To middle schoolers, there's nothing worse than being excluded from a peer group. Developing important self-esteem skills can not only get them through awkward adolescent times, it can carry them through the rest of their lives as...

Here is a unique and innovative game which will help your charges learn the important skill of proofreading and editing their own writing. The class is divided up into groups, and each group uses actual samples of writing from students...

Self reflection is an important skill to reinforce in our children, and it's especially helpful to help them realize who they are in the context of their environment. A collection of lessons about self image and community encourage...

Reflection is the best teacher. Using the resource, scholars complete the final part of their end of unit assessment, the fourth section of their storyboard about an invention. Next, they track their progress using a self-reflection...

The intricate craft of narrative writing can make a happy story feel exuberant or a sad story feel devastating. With 42 extensive lessons that include poignant discussion questions, standards-aligned self-reflections, engaging writing...

"Immoral!" "Scandalous!" When published in 1899, Kate Chopin's The Awakening was not well received. The novel traces the tragedy of Edna Pontellier, who rebels against the strictures placed upon her as a woman and mother....

Entrance essays are the ultimate sales pitch! Show your seniors how to market themselves in the first of six college and career readiness lesson plans. Pupils discover the do's and don'ts of writing personal statements through research,...

Continue work on the two-piece poem that compares two characters from Esperanza Rising. Give class members a few minutes to finish their drafts. After they have a complete product, model how to critique and edit the poems with one group....

Let's work together! Scholars engage in the peer editing protocol, giving and receiving feedback on their draft opinion speeches. They then use classmates' feedback to begin working on their revisions. 

Dictionaries, thesauruses, word walls, oh my! Pupils use several resources to revise their position papers to include appropriate vocabulary. Then, after peer editing, scholars write the final drafts of their essays and self-assess using...

"Who am I?" is not only a great philosophical question that requires a lot of reflection but is also at the heart of a letter of introduction. The challenge, of course, is figuring out where to start. Middle schoolers get a little help...

Practice makes progress. Working in pairs, presenters rehearse and refine their presentation skills before the big day when they pitch their film choices. Rehearsing also allows for refining prompt cards based on peer feedback and...

After completing three body paragraphs of an argument essay about life's rules to live by from Bud, Not Buddy Christopher Paul Curtis, it's time to begin writing the introduction and conclusion. Independently, pupils draft the final two...

Get the word out about friendship, support, and a safe school community with a media literacy lesson about bullying. Young journalists investigate instances of bullying and take descriptive pictures as they compile a magazine to fight...

Here is lesson 5 from a 7 lesson unit on using blogging to create a community of writers. The aim of this lesson is to get students writing about what Archaeologists do and how they use material data to study the past. They compose a...

Following a brief video, two teams play against each other to read clues from a card and guess which occupation it describes. The team that guesses the most correctly wins. A quick-write poses several questions about one's dream job.

Academic goals can lead high schoolers toward bright futures. Get your class to think about where they want to be in 20 years and what they'll need to do to get there with this lesson plan. Learners fill out a brief questionnaire about...

A four-week leadership class is designed to help scholars develop the skills they need to become effective leaders. Pupils study the habits of highly effective people and apply these concepts to leadership. They investigate paradigm...

Are you a peace-keeper or a problem-solver? Explore conflict management styles through a lesson, fourth in a 15-part series, that combines individual assessment and collaborative work. Groups learn the basic tendencies of each style,...

Use these project guidelines as a start to designing your own class PowerPoint project and to consider what elements you would like to assign and assess in your class. While the resource begins with instructions for researching World War...

Assertive communication is an acquired skill. Teaching young people to ask for what they need and to believe that they have a right to ask is at the core of a unit on assertive communication. Over the course of the unit, middle and high...

What important facts about Dr. Seuss influenced the Read Across America movement...? This is the driving question of a research project that requires scholars to find information about Dr. Seuss' life and work. Class...

"Understanding Influences," a richly detailed, carefully scaffolded unit, asks middle and high school scholars to examine how internal and external factors like friends, media, and society influence their attitudes and...

What does your posture say about you? How can it affect the outcome of conflict resolution or negotiation? Show scholars the importance of nonverbal communication during the sixth in a series of 15 peacebuilding lessons. Learners work...