Play the game of Tag and differentiate between plants and animals. Explore the characteristics of plants. Identify the major parts of plants (e.g., seeds, stem, pistil) and describe their basic functions. Compare the requirements of some...

Students explore how language shapes debate by researching the names and tags both advocates and opponents use when discussing a topical issue. For homework, they create name collages and write prose poems.

Here is an app version of a powerful tool that allows you and your students to have one place where you can capture, organize, and share items in multiple media formats.  The different uses for this app are as varied as your ideas...

Students apply satellite tagging data to investigate questions related to open-ocean animals, their habitats, and their migratory behaviors. They determine how physical or biological factors determine organism behavior using a data...

Students participate in a game to get to know their classmates. In this getting to know you instructional activity, students use the tags with sentence starters to get to know their classmates. Students fill out the tags and walk around...

Seventh graders practice analyzing, collecting and categorizing artifacts. Using charts, they organize and interpret information about the artifacts they classified. They work together to create a graph to represent class totals and...

Churches have been tax-exempt since the founding of America, but should they be? Pupils ponder the question as they browse the website in preparation for a class debate or discussion. They research the history of tax-exemption for...

What do Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg have in common? They're both billionaires, and neither one has a college degree! Using the website, scholars explore whether having a college education is truly worth the money it costs. They read...

Unfortunately, fake news, fuzzy facts, and bogus news stories are not new phenomena. Class members use a "Fake News Through History" worksheet to analyze historical examples of false, invented, made-up news. Researchers share their...

Students explore Spain. In this geography skills lesson plan, students investigate a political map of Spain and record the names of states, capitals, and landforms. Students then practice tagging the states, capitals, and landforms on...

Young scholars discover ways to keep the animals in our environment safe by examining electronic I.D. tags.  In this animal safety instructional activity, students participate in a role-playing activity in which they are monitored...

Students are split into teams. Students travel to the stars activity on a given web site and gather information about stars. Students then choose a category for the tag board that the teacher has made. The teacher asks a question and...

Learners complete an getting to know each other activity. In this personal names activity, students play a name game, read a book about names, and then discuss why names are important. Learners design a name card on oak tag rectangles...

The New York Times' Learning Network provides great lessons! This one uses articles from the paper to help readers understand homonyms like mail (verb and noun). It also includes an exercise in reading informational text. Links to the...

Discuss nutrition and identify components of a healthy diet, view a Food Guide Pyramid, and create a Personal Food Pyramid, listing all foods eaten in the past 24 hours. Compare food lists with the standard Food Guide and determine where...

Discuss the meaning of the phrase tone of voice with the class. They respond to a variety of scenarios where a particular tone would be prevalent. They then read "Mother to Son" without knowing the title and answer some questions about...

Celebrate inventions such as lightning rods, bifocals, and stoves with a Ben Franklin Day. Young historians conduct research and write a paragraph about an accomplishment of Benjamin Franklin including an illustration...

Make the move toward incorporating more technology in your classroom and help to prepare your class for the professional world. Here is a resource that describes the Common Core standard while incorporating technology and English...

Demonstrate the importance of evaluating and citing sources. Pupils can complete the suggested assignment provided here, or one of your choosing, while focusing on checking that the resources are credible and citing those sources...

Study allusions with a research and presentation project. Pupils are assigned a specific allusion, the phoenix for example. They research the origins, compose a summary, explain the concept, and explore this allusion within various...

One way to get your class to evaluate and synthesize multiple multimedia sources is through a research project. The idea here is that class members will watch videos and listen to scientific debates in order to create a casebook about...

After reading on the topic of their paper, high schoolers work in pairs to assess how to write powerful, precise thesis statements. The introduction contains three statements: a universal statement, a bridge statement, and a thesis...

Read and analyze the book, The Teacher From the Black Lagoon by Mike Thaler with your class. They will compare/contrast the two Mrs. Greens with a Venn diagram, design a new book cover, create a paper mache mask, and complete a story...

Looking for ways to increase engagement by bringing technology into your elementary social studies class? Teachers are introduced to the technology resources available for social studies and then they show their students specific...