Design an informational brochure to urge people to move to a specific community. The purpose of this activity is to expose pupils to expository writing. After creating the brochure, they write a three-paragraph persuasive or...

Here's a fresh approach that combines research, business and personal letter writing, and creative story telling. Student groups research different decades in the life of a famous Japanese astronomer. They then craft a decade fact sheet,...

Students determine what grammar is and how they have learned it. In this creative writing lesson, students read "Style' Gets New Elements," and respond to the discussion questions. Students then present grammatical rules to one another...

Can your pupils change the world? Explore this question with Ben Harper's song "With My Own Two Hands" and John Mayer's "Waiting for the World to Change." After listening to the songs, they discuss the tools at their disposal for...

Children have rights! Exploring those rights and using media to express those rights is the focus of this Media Awareness Network lesson plan. Although some of the law links reflect the Canadian Articles of The Convention, the majority...

Students examine and create persuasive essays. For this writing lesson students engage in activities that allow them to understand how a persuasive essay is constructed so they may compose their own.

Examine the works of visual and performing artists with upper graders. Using the works, they identify the comparisons among the techniques used. They will also review the six traits of effective writing and keep a writing journal...

Your principal won't mind graffiti, as long as it's on a virtual wall. Scholars use the Scratch block-based computer language to write a program on graffiti. The program lets users place certain designs on a wall. 

Focus on prepositions and prepositional phrases, is the goal of this game of charades. The clues are based on maps that they have drawn out of a hat, and describe how to get to a certain location in a town using prepositions. Note:...

Learners read and decorate three Dolch sight words. In this literacy lesson, students write three Dolch sight words on a paper. They outline the words six times with the color of the rainbow.

The teacher reads the story "If I Were An Ant" by Amy Moses. The students then each create a page in a classroom book about what a small object would look like if he/she was an ant. The student writes about their chosen object and then...

Students explore a computer-aided design program. Students chart out roller coaster design, computer graphics and architecture. Students focus on understanding the connections between mathematics, science, technology and innovation.

Financial literacy is generally focused on personal spending and saving, but consider an opportunity to talk to your pupils about how charitable giving can also factor into money management and how it can enhance life for both...

In this 2-day lesson focused on exponents, middle schoolers will cross the curriculum by engaging in science, history and language arts activities. Exponential growth will be explored using grains of rice on a chess board. Exponential...

To describe the ecological and aesthetic importance of the Potomac River, Middle schoolers name the ways in which the river's values are jeopardized and explain the purpose of Earth Day. They write a response to a newspaper article in a...

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,...

Third graders discover how to write diamante poems and review the parts of speech contained in them. After writing poems about their teacher, they create ones about themselves. The poems, assessed for creativity and handwriting, are then...

Scholars read Maniac Magee and create epitaphs for each of the major characters using precise words reflecting the individual characters personality and nature. They will learn what an epitaph is and practice writing their own. They can...

Violence and human suffering, as represented in art and film, are the focus of an investigation of the power of visual images and the moral implications of such representations. Class members examine “Guernica,” Pablo Picasso’s massive...

Children create crazy crayons they made to sort and construct a floor bar graph. Then, using technology resources, they make a simple bar graph to compare the top four colors produced. Students will then interpret the printed graph by...

What is a sentence? Second graders will explore the components of a sentence in the ten lessons of this unit. The subject, predicate, the process of proofreading, punctuation, and sentence sequence are analyzed in this unit. Handouts and...

Students analyze various inspirational statements from graduation commencement speeches, and then write their own speeches that reflect lessons to help students succeed in the next stage of life.

Students analyze the Constitution's wording regarding impeachment and discuss the impeachment process. They then design a survey based on student-generated questions about the charges against President Clinton and write a letter to the...

Students create their own opinion polls about local policy issues. They evaluate how anonymity may affect responses. In groups, students experience the process of developing polls, focusing on student-related topics. Students must...