New ReviewA 17-page Educator Guide is designed to support classroom discussions of Ken Burns' documentary on Ernest Hemingway. The guide includes background information on Hemingway's life, the themes found in his works, essential and discussion...

Bass drum, snare drum, tom-toms, cymbals. Perched behind their drum sets, wielding their drum sticks and wire brushes, drummers lay the grove and are the heartbeat of a band's performance. A dynamic lesson introduces young musicians to...

What does the data say? Using provided voter data from the 2016 presidential election, scholars describe the data and identify questions they could answer by analyzing it. Learners then construct tables and use them to determine whether...

Are you looking for a timely, engaging project-based learning activity for 21st-century learners? Here's a fine one. A carefully scaffolded, richly detailed plan asks scholars, working individually or in small groups, to create original...

The Paradise Papers, a year-long research project from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism (ICIJ) exposed how political leaders, business people, and wealthy individuals used offshore entities to avoid taxes and hide...

Boost physical activity as well as concept proficiency with brief bursts of movement. Before taking a test, scholars vote on five exercises to complete from a set of 8 cards. After two minutes, learners begin their work with heightened...

Teach the importance of showing gratitude at any age with a teacher's guide comprised of thirty activities. Browse the extensive table of contents to find the array of exercises designed to meet the needs of your learners. Scholars take...

Using the announcements of presidential candidacies, pupils consider how contenders make their initial arguments to the public. A worksheet helps structure collaborative work to analyze 10 video clips. Writing prompts allow for extension...

It's that time of year, and the year. Once again the race is on for the White House. It's important that young voters, and would-be voters, understand the process for becoming the United States President. Class members research the...

Take a step back to Algebra II. The first lesson plan in a series of 23 asks scholars to remember working with quadratic equations with complex solutions. Pupils apply polynomial identities to complex numbers and work examples that show...

Confirmation bias makes it difficult to overcome our preconceived notions of others. That's the big idea in a lesson plan that teaches learners strategies to recognize and question their biases.

The focus of the second lesson in the Standing Up for Democracy unit is on the power of assumptions based on a single experience or point of view. Class members begin by journaling about assumptions others make about their identity based...

Get the lowdown on five different types of biases (confirmation, anchoring, blind-spot, negativity, outcome) with a activity that not only provides examples but also offers suggestions for how to detect and combat each type.

Famous as a horror story, as the first science fiction novel, Frankenstein is also a tale of ambition, a warning about unbridled science, and responsibility for actions. Readers consider what the tale says of the consequences of creation...

Identifying the tone of a piece of writing or the author's attitude toward the subject matter can be difficult for learners. Simplify the process with a activity that begins with skits, moves to songs and their lyrics, and then to...

Although Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X both work for equal rights, social change, and political empowerment, their approaches were radically different. To better understand these contrasts, class members compare King's "I...

Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is difficult to read and difficult to teach. The novel is so highly regarded that it is one of most often listed as an option for the AP Literature and Composition exam. The materials in this packet from PBS...

Toni Morrison's powerful and painful Pulitzer Prize winning novel Beloved is not easy to read or easy to teach. Here's a teaching guide, loaded with primary source materials, that gives readers the background they need to understand the...

Take a little bit away. The 10th section of an 18-part unit introduces subtraction of decimals. Scholars use a place value chart like they did with addition of decimals to organize and represent the problem. After using the place value...

Introduces addition of decimals by using unit notation to represent the problem. Pupils use a place value chart to decompose the numbers and then add before connecting to the standard algorithm. 

Go another round on rounding. Pupils refine their learned rounding skills in the eighth installment in an 18-part unit on decimals. The lesson takes away some of the previous scaffolding to encourage scholars to use the procedures that...

Which is bigger? The sixth installment in an 18-part series covering decimals provides a lesson on comparing decimals to the thousandths. Teachers use place value to help class members compare and order decimals. Instruction encourages...

There is more than one way to write a number. The lesson plan provides teachers with a way to teach reading and writing decimals to thousandths using standard, expanded, and unit forms. Pupils work through in-class and homework...

Convert with exponents. The fourth lesson in a series of 18 uses powers of 10 to convert within the metric system. Scholars use their fourth grade knowledge of conversions to write and use the conversion factors containing exponents....