This science and math lesson uses coated candy and water to create a rainbow on a plate. It takes a popular internet activity and modifies it for the classroom. It's extended by having students hypothesize if other temperatures of water will work and if different colors of the candies run faster than others. It also meets the math SOLs because students can calculate the cost of the experiment and/or create graphs of the results of the experiments.  You could extend this activity into art or English writing by having students draw their rainbows or write about what they saw happening on the plate as a report writing. You could have them take it a step further and do a creative writing about what they think is at the other end of the rainbow. 

 Each student writes a one paragraph summary of a chapter of a book and then illustrates their chapter. It can be used for a book the whole class is reading so then all of the summaries are collected and bound together to create a “summary book” of the book read. This activity can be used for both fiction and non-fiction books in any subject and any grade, although this activity is linked to upper primary SOLs. This activity assesses reading comprehension and practices all writing skills. It also includes Art SOLs, and if you have students create their final products on the computer, then you would be incorporating the Computer Technology SOLs as well. If it is used for a non-fiction text in a different content class, then the activity would also cover those SOLs. It can be used for EL classes in middle school also. 

As some of the foundational texts for beginning readers, fairy tales are a staple of many classrooms. This lesson allows students to engage with fairy tales from different regions around the world and compare important cultural elements of these stories.

In this lesson, students will begin to recognize how computers transmit information. Students will participate in a traditional telephone game recognizing the transmission of sounds, then students will gain an understanding of different ways to share information on devices. Email will be the focus as students will learn proper email etiquette and then students will practice sharing emails with different people in their classroom or community.

This lesson sequence offers students and teachers a way to explore gender and cultural identity through analyzing children’s literature and coding with Scratch, specifically exploring the importance of names to our identities. Through read-aloud activities and self-differentiated Scratch projects, students learn about the importance of names in reference to both gender and culture, and have a chance to explore and express ideas about their own names, brainstorm creating school environments supportive of diversity, and reflect on their own bravery and resilience. This sequence is broken into seven lessons, though your students may need additional class time to work on their projects.This lesson sequence is part of CodeVA's committment to the U.S. Department of Education "YOU Belong in STEM" initiative.