Introduce your middle schoolers to the lives of past Native Americans. First, learners work together to put photographs in a sequence. Then, using their sequence, they create stories to share with the whole class. No matter how old your...

Dead trees provide nutrients for the soil, food for animals, protection and a home for organisms, a seed-bed for new trees, and a place for nitrogen-fixing bacteria to live. In the activity, pupils collect decaying logs, expose them to a...

What makes a good monarch? Elementary and middle schoolers examine popular symbols of the British monarchy before designing a television advertisement about the qualities needed in a monarch. Next, they write poems using metaphors and...

The Harlem Renaissance if the focus of a carefully crafted, interdisciplinary unit designed to introduce middle schoolers to the contributions key figures made to American art and culture during the period. Class members select...

Celebrate Women's History Month with hands on-learning. The resource provides seven strategies to help educators teach Women's History Month, ranging from watching films to reading books written by women. Activities including writing...

The unit study of Angel Island Immigration Station concludes with scholars using information from the previous lessons to craft a news story about the Angel Island program.

Students complete a variety of poems that focus on many different literary techniques and styles. As part of this experience, students share their portfolios with adults in the school and at home.

Students create individual poems containing varied line lengths, punctuation, and rhythm, and explain how each contributes to overall effect of the poem.

Young scholars analyze how a poet uses language to capture creatures and draft a poem on a 'sinister' animal. In this poetry analysis lesson, students read Ted Hughes' poem 'Pike' and analyze pictures of pike fish. Young scholars use...

Seventh graders read a book of poems called "Out of the Dust". In groups, they research the Dust Bowl and how it affected people living through the Great Depression. Using the text, they identify the theme and key turning points and...

Students demonstrate their learning about Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers Union by writing a biopoem. They word process the poem.

In this grammar worksheet, students write acrostic poems using the first 5 letters of their first and last names and provide adverbs and propositions for each letter. Then they write sentences for each word.

Students create new words to convey their thoughts. They find, list and discuss the poetic devices used by the poet in creating his or her war poem and create their own war poems. They use sensory perception words and memory in...

Students brainstorm a list of stereotypes associated with the Hispanic or Latin culture. In groups, they use the internet to research issues of importance to the Puerto Rican community. They focus on the cultures that speak Spanish and...

A Six-Trait Writing instructional activity helps your middle schoolers liven up their word choice and shows them how to evaluate their own writing. Class members take a close look at the language used in poems by Shakespeare, Kipling,...

As the culminating project for a unit study of The House of the Scorpion, class members craft a multi-genre research paper to demonstrate not only their depth of knowledge of a topic of interest to them, but also their...

Students differentiate between fact and legend. In this Barbara Freitchie instructional activity, students read poetry and non-fiction accounts regarding the story of Freitchie. Students analyze the story of the American patriot to...

Students analyze 'Where I'm From' by George Ella Lyon. In this poetry lesson plan students examine the content and structure of the poem and mimic it to create a similar poem of their own.

Pupils explore emotions and memories in preparation for poetry writing. In this poetry lesson students use a graphic organizer and prompts to begin to describe a specific memory which they will turned into a poem.

Students explore what poetry is and certain aspects within it. They write their own knowledge and perceptions of poetry and the expand that knowledge and experience through listening to, reading, and writing poetry and exploring poetic...

Learners explore unit rate and ratio and discuss the relationship.

Learners explore the format of the following poetic forms: acrostic, haiku, cinquain, diamente, and free-verse.They create a handbook or anthology of these poetic forms, with at least one sample of original work in each format.

Young scholars examine examples of literary terms in poetry. Then they choose two songs, write out the lyrics, and decipher what they think the artist is trying to say. Each student presents their song to the class and they cite examples...

Sixth graders read the books, The Invisible Thread: An Autobiography by Yoshiko Uchida and Baseball Saved Us by Ken Mochizuki about Japanese Americans during World War II. They hold discussions, take quizzes, and write essays about the...