Browse lesson plans

Design technology: Children's engineering

This unit includes design technology projects linked to major themes in engineering. All the lessons and activities support national and state standards. They include materials lists, procedures, student data sheets, and assessment strategies. The lessons vary in grade level and can be modified up or down.

Format: lesson plan (multiple pages)

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Balance beam discoveries

This lesson encourages students to explore another model of multiplication, the balance beam, and another relationship, the inverse of multiplication. This exploration leads naturally into representing multiplication facts in equation form. In addition... (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 3–4 Mathematics)

Provided by: Illuminations

Balancing

In this lesson, the fourth of a six-part unit from Illuminations, students are encouraged to explore another model of subtraction—the balance. This model leads naturally to recording with equations. Students use actual and virtual pan balances in... (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 1–2 Mathematics)

Provided by: Illuminations

Balancing discoveries

This lesson, one of a six-part unit from Illuminations titled “Do It with Dominoes,” encourages students to explore another model of addition, the “balance” model. The exploration also involves recording the modeled addition facts... (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade K–2 Mathematics)

Provided by: Illuminations

Block pounds

In this lesson from Illuminations, students explore the use of variables as unknowns as they solve for the weights of objects using information presented in pictures. They also model situations that involve the addition and subtraction of whole numbers,... (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 1–2 Mathematics)

Provided by: Illuminations

Keeping in balance

In this lesson for grades 1 and 2, one of a four-part unit from Illuminations titled “Exploration of a Balance,” students participate in activities in which they focus on patterns and relations that can be developed from the exploration of balance,... (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade K–1 Science)

Provided by: Illuminations

Maintaining the balance

In this lesson for grades 3 and 4, one of a four-part unit from Illuminations titled “Exploration of a Balance,” students participate in activities in which they focus on patterns and relations that can be developed from the exploration of balance,... (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 3 Mathematics)

Provided by: Illuminations

What balances?

This lesson encourages students to explore another meaning of subtraction, the balance. They use subtraction facts to generate related addition facts and explore at the concrete level the idea of subtraction as the inverse of addition. Through a series... (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade K–2 Mathematics)

Provided by: Illuminations