How To Use Our Lessons

How Our Lessons Were Designed

All of the lesson plans that you find on our website are designed to align with MN State Standards and Benchmarks for Social Studies, and are grade specific. Each of our lessons incorporates an Ethnic Studies Framework and utilizes the “Ignite / Chunk / Chew / Review” Lesson Format created by Zaretta Hammond (for more information, see “Lesson Template and Guiding Frameworks”). 

Each of our lessons incorporates assessments aligned with MN State Social Studies Standards and Benchmarks, and has an estimate for how long each lesson will take. The multiple forms of assessment given each day are provided to allow teachers to gauge comprehension of lesson content and adjust the lesson accordingly if needed. 

How To Use Our Lessons

Prior to facilitating one of our lessons, we recommend reading through the lesson, worksheets, and reading/video materials in full, as well as completing any relevant suggestions listed on our “Pause and Prepare” section. The “Pause and Prepare” section of each lesson plan is designed to help educators understand potentially unfamiliar topics and prepare for potential discussions that could arise in the classroom.

Before being listed on our website, each of our lessons has undergone a series of reviews by faculty experts, as well as by education professionals.

All of our lesson materials are free or open-access.

How to access our lesson plans

  1. Click the underlined, hyperlinked title of the lesson plan
  2. A new tab will open in your browser
  3. The new tab will be a Google Folder organized into additional folders:
    1. Instructional materials
      1. This is where you will find lesson plans and Google Slides
    2. Worksheets
      1. This is where you will find all worksheets and assignments associated with the lesson plan
    3. EL Vocabulary Lists & Video Transcripts
      1. Note: Only some of our lessons contain EL Vocabulary Lists & Video Transcripts at this time. If we include a video in our lesson, it will either have closed captions or provide transcripts.
  4. Optional: If you wish to further customize our slides (see below) or make further accommodations to our lesson plans to increase usability in your classroom, you can do so by copying the lesson plan into your own Google Drive and making revisions to the copy.

Making Accommodations

Our lesson plans are designed to try and accommodate multiple learning styles. However, no classroom or learner is the same, and it is likely that our lessons will require further accommodations to meet the specific needs of each classroom and individual students. Unfortunately, we do not have the capacity to include translations of our lesson materials at this time.

Videos

All videos that are incorporated in our lesson plans have closed captions, and we have provided transcripts available in our Google Drive.

Google Slides

All Google Slides that are incorporated into our lesson plans are in basic format, designed for maximum contrast between text and background in order to ensure usability with screen-readers. Teachers are encouraged to further design and customize the display of our slides based on what is accessible and relevant to their classrooms.