper? Students learn to identify the parts of plants along with the tastes and scents of spices, becoming botanical taste bud detectives along the way.

General Science Lessons

Aquifer Lesson

Where did that water come from before it came out of the pipe? This lesson provides students with a hands on discovery session all about groundwater and its journey from the sky through the earth and up to your sink. Students love the opportunity to create their own delicious edible model aquifer, though they just might enjoy adding the "pollution" a little too much!

Bubbleology

What is so fascinating about bubbles? Why do we love to chase them and create them and pop them as soon as we can? Is it the precise spherical, round ball, shape, the incredibly fragile nature of the thin soap film, the beautiful colors that swirl and shimmer, or most likely, a combination of all these? In this unit students play with bubbles for a purpose, hypothesizing and determining the strongest bubble formula, using color to measure their thickness, solving bubble mysteries, constructing square bubbles and geometric suds, determining bubble chemistry, making elephants toothpaste, bouncing bubbles, creating super strong bubbles, putting students in a bubble, creating CO2 Sandwiches, and much much more.

The Eyes Have It- Predator and Prey

Quick, what’s the difference between your eyes and the eyes of a gecko? A cat? An owl? A kangaroo? For centuries, humans were in the dark about what and how other animals see. But scientists are learning it's all about the eyes. Students learn how to determine predators from prey by looking at their eye placement, learn the order of the food chain, and use easy-to-make viewers to get an bee, owl, mole, or cat eye view on the world.

Zap Electricity Unit

Have you ever been "shocked" when you touched a doorknob, a car-door handle, or a water fountain? Ouch! Well, then you already know something about the effects of static electricity. What you might not know is how static electricity happens. Students get to explore the structure of atoms, learn how opposites attract, discover practical purposes for static, find out what's the biggest kind of static electricity, and see for themselves the shocking effects of static during hands-on experiments like the Super Sparker!

Diving into the Gene Pool Unit

Ever hear the phrase ‘Like father like son?’ In this unit, students learn all about how they inherit their looks, height, size and chemical make-up from their parents! They’ll also meet the amazing 19th century scientist, Gregor Mendel, who used short and tall pea plants to study heredity and have fun with Punnett who mapped out how Mendel did it. They'll construct an edible DNA double helix and make and match bonds before playing with "Doggone DNA" in order to create and decode a “DNA recipe” for their own man’s best friend to observe how variations in DNA lead to the inheritance of different traits. *Note: additional extension activities are available for this unit.

Moonstruck Unit- Updated!

The Moon has fascinated people throughout history and while most of us may never touch its surface with our own two hands that doesn't mean we can't understand what the ever-changing bright silvery disk is really doing in the darkness beyond our atmosphere. This lesson provides students the opportunity to recreate the lunar surface and bombard it with asteroids, to experience a taste of space and feel a fraction of what astronauts go through, peel back the layers and see beneath the surface, recreate craters, learn about orbits and why we can't see the dark side of the moon, determine what life might be like without the moon in our sky, practice the phases with the Oreo Moon, and determine the veracity of legends about lunar luck.

The Family of the Sun New!

What do you begin an astronomy lesson with? A first taste of the constellations? Celestial co-ordinates? Physics? History?  Our galaxy, the Milky Way, a spinning top, with swirling arms extending from the center like a pinwheel. Our Sun, one of about 100 billion stars in the Milky Way. Our galaxy? Just one of roughly 100 billion in the visible universe. With all that to cover, where in the worlds is the best place to start? In this lesson Students not only find constellations, create models, and become able to picture the dimensions of our solar system, among many other things  they discover that with Space no matter how much progress one makes, there is always the thrill of just beginning.

Mission X New!

Can you imagine if your job might only last a few hours, a few days, a few months, but it took years of training, constant preparation, and lifelong dedication in the hopes that you’d get to do it?  That’s what life is like for astronauts. In this lesson students  complete, “missions” to train like an astronaut, learn why astronauts need to be physically fit, and gain a better understanding of just what astronauts have to do to keep in shape on Earth so they can get shot into space!

Solar Travels NEW!

Any kind of journey takes preparation. You have to know what to pack, you need to know what the weather is going to be like, and you have to figure out how you’re going to get there. In this lesson students have been hired by Solar Travels, Inc and are in charge of a new company division that will put together a vacation package that can safely deliver the company’s very important clients (V.I.Cs) to the ultimate vacation destination and back home to Earth. And when the journey is measured in light years, there’s plenty of time for “Are we there yet?”

