Considering a unit study of American Musical Theatre? What better way to start than at the very beginning. Eight pairs of cards provide class members with background information about the genre from 1893 through 2004. The cards are...

Carl Sandburg composed poetry that conveyed a time and place in American Literature and history. Learners identify the literary techniques he uses to describe the historical and cultural context of living in Chicago. They define the...

By The Great Horn Spoon is a fantastic novel for introducing learners to life during the California Gold Rush. First, kids research and analyze American folk songs, then they connect to the text as they listen to symphonic pieces written...

Duke Ellington, jazz, and jive kick-off a fun and creative lesson on responding emotionally to music. The class will learn about jive talk used in the 1920s and the life and music of Duke Ellington. They'll listen to a selection of his...

What were the virtues and values that helped form America? Pupils watch and discuss a video, read biographies of early Americans, chart the differences between early American religious movements, write journals and letters, draw, and...

Challenge young mathematicians' ability to compose and decompose shapes with this fun geometry puzzle. The goal is simple, locate all of the rectangles shown in a picture of three overlapping rectangles. Perform this activity as a whole...

Challenge readers of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath to create a museum exhibit that uses artifacts to focus on one issue raised by the award winning story of the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, and the Joads.

Take a trip to the Grand Canyon! Lesson one explores how Ferde Grofe painted a musical landscape of America when he wrote the Grand Canyon Suite. Learners then examine art that shows the Grand Canyon in lesson two. Finally, lesson three...

“. . .different men often see the same subject in different lights. . .” but the great orator Patrick Henry used all the skills at his command to craft a speech to convince listeners to see things as he did--that liberty was worth dying...

Students explore cubing as a graphic organizer to better explain the key concepts of the Civil Rights Movement and take positions on key concepts regarding the Movement.

Students write persuasively through description and word choice while reviewing a topic of interest to them.

Fifth graders study nuclear destruction using visual literacy. In this nuclear destruction lesson, 5th graders work in groups to examine a group of pictures that show the destruction of a home by a nuclear blast. They discuss the type of...