Blackberry pie, blackberry cobbler ... what other recipes use blackberries? Scholars hunt for an interesting blackberry recipe to copy and share with friends after using the novel study for A Taste of Blackberries by Doris Buchanan...

What doesn't break you makes you stronger. Katy, in What Katy Did, learns this lesson the hard way. After a terrible accident and a long recovery, Katy becomes what she always wanted to be—good and kind. Scholars learn about Katy's...

Using the book Swamp Monsters by Mary Blount Christian, young readers discuss key vocabulary terms and make predictions about swamp monsters. They complete a Cloze activity, explore past-tense verbs, and categorize vocabulary words.

Advanced beginner to intermediate ESL level learners, use English to communicate in social settings by conducting a survey. They ask questions to develop new vocabulary and build communication skills.

Finding approximate solutions to word problems allows users to assess the reasonableness of their answers. In a well-paced lesson, the class rounds numbers to estimate the solutions. They explain their thinking and determine if the...

Students work together to build models of prairie plants. Using the model, they estimate the height and then measure them using metric and standard units. They write a fraction to represent their part of the whole set and compare and...

Students examine the building of the I & M canal in Chicago. Using the internet, they research the lives of the individuals who worked on the construction and develop a timeline of events. They explore the impact of the canal on...

Students locate Africa and share their knowledge of the continent, then read a news article about Oprah Winfrey building a school in South Africa. In this current events lesson, the teacher introduces the article with a discussion and...

 For this geometry lesson, learners read The Greedy Triangle and use geoboards to construct geometric shapes. They identify the number of sides and angles each shape has.

Students, assessing a variety of formatting tools with Microsoft Word, utilize a bank of vocabulary words to make a personal dictionary of nouns. They classify nouns for people, places, things and ideas and separate them into common and...

Looking to introduce some text-based questions into your ELA lessons? Practice the kinds of skills the Common Core demands with the seven text-based questions and the essay prompt provided here. Designed to be a three-day instructional...

Sharpen your pencil and grab a ruler, it's time to draw some quadrilaterals! Given the definition of a parallelogram, rectangle, and rhombus, learners draw examples and nonexamples of each figure. The three definitions are...

Do young people have rights in the United States? Your pupils will not only learn the answer to this important question, but will also build vocabulary through cloze activities and gain a thorough introduction to the Bill of Rights.

Learners examine how the Inca communicated over large distances. They locate the Inca Empire on a map, define key vocabulary terms, play the game, 'telephone,' and create a quipu to show the year they were born.

The instructional activity starts out with a brain drain, which is a great way to get students to activate prior knowledge and build lasting connections. They tell everything they know about prime factorization, use their knowledge to...

Designed with many of the Common Core standards in mind, this 10-lesson unit is brimming with ELL strategies, teacher's notes, and the best of core instructional methods for teaching the common elements of folktales, and exploring...

Young scholars identify at least one country where the Spanish language is spoken, describe similarities and differences between Spanish, Mexican, and Puerto Rican families, and practice speaking the Spanish words for several family...

In addition to the catchy title, this lesson plan provides upper graders an opportunity to more closely scrutinize the attributes of plane figures. In particular, they focus on the similarity of different shapes. Both whole-class and...

Compute fuel economy and gas mileage. Why? So you can teach rates and ratios, of course! Middle schoolers calculate the rate of miles per gallon for various vehicles. They research each vehicle, its mileage per gallon, and cost per...

Ideas like this are highly effective for helping build better reading comprehension. The class listens to an excerpt from a grade-appropriate text, and they discuss what clues or words helped them visualize the scene. They then read a...

A getting-to-know-you activity that is perfect for the beginning of the year! Kids craft their portrait out of clay, then make a mobile by dangling ceramic representations of things they love. This project builds self-awareness, motor...

Play with clay while building finger dexterity and important sculpting techniques. Learners make camel containers while they practice throwing and molding clay. Fun camel facts make this an interdisciplinary art lesson.

Use this podcast lesson to familiarize scholars with the characteristics, history, and cultural implications of idioms. As part of the Walking Classroom curriculum, kids listen to a 12-minute podcast as they walk around campus. If you...

A reading of Mark Twain’s The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County not only offers pupils an opportunity to practice their listening skills but also provides them with examples of dialectic speech. This is the gol’derndest lesson...