 

Asteriod Orbits New!

It’s like a traffic jam in outer space, we’ve got rocks and dust flying all over the place! There’s metal and dirt just zooming around, and scientists know surely more will be found. A big fender bender would mean the end of life as we know it. An asteroid crash? Well, that would just blow it. What do they taste like, those rocks from so far, and are they really lots bigger than Grandmother’s car? Who is Icarus and why did he fall? Can a collision be avoided at all?   How can we tell if The End is quite near? Shouldn’t we all be quaking with fear? These questions are answered, if you just click right here.

 

Mining Meteors New!

“If it wasn't grown; it was probably mined.” What is it that makes humans dig endlessly into the dark, risking their lives in search of glimmering scraps of gold, dark iron, bright copper? Our world hinges upon metal. The progress of cave-dwelling humans to today’s modern society, progress in agriculture, transport, technology, advancement in arts and crafts, none would have been possible without  metal. But what of the day when every scrap has been found? Where do we turn? In this lesson students learn what their cars are really made of, what makes one man’s junk another man’s treasure, get a taste of mining, pan for gold, and make a plan for when the supply has a limit.

 

Heart of Fire

Welcome to the greatest show on Earth. Propelled by intense heat simmering beneath the crust, Earth’s surface is dramatically reshaping itself in an endless, slow-motion ballet called plate tectonics. Deep inside Earth, there are many layers and students learn about each one in this lesson as well as how volcanos produce a lot more than just lava, and come in more shapes than simply a cone. They'll visit Pompeii and then make a volcano of their own (and erupt it of course). Finally, they'll become experts in the science of stratigraphy as they determine once and for all which came first, the crack or the rock?

Twister

A tornado isn't likely to sweep down and take you to Munchkinland, as it did to Dorothy in Frank L Baum’s, The Wizard of Oz but this lesson will take students into the center of the storm and down into the heart of tornado alley. They'll learn about the Fujita scale and the recipe for the perfect storm, grow their own tornado in a bottle, and become engineers as the endeavor to construct a tornado-proof house. They'll also create terrific twisting tornado art and see what they know with a review game that just might blow them away.

Hibernation Unit- NEW!

You wake up a dark November morning only to find out it's pouring rain, even though the thermometer reads 30 degrees. It's enough to make anyone want to go back between the flannel sheets and set the alarm clock for May. You might wish you could stay in bed all winter, but some animals really do! Brown bears do it, ladybugs too. Bats and snakes, and a frog or two. Groundhogs, chipmunks, in a sleepy state. What do they do? They hibernate! In this lesson students explore the reasons animals eat so much in the fall (would you want a diet where you had to gain 30lbs a week?) learn who actually hibernates, what triggers it, what it really means to be cold blooded, who are nappers and snackers, and why animals hibernate in the first place. Through hands-on (and in) experiments and activities students get a real feel for the effects of animal insulation, track down torpor, figure out how animals find food in the winter, and learn that being asleep can be really hard work.

Nuke It!

The microwave oven is now an essential part of most kitchens when once it was considered a luxury only the very wealthy could afford. Now, everybody likes to use the microwave to pop popcorn, melt butter, or make hot chocolate. Unfortunately, most people still have no idea how their favorite popcorn popping machine even works! In this lesson students learn how it was all inspired by chocolate, meet the inventor, hypthesize and conduct experiments that will help them figure out how this miracle machine does its job, learn about waves, make soap grow, and deduce that with the help of a little chocolate and a microwave they too can measure the speed of light.

Life is an Adventure-Paleontology

A mysterious package has arrived that will send your students off on a grand adventure. Students practice their cartography and journaling skills, find their own fossilized dinosaur embryo,make a special storage box to keep it safe as they travel, uncover the secrets of rocks, and discover a 112 mile wide clue in the Curious Case of the Disappearing Dinosaur as they follow in the footsteps of other paleontologists.

Lepidoptera!

Did you know that butterflies don't have lungs, that they taste with their feet, and zip up their tongues? Go on a multi-nation adventure and delve deep into the magic and mystery of metamorphing and migrating butterflies. Students learn in-depth the amazing features, life cycles, and self-defence mechanisms of these fluttering creatures, create their own flying butterfly and learn the beauty of symmetry as they construct their own metamorphic masterpiece, and more.

F-tWaNg!! ThW-ump!!

