Do you want to live forever? After reading Kurt Vonnegut’s short story, “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow,” class groups adopt the roles of an ethics committee, product manufacturers, concerned scientists, and potential users of an...

Greed is the theme of this collection of multidisciplinary activities. As a class, read The West African folktale, Anansi Goes to Lunch by Bobby Norfolk, and take part in a grand discussion about it's plot and theme. Reinforce the...

Visit the Magic Treehouse and take your class on a trip through time with a reading of the children's book Mummies in the Morning. Using the story to spark an investigation into Egyptian culture, this literature unit engages...

A carefully crafted three-day activity integrates poetry and visual art. By analyzing and comparing Langston Hughes' poem "Mother and Son" and Romare Bearden's collage "The Dove," readers explore the theme of hope. The activity activates...

Explore works of art with your class by engaging them in a variety of artistic activities including papier-mache sculpture, poetry, performance, and more. After viewing and discussing four paintings of the sea by Robert Harris, learners...

Special educators know that it isn't all about the lesson plan, but rather the strategies and practices you choose to use. Here are a set of research-based practices and tips you can use to inform your choices when teaching learners who...

Who are we and what shapes our identities? Seventh graders work to answer this question as they learn how to write a memoir. Full of non-print resources and supplemental texts that range from fiction to non-fiction, scholars write their...

Something wickedly wonderful this way comes in a lesson that focuses on Macbeth. After a close reading of the play, class members craft a literary analysis essay in which they use evidence from the text to show how Shakespeare uses the...

Let's make colors! Your class will participate in a creative art project that introduces them to the concept of color blending and allows them to discover color combinations through exploration, trail, and error. First, the teacher will...

Kids create a clown out of shapes. They work to show emotions while practicing their drawing skills. Pupils use circles, triangles, squares, oil pastels, and their imagination to draw, color, and decorate a sad or happy clown. Tip: Have...

Do “memories need to be shared?" Are “memories…forever?" Would you give up memory to live in a perfect world? Introduce a unit centered on Lois Lowry’s utopian/dystopian novel The Giver with a series of activities that has groups...

The Harlem Renaissance if the focus of a carefully crafted, interdisciplinary unit designed to introduce middle schoolers to the contributions key figures made to American art and culture during the period. Class members select...

“It was a dark and stormy night.” Thus begins the 1830's novel Paul Clifford and, of course, all of Snoopy’s novels! Encourage young writers to craft settings for their stories that go beyond Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s often-mocked phrase...

Pupils make different crafts to represent spring and Easter. In this crafts lesson plan, students make cookies, nests, and bunnies out of their hands.

Give your students something to work for with this simple incentive program. Requiring children to earn three stars in order to meet their goal, this is an easy way motivate them to try their hardest and be on their best...

Conduct a written literary discussion and diminish stress about public writing. Class members, already arranged into literature circles, compose and post responses to novels, signing with initials or class number. The process continues...

Make predictions and recall details while reading A House For Hermit Crab. While you read the story, discuss aspects of the plot and encourage listeners to respond. Extension activities such as crafts, counting, puppets, and...

Have your class doing everything from reading literature, analyzing literary devices, identifying independent and dependent clauses, discussing, and writing creatively with the rich resource found here. After a mini lesson on independent...

Young learners explore gender roles in advertising by taking an ad campaign they have seen which is specifically directed to one gender, and redesigning the campaign to target the opposite gender. After leading a guided discussion about...

Create a simulation of acid rain in your classroom with lemon juice and bean plants to help kids study the effects of pollution on plants. In addition, learners will listen to a story and write responses based on guiding questions.

Make analyzing the sequence of events in an informational text easy. Ask readers to craft a one-sentence summary of each paragraph in a document and create a text map. To demonstrate their understanding of the process, participants read...

C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength provides the model for using dreams in narrative writing. After a discussion of the purpose of dreams in Lewis’s tale, class members craft a story in which their dreams play an essential role.

After each of three viewings of a 45-second video, aspiring writers employ vivid adjectives and precise, strong verbs to "show, don't tell." First they compose a single sentence, then three, and finally a five-sentence paragraph. Repeat...

Reading, writing, and rings! A lesson from NASA combines space science with authentic reading and writing tasks. Included in this lesson are pre-reading activities, four mini informational booklets on Saturn, a structured...