Plot, setting, characters, and conflict are common to both drama and narrative stories. Kids create narrated tableaus that show their understanding of the plot, setting, and conflict of a story they've recently read. The lesson...

Barbed wire may have made cattle farming easier, but it brought to an end the free-roaming days of the plains. No longer could Native American groups continue their nomadic lifestyle, and the days of cowboys herding large groups of...

The class examines the new tax cut plan proposed by President Bush. They practice calculating income tax rates and interpreting the data. Then they research topics that are of interest to them related to taxes.

Commonplace today, the zipper and button construction of blue jeans was a major innovation. Using the patent for the J.W. Davis and Levi Strauss innovation, individuals comb an image of the fly for clues. Afterward, they discuss its...

Understanding the soldier's experiences during World War I sometimes takes a newscast. Learners see the importance of understanding multiple points of view with a newscast project surrounding the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. Compare and...

What experiences lead people to change and how do they do it? After reading about Cole's encounter with Touching Spirit Bear, readers complete the second out of a series of five activities to predict future events in the text. The...

Reading snail mail is a great way to go back into history and to understand others' points of view. The resource, the second in a five-part unit, covers the Dreyfus Affair. Scholars, working in two different groups, read one letter and...

Several social activities provide showcase the perspective of many prominent figures in World War I history. Students read an assigned case study about a memorable person and complete several activities to further understand this...

Do not overlook this set of lessons just because your school does not have a data analysis system. There is plenty of material here to administer a complete mini unit on the formation, distribution, and properties of coal. Since it...

Some scholars consider the Civil War and Reconstruction a second American Revolution. Class members weigh in after examining primary sources, including a Congressional resolution calling for the Fifteenth Amendment and the credentials of...

Would your ideal science lab be filled with bubbling beakers and zapping Tesla coils? Or would it contain state-of-the-art computer technology and data analysis? Dream big with an innovative lesson that connects math and language...

Learners view and analyze three different images related to the Battle of Lexington and Concord. They also answer a variety of questions in a graphic organizer to help keep the information straight.

Most twenty-first century pupils don't know how to interpret cuneiform. Examining images of cuneiform and papyrus writing and using a chart and Venn diagram, young historians extrapolate what life may have been like for people who lived...

World War I was known for its gruesome battlefields and horrific injuries. Using photographs from a battlefield surgeon's scrapbook, scholars see first-hand what life was like in the trenches. After creating a timeline of the war using...

Young historians practice in-depth, quality analysis of primary source texts in this three-lesson unit, which examines excerpts from the slave narratives of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and Caleb...

When it comes to the law, is justice always served? Teach scholars about how law sometimes enables prejudice of entire groups of people with a unit on World War II that includes a warm-up activity, analysis of primary sources,...

Carbon is in the air; should we care? Teach the class why it is important to pay attention to carbon levels and how the world population and various countries across the globe affect the carbon levels in the atmosphere. High schoolers...

Sweethearts® candies are a beloved Valentine's Day treat—so much so that eight billion hearts are produced every year around the world! Learners use number sense reasoning and critical thinking to solve nine word problems about the...

Was Nat Turner a hero or a violent criminal? Using primary sources and images that discuss the rebellion of enslaved people he led in antebellum Virginia, scholars consider the question. Then, they create memorials to Turner and...

The Boston Massacre may be an iconic event in American history, but perhaps the British soldiers had another point of view. Using primary sources, including reports from Boston newspapers and secondary sources from the British...

While the Industrial Revolution may have fueled America's rise to the top of world markets, the child laborers often faced dangerous conditions. Using primary source images and other information, scholars consider what these children...

Fourth graders solve division problems by practicing on function machine.

The dialect words for types of food from across the British Isles get pupils thinking about native dialects and how they differ from Standard English. Class members create a dialect dictionary and discuss the difference between accent...

Check out this fantastic research project where learners work to see the modern world through the eyes of a historian and analyze a contemporary event of their choice. An in-depth reflection on the project is given by the project...