Everyone has a different opinion about the characters they read about in books. Have your class explore forming an opinion and finding evidence to support it as they read and discuss what they think about a particular character. They...

What is family? Challenge your scholars to write an encompassing definition of what this word means to them. After reading "It May Be a Family Matter, But Just Try to Define Family," class members discuss the emotional issues surrounding...

Jump back into expository writing and analysis at the start of a new school year! Start with a review of an authors' stylistic choices in diction, syntax, treatment of subject matter, and figurative language. Writers choose a text to...

Explore a basic pattern to practice writing expressions. In collaborative groups, learners examine a contextual pattern and write an expression to model it. The task encourages groups to describe the pattern in multiple ways.

If you are planning a unit on memoir and autobiographical narrative, you should consider this resource. Using Internet research skills, pupils review works by James Frey and Henry David Thoreau. In response to these works, learners...

Though the discrete content here is a pair of New York Times articles about a 1998 military strike on Iraq and the coincident impeachment by the House of Representatives of then-President Clinton, this detailed plan for creating,...

Discover relationships between linear and nonlinear functions. Initially, a set of data seems linear, but upon further exploration, pupils realize the data can model an infinite number of functions. Scholars use multiple representations...

Lead your class in a discussion about how they believe money influences politics. After reading "Go Ahead, Try to Stop K Street" from the New York Times, they evaluate the claims in the article about the current lobbyist scandal in...

Discuss and share opinions on violent computer games. After reading an article, your class will discover the controversy surrounding online games. They analyze the suitability of computer games and write their own letters to a developer...

Take some intellectual fun and apply it to the concept of multiplying expressions together. A guide models how to break two numbers into an area model to multiply together in pieces similar to FOILing. The rest of the puzzles consist of...

Learners discuss the difference between designed and natural elements. After reading an article, they discover information about current controversies in evolutionary science. In groups, they research and write dialogues between two...

Students share their opinions on the war in Iraq. After reading an article, they identify the thoughts of President Bush on the conflict. In groups, they share their opinions for and against current United States policy in Iraq and the...

Students examine events of historical significance in music. In groups, they are given pieces of sheet music and work together to try to determine the social and political conditions of the time based on the lyrics. They write their own...

Students investigate the influence of fast food brand names on food choices and analyze the factors that contribute to branding preferences. They write an opinion essay on the corporate responsibility to influence food choices.

Learners create and test a hypothesis about cell division. After observation of Frog Egg cell division, students write obervations and refine process and hypothesis. The use of scientific method, group work and inquiry are fostered by...

Explore the effect of outliers through an analysis of mean, median, and standard deviation. Your classes examine and compare these measures for two groups. They must make sense of a group that has a higher mean but lower median compared...

Number patterns can seem mysterious. Help your learners unravel these mysteries as they complete an intriguing task. Through examination, collaborative groups determine that they are able to produce all integers above a certain...

Is it possible for a rectangle to have the same area and perimeter? If you disregard units, it happens! In a challenging task, groups work to determine the rectangles that meet these criterion. The hope is that learners will naturally...

If the fractions don't have a common denominator, make them have one. Learners first read and analyze a conversation of pupils trying to add 2/5 and 1/2. They compare the process of adding fractions to the process of adding quantities...

Fourth graders participate in a demonstration lesson using bubbles in which they determine that air fills the bubbles. Next, they work in small groups as they they experiment with the properties of air at separate work stations. After...

Students share opinions about the factors that contribute to or detract from their happiness. They create survey to determine how people in their community measure happiness, and write reflections on the relationship between money and...

Second graders study recycling. In this environment lesson, 2nd graders discuss how to sort trash, sort actual trash labeling it, and explore the trash writing new uses of each item of trash instead of throwing the...

Students are introduced to Trompe l'oeil art by a docent. Using that information, they compare and contast it with other forms of art they are familiar with and discuss their opinions with the class. They write a poem about their...

High schoolers are introduced to media literacy and deconstruction. They analyze the media's use of gender roles and body image. They voice their opinions about media messages and how to change them.