Engage conversation and explore the journey as you challenge young readers to interpret the german folktale, "The Fisherman and His Wife" written by literary brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm.

Learners view and analyze three different images related to the Battle of Lexington and Concord. They also answer a variety of questions in a graphic organizer to help keep the information straight.

Your new Day One lesson has arrived! Impress young scholars with your scientific super powers through an engaging lesson geared toward scientific thinking. Through a display of theatrics, you will debunk the scientific method as...

Pique your pupils' interest before reading Peter and the Starcatchers with an anticipation guide. Given a list of 10 statements, learners choose true or false based on what they think the book is about. They then discuss in small...

Bring the drama of Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea to class with a fun role-playing activity. Given a list of survival items, readers decide which items would be the most necessary for an adventure like...

After examining different perspectives on book banning, scholars select a book from a list of frequently banned books and research the controversies surrounding it. They then craft an argument about their chosen book, including arguments...

A growing demand for sustainable food systems comes from schools and even some cities. So what are some solutions? Scholars consider four different ways to approach sustainable food solutions and list the pros and cons of each. The fifth...

The eighth in a series of 23 life skills exercises focuses on self-awareness and respect. Groups record, on the provided worksheets, words and phrases that signal respect, and generate lists of behaviors that signal respect.

Christopher Columbus: hero or villain? Prepare class members for the debate with activities that asks them to think critically about how history is reported.

Test your pupils' reasoning skills with several activities and a quick mystery to solve. Learners watch and analyze a few video clips that demonstrate reasoning in action, practice deduction with an interactive and collaborative...

Do these items have the same ratio? Through a learning contract, pupils master proportions by practicing proportions via word problems, graphs, and with manipulatives. An exit ticket checks for understanding at the end of the...

Remodeling projects require more than just a good design — they involve complex fractions, too. To determine whether a tiling project will fit within a given budget pupils calculate the square footage to determine the number of...

Look before you leap! Learning how to analyze the risk involved before engaging in an activity is the focus of this lesson. Class members examine rules, both within their families and society at large, and consider why these boundaries...

"Warning: Conducting this lesson may be harmful." Such statements, called "Trigger Warnings," are the focus of a two-part lesson that looks at censorship, especially the pros and cons of trigger warnings. Class members read two articles,...

Though the Statue of Liberty welcomes political refugees to her shores, the welcoming sentiment has not always been reflected in the American citizenry. High schoolers read about the regrettable period in United States history...

Young sleuths don their trench coats, tip their fedoras, and grab their notepads to investigate one of four famous unsolved mysteries. After examining multiple primary and secondary sources related to their cold case, they propose a...

Common Core is all about getting your learners to open their minds and think about the why and how. This problem has them thinking about unknown numbers and their relationship with one another when we round and...

What does the French and Indian War have to do with the American Revolution? Following the war, Britain issued the Proclamation of 1763 in an attempt to limit the colonists' western expansion. To understand how the proclamation, the...

Twenty-one pieces of tagboard can lead your class to a greater understanding of integers when you use them to form a human number line. After creating this math tool, two strategies for adding and subtracting will have your...

Introduce pupils to the two types of reasoning, inductive and deductive. Classmates work in pairs or small groups to learn the difference between the two and apply these reasonings to develop valid conclusions. 

Celebrate April's National Poetry Month or enrich a poetry unit with a wealth of language arts material. Class members develop an oral interpretation of a poem and/or develop a podcast interview with a poet. 

Learning how to craft a cogent argument based on a solid claim, supported with evidence and solid reasoning, is an important life skill. Teach middle schoolers about argumentative writing with a lesson asking them to analyze the claims,...

If there is a conditional statement, then there is a hypothesis and conclusion. Pupils learn how to identify the parts of conditional statements. Class members continue to work with conditional statements and rewrite them in their many...

Did Smitty do it, or is he a victim? Sleuths apply their observation and reasoning skills to build a case for an argumentative paragraph. Class members closely observe a cartoon, make a claim, cite evidence from the image, and support...