Life in the great, wide-open spaces of the West! Scholars analyze the reasons behind the vast movement to the Great Plains after the passing of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Homestead Act. Using photographic, document, map, video, and...

After examining and discussing Guy Ben-Ner's Treehouse Kit, a contemporary art installation with a sculptural and video element, small groups work together to create short silent films. The films should be built around a particular topic...

Introduce middle schoolers to the First Nations that inhabited the Northeast during the Age of Exploration with a series of activities designed for differentiated groups.

Learn about dichotomous keys, plant identification, and how to care for the planet with a lesson that includes several hands-on and innovative activities. Kids go on a plant scavenger hunt and classify the plants that they find...

Focus on the principles of design with a wearable landscape art project. The plan provides definitions to share and art to examine. After students have a grasp of the principles, they draw a scene to eventually transfer onto a...

Groups work together to design a lighthouse, from designing and drawing the wiring diagram, to creating prototypes of the switch and circuit, to envisioning and building a scale model along with a blueprint. By including different...

Four projects enable class members to show what they have learned about ways they can stand up for democracy. to begin, individuals review their identity charts and craft a mask that represents themselves. Next, groups create a short,...

Young scholars demonstrate their knowledge of geography with this fun, collaborative social studies project. Working in small groups, students develop their very own countries, writing descriptions...

What skills do employers look for in potential employees? Introduce scholars to the skills that pay the bills during the second of six career and college readiness lesson plans. Once they have defined critical 21st-century skills, groups...

Small groups use the knowledge learned about the heart to design and build a prototype of an artificial heart valve. The teams demonstrate the functionality of their valve. They are also responsible for creating a pamphlet that describes...

How do the changing seasons affect the homes where we live? This question is at the forefront of engineering and design projects. Challenge your physical science class to step into the role of an architect to build a model home...

Designing the right package — it's more than a pretty picture. Challenge small groups to design a food package. They must consider the type of food they are packaging and the package's ability to control the physical and...

Explore the behavior of light with different materials. Collaborative groups determine whether certain materials absorb, reflect, diffract, or transmit light waves. They then measure the angle of incidence and angle of reflection.

A "Magic Minute" activity asks class groups to develop a commercial to advertise a way to turn a time-waster into a time-saver. Ad groups begin by brainstorming time-wasters and then problem-solve was to turn them into time-savers. After...

See how design and geometry go hand in hand. The activity asks learners to use geometry to design a backyard garden given dimensions of each feature. Scholars work with ratios and scale to develop an accurate scale drawing that includes...

Urban spaces are often overlooked and broken down. Offer your pupils the opportunity to reimagine an urban space. Learners examine and discuss works of art related to this theme and consider their own communities. Small groups then...

Introduce your class to encoding text. Pairs work together to create a protocol to send text prior to learning ASCII encoding. Groups then collaborate to send and translate ASCII codes creating a formatted text message. 

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...

Use whatever material floats your boat. Working in groups, scholars decide on a type of metal and a type of coating to use for building a boat. They test their creations by leaving their boats in a pool of water for several days before...

The big idea in the last lesson plan in the Health Smart series is that individuals must practice emotional first aid, that just as we take care of physical injuries, we must take care of emotional injuries. Scholars watch a short video...

Discover Modernism through the eyes of artists. Over the course of six well-thought-out lessons, learners examine works by Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse while completing a range of collaborative and hands-on activities. A great resource!

Take your class on an out-of-this-world adventure with this fun engineering design lesson. Working in small groups, young scientists design, build, and test crew exploration vehicles using some creativity, teamwork, and...

Having read and discussed Bullfrog at Magnolia Circle, third graders demonstrate their bullfrog expertise by writing informational paragraphs. Building on the note-taking and paragraph planning from the previous lesson plan,...

Imagine a project that informs and entertains. Replace book reports with a bulletin board that highlights all the important elements of a novel. Readers research the author, create a timeline of events in the story, write a...