"catapult (n) - ancient device used for hurling cats at the enemy. It was later replaced by the rockapult, a much more effective weapon." Okay, that really isn’t true, probably, but seriously, weapons that once smashed castle and fortress walls are now great lessons in how basic mechanical principles can, and did, turn simple materials into very useful, effective, and protective tools. Students learn the power of simple machines like levers, spend some time with Newton's laws, and play with potential and kinetic energy while constructing and designing their own catapults.

Poseidon's Steeds

What has the head of a horse, with the sucking snout of an aardvark, spines like a puffer fish, a pouch of a kangaroo, eyes like a lizard, the tail of a monkey, an armor plated body like the Stegosaurus dinosaur, the ability to change colors like a chameleon, and a tail like a monkey? Here’s a hint, it lives at the bottom of the ocean…still no? In this lesson, students learn all about the mysterious and wondrous seahorse, learn how a dad really can give birth, come to understand how the concepts of buoyancy, density, volume, and mass are related to fish and just how they sink or float, learn why some fish have more than one bladder, understand why people create myths, create one themselves, and finish it all up with an original artwork of their own.

Herpetology

Imagine you are a time traveler; you hop in your time machine and travel back through time millions of years to the age of the dinosaurs. You step out of your time machine and gasp, Pterodactyls fly high above a deep swamp filled with huge dragonflies. The earth shakes as an enormous 80-ton Brachiosaurus munches on the top of a tree nearby. On the muddy ground at your feet, something strangely familiar hops by: a frog? Surprised? No, it didn’t sneak its way onto your time machine. Few people realize just how ancient frogs are. In this lesson students learn the secret to frogs’ success, the truth behind hibernation and camouflage, the power of poison, how being a reptile takes a lot of work, just how far a frog can jump, and all about that sticky tongue. They also learn the simple needs of a frog, each stage of their amazing life cycle (including carnivorous tadpoles), dissection without a knife, and that’s only the beginning.  Kissing a frog won’t turn it into a prince — except in fairy tales ― but frogs may be hopping toward a real-world transformation into princely allies in our battle with antibiotic-resistant infections that threaten the lives of millions of people worldwide, unless they disappear first. Herpetology, it’s all about the frogs!

 

Math Lessons

Easy, Peasy, Pizza Pie!

Every second, Americans eat 350 slices of pizza. That's 23 pounds per person, per year. Don't you think it's time we put all that pizza to a purpose? Pizza teaches everything from basic fractions and numerators and denominators, to word problems ["If we have 5 pizzas and eat 3 pizzas, besides a stomachache, what is left?"], graphing, and second semester algebra formulas in this mouth-watering lesson, all with a slice of history on the side. A pie chart has never smelled so good.

A Wizard of Odds

Someone may have told you that chance is just a roll of the dice, but...hey chance actually IS just a roll of the dice! So, what are the chances you are a math wizard? Find out while we review the ins and outs of probability. Students will learn all about what probability means, why we study it, and how to express a probability on paper. Should they take the deal? With probability on their side they won't have to guess.They'll be able to determine the number of possible outcomes in a random event and know how to use a grid to figure it out. They'll learn about mathematical expectation and that probabilities aren’t just for predicting dice rolls - the principles they’ll learn are the basis for predictions in all kinds of complex systems, from the stock market to the weather!

Introducing Probability Pig

Pig! is more than just a game where you try not to get too greedy, it's a great way to teach students at every level how to think strategically—to look ahead and figure out how what just happened, and what might happen next, will affect their chances of winning. And this effort to predict provides a perfect chance to explore probability, a way to measure how likely something is to happen. Are they going to have fun while learning? The probability is high!

Four Heads

Everything's more fun with a little competition! With these games students gain a solid understanding of basic concepts, while having so much fun they may not realize it’s a math review. But when it comes time for that big equivalents quiz, your students will remember the equivalents practice they got while snatching that spoon!

Sym City! Symetry Unit

Everything from butterflies, to algebra, to the universe is based on symmetry. So how come we know so little about it? Compared to other famous concepts of mathematics and physics—infinity, uncertainty, relativity—the notion of symmetry might seem a bit boring at first, but not when you can use it to make creepy, strange, whimsical aliens; mysterious mirror drawings; perfect portraits; terrific tessellations; and turn your own name into a funky piece of art. You really can find symmetry everywhere! Even in ancient (but still really fun) games like Madagascar Solitaire in which knowing symmetry is simply good strategy!

