Connecticut State Department of Education

Teacher of the Year Ceremony
Due to inclement weather, the Teacher of the Year Ceremony has been postponed to December 16, 2025 from 5-7pm. Doors will open at 4pm. The Ceremony will take place at the Bushnell Theater in Hartford, and the order of events will remain the same.

Connecticut Core Standards

Lesson Plans - Science

Lesson Plans for Grades K-5

Grade Title
1 Construct a Boat & Make it Float – Construction, Trial and Error, and Boat Revisions 
2 A Butterfly is Patient
2 Finding Evidence: "The Wonders of Nature" (Liben)
3-5 The Water Cycle
4 Close Reading of The Life and Times of the Ant

Lesson Plans for Grades 6-8

Grade Title
6-7 A Tale of Four Cities: Using Data to Model Variations in Regional Climate in the Western United States
6-8 Template for Integrating the NGSS and Common Core into Lesson Plans – Photosynthesis Lesson
6-8 Galileo – Revealing the Universe
7 The Omnivore’s Dilemma–The Secrets Behind What You Eat by Michael Pollan
7-8 Natural Selection and the Development of Antibiotic Resistance
7-8 Can Dogs Smell Cancer?
8 The Energy of Ocean Waves
8 Where Did the Water Go? - Watershed Study

Lesson Plans for Grades 9-12

Grade Title
9-10 Unraveling Earth’s Early History
9-10 Solar Cookers
9-12 For the Sake of Argument - Writing Persuasively to Craft Short, Evidence-Based Editorials
11-12 Analyzing Floods - Understanding Past Flood Events and Considering Future Flood Events in a Changing Climate
11-12 Albert Sabin and Bioethics - Testing at the Chillicothe Federal Reformatory
11-12 Learning from Disaster - Exploring the Ebola Epidemic
11-12 Mixed Signals: Exploring the Science Behind Nutrition and Disease