Icebreakers and Team-Builders
Icebreakers and team-building activities will help your students get to know each other. These resources will help your students build rapport.
Download Activities
Earth Day
For Earth Day, explore ways to take care of the planet. Free lessons in this collection include:
- How Can I Take Care of the World?: Sing along to “Go Green” to learn what it means to reduce, reuse, and recycle.
- People’s Everyday Lives Affect Earth’s Systems: Students identify examples of how daily activities affect Earth’s systems. They then research how daily activities impact the Earth.
- Cleaning Up Ocean Plastics: Dig into the problem of plastic pollution. Then, explore engineering solutions, including a snail robot that cleans up microplastics.
Election Year
Cover voting, good citizenship, and the foundations of government with these free TCI lessons, including:
- NEW! Touring Washington, DC: Go on a virtual field trip to Washington, D.C. Explore the important buildings in the U.S. capital and learn why this place is important.
- NEW! What Does the President Do?: Examine a primary source of a president’s daily dairy. Then, explore the many roles of a modern president.
- Primaries vs. Caucuses: What’s the difference between a caucus and a primary election? Make sense of the presidential nomination process, then research caucuses or primaries in your state.
National Financial Literacy Month
From budgeting to using credit wisely, K-12 teachers can prepare their students for their financial futures with TCI’s free lessons and easy-to-use resources.
- Using Money Wisely: Play a budget game! Allocate tokens to categories and make tough choices.
- Understanding Entrepreneurship: Interview an entrepreneur, then share findings with the class.
- Money, Banking, Saving, and Investing: Act as financial advisors and make recommendations to clients.
- Financial Literacy Tools: Identifying Job Skills, Creating a Monthly Budget, and Using a Credit Card Responsibly
Current Events Toolkit
The Current Events Toolkit provides a structure for bringing current events into the curriculum. It includes strategies for navigating current events with your students. Resources include:
- Strategies: Guide students through identifying perspectives, analyzing new stories, and discussing current events.
- Graphic organizers: Main Idea /Detail, 5W’s, Evaluation Web
- Class discussions: Sentence starters, speaking and listening checklists, and more
Arbor Day
Celebrate Arbor Day by learning its history and how scientists are studying trees to understand and preserve the environment. Resources in this collection include:
- A Special Day for Trees: Learn about the history of Arbor Day, then become an erosion detective!
- Getting into the Treetops: Explore how scientists use technology to study trees high above the ground, then plan your own investigation to learn more.
- Land Use Conflict in the Amazon Rainforest: Create and present news reports about groups with competing interests in how to preserve and use the resources of the Amazon rainforest.
- Featured Career Profiles: Environmental scientists, foresters, chief sustainability officers.
Explore Icebreakers
Actionable toolkits, checklists, teaching strategies, and more – explore our collection of resources to build a cooperative classroom environment!
