Militaries throughout history have used topography information to plan strategies, yet many pupils today don't understand it. Scholars use Legos and a contour gauge to understand how to construct and visualize topographic profiles. This...

How do you help a child with dyslexia succeed as a writer? Here is a resource for those who need guidance in creating writing lessons for their learners with dyslexia. It discusses research-based strategies that can be used and...

Writing is a craft. Scholars take a mid-unit assessment where they answer questions about the author's purpose and craft in Douglass's narrative. After completing the assessment, pupils look continue with their independent reading text.

An interesting way to look at the kitchen floor is to count the number of tiles in the border. Fred starts with four white floor tiles and writes an expression for the number of tiles needed for the colored border. Algebra learners are...

Investigate dilations to learn more about them. The second segment in a series of 16 provides a discussion of properties of dilations by going through examples. The problem set provides opportunities for scholars to construct dilations.

Budding poets create two acrostic poems, one for their name and another using a word of their choice. Over the course of five days, scholars compose, revise, publish, and share their work with their peers.

After reading Loree Leedy's There's a Frog in My Throat: 440 Animal Sayings a Little Bird Told Me, kids create and illustrate their own poems that convey the meaning of an idiom. The poems are then transferred into Shutterfly's Photo...

Did you know that mastaba means bench in Arabic? Learn why a mastaba was so important to ancient Egyptian architecture. Middle and high schoolers alike stay entertained while reading a passage that describes the virtual tour of...

A reading of Peggy Parish's Amelia Bedelia launches a study of idioms. Groups then select several idioms, write the meaning of the expressions, draw or select images, and use GIMP or Photoshop to create an idiom book. 

Immaculate, accumulation, dissipation. Vocabulary drawn from chapter 16 of James McBride's memoir, The Color of Water, can prove to be challenge for readers. To help kids understand the meaning of these words and what they add to the...

Did the Emancipation Proclamation free all slaves during the Civil War? Why was it written, and what were its immediate and long-term effects? After reading primary source materials, constructing political maps representing information...

There is power in words. Readers take a close look at three text to determine how language structures affect meaning, including include poems and recipes. Scholars analyze the language authors use by circling important words, underlining...

The second lesson in a five-part poetry unit asks seventh graders to construct a metaphor poem. First, pupils examine Emily Dickinson's "The Railway Train" and identify the metaphor. They then select an object and an animal and craft a...

A good story is a great way to support skills that are necessary for encouraging strong reading skills. Here is a class I do, You do, We do style lesson that stars the tale, Ming Lo Moves the Mountain. Included are two fun pre-reading...

Amazing efforts of African American leaders are celebrated in a lesson on civil participation. The engaging resource focuses on primary and secondary sources to analyze the impact of African American leaders such as Ella Fitzgerald....

Similes and metaphors make writing more beautiful and detailed, but can be a little harder to decipher during a first reading. Use a passage from The Man Who Loved Words to show young readers how to think through passages that...

Readers of Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner select 100 words from chapters five and six of the novel, use these words to create a found poem, and then attach their poem to a kite that they construct.

How sustainable are cell phones? Throughout the unit, learners explore the issues around cell phones concerning sustainability. Class members take a graphical look at the number of cell phones across the world using a box-and-whisker...

Solving problems about pen and paper with systems of equations ... or is it the other way around? In the lesson plan, learners first interpret expressions and use equations in two variables to solve problems about notebooks and pens....

Six lessons make up a unit all about biographies. Scholars read about a remarkable life while taking notes and identifying characteristics of the biographical genre. Readers examine the tale's obstacles, accomplishments, and sequence of...

As part of their study of the influence of TV and films, class members consider how music, lighting, costumes, camera angles, etc. are used to influence the response of viewers.

Every healthy classroom community is built on a foundation of respect. Through whole group discussions, shared readings, and collaborative activities this lesson teaches children how to be respectful of one another, making for a much...

Help your 21st century learners develop their media smarts with this resource that has them examine the persuasive techniques advertisers use to influence specific demographics and then to use these techniques to craft their own ads.

Discover how to analyze architecture from a geometric standpoint. The fourth installment of an 11-part unit on architecture first provides a presentation on axis, balance, basic form, formal, pattern, proportion, symmetry, and tripartite...