Keep class members accountable for their own learning with a series of differentiated instruction strategies. From rubrics created by pupils to learning contracts written at the beginning of the year, the resource offers multiple ways...

Assess your class's understanding of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility with a fun and creative final project. Using what they have learned about the novel's characters, they create presentations featuring music and images that...

What a great lesson, upper graders are sure to love. They explore costume design and the relationships between theatre, culture, and history. They research three time periods, write a response about two of them, then create a composit...

Have your class explore alcohol awareness public service announcements. Provided are a detailed plan and a complete set of materials for doing just this. Learners are exposed to a series of approaches and advertisements and decide which...

Do your young readers have difficulty visualizing what they read? Although the activity described here is for The Call of the Wild, the strategy could be used with any narrative. At the conclusion of each chapter of Jack London’s novel,...

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...

Following the method used by Truman Capote, class members research a major character from his novel, In Cold Blood, and then conduct an interview with that character. The resulting research is used to craft a newspaper article about the...

Explore writing techniques by analyzing newspapers and magazines with middle schoolers. They will collaborate in small groups to read local news stories and identify the main ideas and author's intent. They also utilize an information...

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...

Use this New York Times lesson to research contemporary leaders in the African-American community. After reading the article "Blacks Weigh the Impact of the Post-Jackson Years," middle and high schoolers discuss the varying viewpoints of...

The Olympic Games are indeed a significant and far-reaching cultural component in our international community today, but from where do they originate? Where do our traditions stem from, and how do we choose the sports that constitute...

Three lesson plans are shown on this site, two of which pertain to Read 180. Start the year with the first instructional activity by having your learners create a brochure about themselves. In the computer lab, they find clip art and...

Creative projects are a great way to engage your class and can be a fun way to assess mastery! Learners create brochures and postcards that might have been created by and for travelers to ancient Mayan cities. They read and discuss the...

Kindergarteners practice new words through listening to and reading the science book Butterfly by Jenny Feely. The teacher will first choose words that are essential for understanding the text. Then, using pictures in the text,...

Learners use their journals in order to predict what will happen in a text for a prereading strategy. In this prereading lesson plan, students list the 5 strategies they learn and use them before they read.

A quintessential resource for teaching an elementary unit on the first Thanksgiving addresses a variety of skills, including informational reading, critical thinking, comparing and contrasting facts, technology tools, and historical...

Before you jump into this lesson, be aware there is little to work with. That being said, the ideas are solid and will be brought to life with a little Halloween spirit. Learners examine horror as a sub-genre, and contemplate what makes...

Students construct and interpret a "favorite classroom books" graph. In this literacy and math graphing lesson plan, students choose a reduced size copy of the book cover that corresponds with the book(s) they chose to read during their...

Integrate history, math, and art into a study of The Grapes of Wrath with a series of activities that ask learners to investigate the social, political, economic, and environmental factors at play during the 1930s. Designed to be used...

Extra, extra, read all about it! Scholars research information on endangered species and produce a news report to share their findings with the rest of the class. In groups, they then consider engineering solutions to problems on habitat...

Americans may think of Mount Everest as a region dedicated to adventurous hikers, but many cultures have flourished there! Learners read informative books, watch videos, participate in classroom discussion, analyze folk tales, and...

Free speech, privacy, and cyberbullying are the focus of a series of activities that prompt class members to engage in discussions about these interrelated topics. They view a segment from PBS’s series on bullying, read...

Upper elementary and middle schoolers recognize symbols that influence the choices that we make consciously or unconsciously in everyday life. They look at the symbols and choices that others make. They identify and apply knowledge of...

Students practice reading comprehension strategies. In this literacy and science lesson, students read a non-fiction article about wood and locate main ideas and details. Students construct a card game using information taken from the text.