Polish organization skills in your youngsters. With this lesson, they are introduced to the trait of organization and participate in activities that reinforce organization. They cut apart a familiar story, receive different...

Fourth graders participate in reading a poem. They practice test-taking strategies, answering multiple-choice questions, and answering short-answer questions. They continue to practice these techniques and strategies and use them in...

Learners use the "gist" strategy to understand how to dissect parts of a word problem. In this word problem lesson plan, students learn how to solve word problems and then solve them.

Students investigate topics that would be suitable for classroom podcasts. They read an online article, write and produce a podcast.

In this problem solving worksheet, students read a word problem and then illustrate 5 steps given. For example, "What do I know?" and "What do I need to find out?"

Students read a story together then choose a favorite character to portray. For this inference lesson, students pretend to be one of the characters in the story, they prepare drawings or actions then present them to the class. Students...

Young scholars identify persuasive strategies and analyze arguments. In this persuasive writing activity, students read "Chief Red Jacket's Reply" and "Reverend Cram's Speech to the Iroquois Nation" and chart major elements of each...

Young scholars study strategies that aid comprehension. They focus on the main ideas of a passage and eliminate unnecessary and repetitive information. They substitute super ordinate terms for a list of items and create a topic sentence.

Students explore the structure and function of the periodic table of elements. Though memorization drills and games, students working in pairs, identify the elements of the periodic table, their grouping, their properties and their...

Young scholars evaluate the effectiveness of Internet book clubs, present their findings to the class, and design their own on-line book club (under the umbrella of a fictional television program) to encourage non-readers to read more.

Learners consider how xerographic photocopy machines and scanners operate. They discuss and practice using scanners, and brainstorm strategies to increase the efficiency of Google's scanning project.

Students explore Nobel Prize winning economist Thomas C. Schelling's strategic egonomics theory as it applies to making new year's resolutions. They make their own resolutions and develop plans to keep them using Schelling's strategies.

Students interview each other and their parents to examine why and when writers write and where published authors get their ideas. They complete a class T-chart, fill-out an interview worksheet, and read and discuss a variety of book...

Like Oskar, the curious boy in Jonathan Safran Foer’s story, class members journey through other “stories that the mouth can’t tell” to find another sentence that uses a word found in novel. Individuals create their own vocabulary list,...

It's tough for high schoolers to assess what is a credible resource and what is not. A helpful resource prompts class members to research a particular topic and record two facts—and create one lie—while documenting the sources. They...

Here is an authentic assessment task for Shakespeare's Macbeth. Young literature scholars prepare, perform, and record a news broadcast about the major events in the play. For example, groups may choose to report on the death of Lady...

Discuss ways to determine if the information middle and high schoolers gather online is accurate. Using the Internet, they cite two sources that show conflicting points of view on a subtopic of conservation. They summarize and analyze...

Learners practice sentence combining at increasingly difficult levels throughout a week. They begin with nouns and verbs and build to contrasts, parallels, etc. 

Explore the story The Color of My Words by Lynn Joseph using this resource. Learners answer comprehension questions, fill in graphic organizers, and write a poem.

Sixth graders classify numbers as abundant, deficient, or perfect based on the relationship between the number and its factors. They review factor game using the completed lab sheet. When playing the factor game which type of numbers...

Students explore the food pyramid. In this dietary health instructional activity, students examine the food pyramid on the MyPyramid.gov website and discuss healthy eating strategies. There are various links to websites in this...

Read various texts to compare the themes across each text. Learners write a journal entry describing the most beautiful scenery they've seen and use a map of the United States to locate the Sequoia National Park and Muir Woods. They then...

After reading a book on their own, pupils prepare an oral report on the book,  and sit in the "Readers Report Chair" when giving the report to the class. They are taught to briefly summarize the book by talking about one of two...

Students, in groups, read and analyze the short story, A Good Man is Hard to Find, by Flannery O'Connor. They present their findings tot he rest of the class and then connect the various themes discussed to outside material, events...