Class members conduct independent research to continue examining the consequences of the industrial organic food chain from Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma. Pupils learn about source credibility and effective search terms, then...

The best sandwiches aren't always edible. Pupils use a Quote Sandwich graphic organizer to plan paragraphs two and three of their position papers about the best food chain. Next, they begin drafting their body paragraphs for the mid-unit...

Where the Read Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls is rich with themes relating to love and family. Help your class to understand these themes with the series of reading activities included in this unit outline. Readers can keep a journal to...

Combine art and literature to teach greater themes and symbolic meaning. Using the plan outlined in this resource, expose your class to the story "Zebra" by Chaim Potok, conduct discussions about social issues and nicknames, and ask...

Women's voices are becoming more prominent in the world of literature, but for centuries, this wasn't the case. Young historians research a woman whose writings are considered to be lost, out of print, or forgotten. They develop an oral...

After a review of what suffixes are and how they are used, middle schoolers utilize a worksheet that is embedded in the plan to work in pairs to strengthen their understanding and skills in using these very important parts of our...

Does your class need some practice with writing yes or no questions in the present tense? This worksheet offers learners some choice as they pair activities with subjects to form questions. Pupils also write a quick response to each...

Demonstrate how to engage in a polite and professional conversation with this banking and interfacing lesson. Focusing on explanatory and informaitonal texts, middle schoolers write sentences using banking and finance terminologies....

These functional slides first show a list of parts of speech then a few sentences. In each subsequent slide, nouns are first highlighted, then pronouns on the next slide, and articles on the next slide, all using the same basic...

Work on who, what, where, and how with several grammar activities. Additionally, kids complete sentences with demonstrative (relative) pronouns based on whether items are close or far away.

Study the future progressive tense and other ways to express what will (or won't) happen. After completing affirmative and negative sentences in the imperative form, kids work on different exercises with going to and...

Find out what people did or didn't do with a grammar worksheet, which focuses on the past tense of different verbs. After kids use a word bank to complete a paragraph, they use the words did and didn't in several exercises...

Finish your homework! Kids work on imperative sentences with a grammar worksheet, which also focuses on future progressive tense (going to). After they use a word bank to write instructions for a person going on a trip, they fill in the...

What will your class do in the future? What won't they do? Practice the present continuous form for future arrangements (or future progressive tense) with several fill-in-the-blanks and sentence reordering activities. 

James Hurst's short story "The Scarlet Ibis" provides eighth graders with an opportunity to sharpen their literary analysis skills. After a close reading of the text, class members highlight and annotate parts of the dialogue and...

How can we make the world a better place? Help your class members become world citizens, active in philanthropy and the community around them. Use a comic book (included) to discuss the idea of philanthropy. Then, using the superhero...

Interviewing skills are important, even outside of a news reporter's desk or employer's office. Take your class through the process of interviewing people they don't know with a set of case studies featuring journalists and various...

Students explore the definition and derivation of the popular usage of abbreviations in the English language. Using worksheets and lecture materials, students provide meanings for the abbreviation "prenup" when used as an word. They...

Students improve writing skills by expanding their self-perceptions. Next, they develop idea lists for writing topics. Their ideas become the basis for a class newspaper. following the creation of a group composition, students write...

Work on narrative writing with this lesson, in which middle schoolers analyze the characters from a selected piece of literature and write narrative diary pieces as the character. They work to understand the point of view of the...

Celebrate diversity with a toolkit designed to inspire young poets to develop their own voices. After examining poems by African American poets, individuals craft their own poetic stories. The packet features poems by Gwendolyn Brooks,...

Students investigate the world of nonverbal communication by analyzing body language around the world.  In this cultural communication lesson, students research the Bulgarian language and how we could easily misinterpret their...

What do figures of speech have to do with financial literacy? Take an interdisciplinary look at The Berenstain Bears' Trouble with Money to find out. Young analysts read about the cubs' spendthrift ways and how Mama and Papa Bear...

Use this online English skills worksheet on a computer lab day in your language arts class. Young writers respond to twelve questions that require them to write more concise sentences. They may check suggested answers.