The language of the Constitution can feel quite ominous to young learners, but there are a variety of strategies you can utilize to help your class grasp the important concepts and ideals in our nation's founding document. This lesson...

Show your class what poem the famous line "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways" comes from. Class members read Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poem and respond to one question with a short paragraph. The question asks learners to use...

Writing the conclusion of an essay can often seem like a superfluous or daunting task. Support your young writers in understanding the various types and purposes of a conclusion paragraph, such as summarizing key points of a paper or...

Check out a resource made up of two separate exercises. The first page lists a series of higher-level questions about "The Inn of Lost Time" by Lensey Namoika. Use the questions to encourage discussion or as an assessment. Since they...

If you are reading works by Walter Dean Myers in your class, this resource might be worth a look. Included here are activities and discussion questions for Malcolm X: By Any Means Necessary, Somewhere in the Darkness, Scorpions, Fallen...

Hook your class into an exploration of and discussion about violence in video games with a cute animal clip and a video game trailer. After a quick discussion about how media can affect mood, class members read a related article and...

This eBook, part of a series devoted to instruction for grammar and conversation, focuses on the future tenses—the future simple, future continuous, future perfect, and future perfect continuous in positive, negative, and question forms.

Take your pick of 16 graphic organizers, all designed for persuasive writing. Some provide space to prepare an entire essay or speech, while others provide space for brainstorming and organizing ideas before settling on...

Activate your pupils' thinking before reading chapter five of Ordinary People. Learners decide whether they agree or disagree with six statements and discuss their ideas in small groups. They then read chapter five and determine...

The toss of a die determines what questions your pupils will answer in this lesson plan. Learners respond to questions based on Bloom's taxonomy, discussing The Adventures of Tom Sawyer with classmates along the way. They finish by...

What time is it? Language learners are introduced to time vocabulary with a series of activities, songs, and games that let them practice formulating and answer questions about time.

Over, under, beside. Language learners practice using prepositions of location to answer the question, "Where is . . ."

When you ask a fourth grader to write a sentence in the past perfect progressive tense, there might be some confusion. But with a presentation that features several different verb tenses, along with examples and a handy timeline, your...

To make vocabulary words drawn from So Far from the Bamboo Grove memorable, class members select a word from the provided list and incorporate this word in a joke, story, or performance.

Truth or factitious? Users of an engaging interactive test their ability to identify whether an article is real or fake news.

Begin the new year with a two-part activity that asks class members to formulate a resolution and to write about someone or something they are proud of. These statements are then attached to a snowflake and a mandala which they decorate.

What actually happens at a press conference? Make sense of the mayhem with a mock press conference activity designed to promote media literacy. Individuals participate as either members of the press or the governor's office to examine...

The concept of pronoun-antecedent agreement is much easier to understand with solid examples. An explanatory presentation provides an overview of pronoun-antecedent agreement, as well as a series of sentences that feature different...

Compose a Valentine's Day poem! Practicing their rhyming skills, scholars follow the traditional format to create a happy poem for a friend or family member. 

If your students made a list of their favorite things, would writing poetry be on it? After this poetry writing lesson, it might! Young writers make a list of what they like—or what they don't like—before crafting the list into...

How does a new version of a Shakespearean play change in the adaptation process? Use this New York Times' Learning Network lesson to consider texts that have been produced in different media. Middle schoolers examine the latest...

Study opposing viewpoints with this instructional activity, which examines President Bush's September 2004 address at the United Nations. Middle schoolers study the text of the address, and then stage formal debates arguing for or...

Students view image of Bridgeport Community Protest, discuss event depicted in image, and demonstrate knowledge of protest by organizing and carrying out an actual protest or demonstration.

Is the circus a form of theater? Read "A City of Clowns? What Else Is New?" to sway your class that a circus, is indeed, a theatrical performance. Critical thinkers compare/contrast various forms of theater and identify what makes the...