It's amazing how much kids change from the beginning of the year to the end. Create a written account of their growth with a fun learning exercise that involves children recording information about themselves at two...

One of the big challenges of assigning independent reading is helping class members find a book to read. Another is encouraging readers to read a variety of genres. Never fear, help is here in the form of a quest that asks individuals to...

Middle schoolers complete a writing assessment task to demonstrate their ability to craft a narrative based on a variety of informational texts. They view West of the West's documentary Magic Isle, read three print resources about...

Students define the parts of a database, search strategies to locate information electronically, create/modify databases, etc. and enter data into a prepared spreadsheet to perform calculations.

Wrap up your unit on The Cay with an engaging argumentative writing assignment. Writers must decide if they believe The Cay should be banned. The resource includes links to several articles, which have been addressed and examined in...

Should the excavation of what is believed to be the cave of the Lone Woman of San Nicholas Island be allowed to continue? As a practice exercise designed to prepare pupils for a timed writing exam, individuals read two Los Angeles...

Encourage creativity and reflection with a hands-on activity book. Scholars document their personal appearance, age, height, friends, and feelings about the first day of school to the last. 

Third graders tally, sort, and organize pizza orders from monthly school sales. They create an advertising campaign to promote the School Pizza Sale, record the data in graph form, compare and contrast the tallies throughout the year,...

Students are introduced to colorimeter on two levels. They investigate how to physically manipulate the colorimeters. Secondly, the students start on a pathway of discovery to one of the most important principles in analytical chemistry:...

High schoolers are have begun to learn  the art of diplomacy with each other, but do they understand how diplomacy works at a global level?  The second in a series of four lessons, guides scholars in evaluating primary sources....

Math requires strength training, too. Scholars consider three different pricing systems for a gym. Given several scenarios, they determine which gym would be cheaper and find how many visits it takes for the costs to be equal.

Students examine gravity, mass, and friction. In this speed and motion instructional activity, students investigate how straight line motion is impacted by gravity, mass, and fiction as they participate in a hands-on activity.

Build understanding of theme with an activity designed for The Cay and the Common Core. Small groups or pairs use graphic organizers to determine themes, find and record related details from the text, and formulate theme statements. In...

Focus on plot and the impact-specific events in The Cay. Class members use their double-entry journals, created in a previous lesson in this series, to record their thinking about the guiding question as they read chapters 15 through 17....

When is using someone else's copyrighted material appropriate? Learn about copyright and fair use with a lesson from PBS.org. Scholars read through a reference sheet about authors' rights and users' rights, and then create posters...

Look back at the third chapter of The Cay with your class. Pupils will conduct a close reading, taking a second look at a chunk of text and responding to a series of text-dependent questions. Wrap up with an analytical writing prompt...

Encourage your learners to examine the setting in Theodore Taylor's The Cay. Pupils work in small groups to put together a description of the setting before reading two more chapters of the book. They use their double-entry journals to...

Building on the previous activity in this series of lesson seeds, this plan focuses on the use of dialect in Theodore Taylor's novel, The Cay. Class members examine specific lines of text, use their reading journals to respond to the...

If you're looking to set your class up for writing effective arguments, try out this idea. While originally created with freedom as a guiding idea, the activity could easily be adapted for other themes. As a class, create a chart of...

Make a study of the First Amendment and its relationship to freedom. Pupils rewrite the amendment and discuss the central idea before focusing on a specific phrase. After discussing, class members write a journal entry about the included...