Below are links that educators at the New London Community School District have found regarding Quadrant D lesson planning and Rigor and Relevance. Below the links are comments about the sites from New London teachers.

Lesson Plans

• Core Knowledge® Lesson Plans
• Smithsonian Education Educator Resources
• Alamo Tech Prep Gold Seal Lessons
  • Great source for gold seal lessons - the school is set up in professional learning communities, so it has a lot of integrated units
• Loyalsock Township High School Quadrant Lesson Examples
  • The links on the left side of their page contain examples of lessons organized by quadrant and by grade level
• We All Use Math Every Day™ Activities
  • Every day math website. It uses the TV series numb3rs in math and science. I have shown the program and then done the activity that goes with it. I like viewing the show first, since the students can see someone using math not in a classroom.
• Classroom Activities by Texas Instruments
  • This website is through Texas Instruments. The activities are submitted by teachers, so they work in the classroom. They also aid the students in using technology. The activities are not just for mathematics. (English, Social Studies, Science, and Languages)
• Verizon Thinkfinity Lesson Plan Index
  • It has a lot of lesson and activities. All subjects and grade levels are covered. All quadrants are also covered.
• ThinkQuest from the Oracle® Education Foundation
  • This is a GREAT looking website for teachers of grades 3 and up. Kids form a team with a teacher as their coach to create a webpage on any topic. They are in competition with kids from all around the world but all websites are published. This website is an idea for a teacher wanting to use this for quadrant D planning.
• designs for Rigor and Relevance by Peter Pappas
  • This website has actual lessons on it! Some look like a lot of fun but is for the upper elem. or even higher
• Gold Seal Lessons
  • The site is organized in two ways: by essential skills or by subject and grade level. There are 150 gold seal lessons. 75 for K-8 and 75 for 9-12.
• Iowa Model Core Curriculum
  • This site contains quadrant lesson examples for reading, math, and science
• Illuminations from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics
• St. Lawrence County Math Partnership Lesson Plans
  • Math lesson plans by grade level
• National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Lessons and Resources
• National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
  • a page full of great science websites, including cdc.gov, epa.gov, and chemicool.com
• General Chemistry Online
  • chemistry. Check out the exam guide.
• Chemistry Teaching Resources
  • LOTS of chemistry teaching resources
• Physics 2000
  • cool visuals for physics and basic discussion
• HHMI's BioInteractive
  • teacher friendly site with live web casts, lectures, virtual laboratories, interactive learning modules and much more.
• Interactive Algebra
  • algebra problems that kids can do online. Tells them when they’re correct. Shows them step by step how to do the problem when they’re wrong.
• Shodor Interactivate
  • great interactive site based on middle school math. Great for reviewing concepts in algebra, geometry and basic math.
• Algebra Flashcards
  • Great interactive site that makes a game out of basic algebra using flashcards.
• Federal Reserve Education
  • Great interactive website on everything money
• Mymoney.gov
  • more financial planning information
• Younginvestor.com from Columbia Management
  • Informative site for students learning about personal finance.
• Cells Alive!
  • Wonderful biology site with lots of video clips and interaction.
• The Biology Project from the University of Arizona
  • Great biology sits with stuff for teachers, students, cool stuff.
• CIA World Factbook
  • Very informative site. Info for every country on the planet.
• National Geographic Forces of Nature
  • everything you always wanted to know about earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes and volcanoes.
• WebQuest.Org - Search for WebQuests
  • A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented lesson format in which most or all the information that learners work with comes from the web.
• Kingdomality
  • Ever want to know what role you would have played if you lived in Medieval Times?
• Breaking News English Ready-to-use ESL/EFL Lessons
  • Current events lesson for ESOL students. Easy and hard version which includes a listening option.
• McREL Lesson Plans
  • Links to selected lesson plans and other resources that are helpful for curriculum planning, including activities developed at McREL for specific benchmarks within the Compendium. Each subject area is organized by topic.

Rigor and Relevance Information

• Creating High Rigor/Relevance Lessons (.pdf)
  • Information about Quadrant D lessons, with a few examples
• Bloom's Taxonomy
  • As teachers we tend to ask questions in the "knowledge" catagory 80% to 90% of the time. These questions are not bad, but using them all the time is. Try to utilize higher order level of questions. These questions require much more "brain power" and a more extensive and elaborate answer.
• Loyalsock Township High School Rigor and Relevance Resources
  • The Rigor & Relevance Handbook published by the International Center for Leadership in Education, Inc. contains many strategies to help teachers in the classroom. The links to the on this page contain material that was scanned from the handbook and will provide teachers with additional tools for use in classroom instruction.
• Excerpt from How to Design Gold Seal Lessons (.pdf)
• Leading for Rigor, Relevancy and Literacy Presentation (.pdf)
• Leadership for Rigor and Relevance (.pdf)
• Successful Schools: From Research to Action Plans (.pdf)
  • I like the characteristics of successful schools... See how many of these our school is doing! The ten platforms for success could give us ideas of where we should be heading with completing our Quad D's and Gold Seals.
• The Education Challenge (.doc)
  • This is an article that was written by Dagget himself. It is a good reference on Rigor, Relevance, and lays the framework for essentially why quadrant D lessons are crucial to step up our students.
• 2005 Model Schools Conference Pre-conference Presentation (.ppt)
  • I looked at this website for an overview of what rigor and relevance was. It gave a nice slide show/ power point presentation.
• designs for Rigor and Relevance Resources
  • This website has ways to use and make rubrics/assessments, graphic organizers, and other teaching tools.