GastroKids Cooking with Math

Math is in every kitchen, on every recipe card, and at each deluxe dinner holiday gathering. With this lesson students dig their hands into the concepts of weight, cost, estimation, money, supply and demand, measuring, conversions, and more as they become caterers and shop at your supply store. Will they make enough in time to feed their hungry guests and still make a profit? Or will they run out, run late, and run up a bill? If they're savvy they might just get to savor the sweet taste of victory.

Math-O- Matic

It’s not “Oh, math…” it’s Math-O! Fractions are flying, numbers are huddling, teams are tagging, students get 20, make “mummies” and money,  and math skills become automatic with these fun hands-on games as students answer the question, “What’s your final answer?”

Math, It's All in Your Mind

It’s all in your mind! No, we don’t think you’re crazy. Math skills may lay dormant, you may feel a bit lazy, until it comes time, and it’s all on the line, then the skills that you need aren’t that hard to refine. Play Football and Bingo, I’ve got this, Who has that?, Tic Tac Toe that is tricky, and more fun games like that. With such fun to be had, with such skills to be tried, you’ll soon unlock talents you’ve buried inside!

Stop the Yawns! Math Activities and Skills Practice NEW!

Math cards and graphing. A race to be first. Is it luck or strategy? Which one will work? A friendly feud or an all out battle? Will they sink the captain’s ship?  Or are you going to make them paddle? Put an end to indifference, call “Cease Fire!” on those yawns. Play a fun game and the boredom is gone!

On Target! Math Games with Impact NEW!

Thinking fast can make cents, a good guess might pay off, if in practice they’re not perfect, not all is lost. Small change adds up fast and it’s not just dumb luck, strengthening math skills is worth a lot more than a buck. Staying on target and practicing math? It really does have an impact that lasts.

Music Lessons

The String Family

Maybe you’ve never really considered yourself very musical. Maybe you sing like a nightingale. Maybe you quit the flute three months after you picked it up. That’s okay. Music is in all of us, and even just by popping a CD into the stereo, or turning on your mp3 player, we’re tapping into its power. Students tap into the power of music as they learn to recognize the voices in the string family, find out that pitch doesn't always involve a baseball, learn just what sheep, horsehair, rattlesnake tails, and violins have to do with each other, and strum sweet sounds from their own washtub bass.

Art Lessons

Falling For Leaves

The wind is on fire with flame colored leaves dancing and twirling before bowing low, and still lower to finally touch the earth. Autumn has come and trees are slowly unveiling their branches. Where did all those brilliant colors come from? Were they there all along? Students uncover the secrets of leaves and get inspired to create some shapely art of their own in this colorful fall lesson.

Getting Your Hands on Art

Adobe houses, cool and warm colors, and modern art skies. In these two simple projects, that yield stunning results, students enjoy the slick powder feeling of pastels on their hands as they develop their hand eye coordination, creativity, problem solving skills, critical thinking abilities, and boost their self-confidence.

Humans and Art: Caves of Wonder

Humans make art. Sometimes we put it on a wall, other times we put it in a museum, and occasionally we put it in a cave where it stays lost for thousands of years until someone falls down a hole and discovers it. In this lesson students act as modern explorers and archeologists as they journey through the lost caves of Lauscaux and interpret the meaning behind the beasts on the walls. Then as paleolithic painters themselves they create their own cave art and tell the story of its creation and discovery.

Nishikigoi (Koi) Living Jewels

Unlock the mystery of the origins of a species. Students follow the fascinating history of the koi from their humble mud sucking beginnings as dinner-table-destined-bottom-feeding-carp in ancient rice fields through their rise to priceless possessions of royalty and bringers of luck and wisdom. Mendel wasn't the only one experimenting with genetics, humble rice farmers in Japan were some of the earliest genetic manipulators, creating living jewels from their convenient protein source. In honor of the living koi, students will create lovely colorful carp of their own.

Hummingbirds Art & Science

With hearts that beat from 500 to more than 1200 times per minute, wings that buzz at as much as 52 beats per second and respiration that can clock in at up to 600 breaths per minute hummingbirds are truly some of the most incredible creatures on the planet. Students delve deep into the lives of these featherweights, making their own (edible) hummingbird nests, carving out birdbaths, finding out just how flight feathers help with flight, and learning to identify different species. Then they follow the flight path and discover if a ruby-throated hummingbird can really fly 500 miles over the Gulf of Mexico with no food or rest and make their own feeder to welcome the intrepid birds home. And at the end of the journey, students craft their own brilliantly feathered friends.