Learners are designing a stunning new water feature for an aquarium, but they soon discover that more than just a pretty home for their fishy friends is required.  From calculating the volume of a composite shape through the...

How to use the relationship between multiplication and division to solve math word problems is the focus of the instructional activity presented here. In it, fourth graders work in groups to solve problems posed by the teacher. Then,...

Teach your class to think of electrons as tiny packets of energy that travel in waves. Through a short video and diagram, participants see how electrons are located around the nucleus of an atom. They then get into groups and try to...

The brother-sister pair Carlos and Clarita need your class's help in developing their new pet sitting business. Through a variety of scenarios and concerns presented to the siblings, the learners thoroughly explore systems of equations...

This fabulous resource is a must-have for any algebra teacher's arsenal of lessons. Developing the idea of equations and use of variables from basic physical scenarios, learners gain valuable intuition in the structure and meaning of...

Get your learners to think outside the box. Students require a good understanding of ratios and their relationship to fractions to complete the problem. The only quantities given in the problem are the ratio of the number of votes for...

A deceptively simple question setup leads to a number of attack methods and a surprisingly sophisticated solution set in this open-ended problem. Young geometers of different strengths can go about defining the solutions graphically,...

A reading guide designed for Jennifer Fleischner's nonfiction text, The Apaches: People of the Southwest, provides readers with three levels of comprehension questions meant to encourage higher-level thinking.

Pique your pupils' interest before reading Peter and the Starcatchers with an anticipation guide. Given a list of 10 statements, learners choose true or false based on what they think the book is about. They then discuss in small...

The similarities and differences between academic and everyday summaries/abstracts are explored in this PowerPoint. After reading "Historiographic Reflection on Israel’s Origins: The Rise and Fall of the Patriarchal Age,” and abstracts...

Students explore clouds and abstract thinking through painting. This lesson plan uses higher thinking skills and encourages self expression.

Young geometers develop one of the fundamental properties of quadrilaterals (connecting side midpoints gives a parallelogram) in this short but thought-provoking exercise. Using a combination of hands-on techniques and abstract algebraic...

Geometry gets an engineering treatment in an exercise involving a belt wrapped around two wheels of different dimensions. Along with the wheels, this belt problem connects concepts of right triangles, tangent lines, arc length, and...

Students explore a framework of political and social values to evaluate the validity of any public policy debate, bill, or law. They participate in cooperative learning in terms of the group investigation model.

Who, what, when, where, and why questions are often the questions that teachers use to foster engagement, verbal communication skills, higher-order thinking, and hopefully, a deeper understanding of the world. This tool is geared toward...

Students discover African musical rhythms by performing Ancestral Spirit Dances.  In this musical lesson, students research Willis "Bing" Davis and the abstract work he created.  Students listen to Yoruba drum music and...

Students analyze Abstract Expressionist artists and their art. In this art analysis lesson plan, students view the works by Jackson Pollock and Helen Frankenthaler and analyze the pieces. Students complete image based discussion and four...

More of a short lesson than a worksheet, this exercise gives instruction on the definition of nouns. Young writers discover common, proper, singular, plural, concrete, and abstract nouns. Excellent!

Here are the complete set of the math practice standards and the Common Core standards for first grade. They cover operations & algebraic thinking, operations in base 10, measurement and data, and geometry. Illustrated nicely with...

Your learners will be tantalized by this inquiry-based, collaborative activity as they discover how to write an equation that represents the height of an ice cream cone. Given the scenario based on the poem, "Eighteen Flavors," and...

"Fore!" All right, no one really yells this out in miniature golf, but this well-defined activity will have your charges using lots of numbers in their unique design of a miniature golf hole. Included in the activity criteria is the...

Keep your pets slim, trim, and healthy using mathematics! Pupils use a linear programming model to optimize the amount and type of food to provide to a pet rabbit. They model constraints by graphing inequalities and use them to analyze a...

Tap into the wisdom and knowledge of older members of the community with this New York Times plan. To warm up, learners write about and discuss advice they have been given. After reading "The Life Report," an op-ed column that asks older...

Chapter nine of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath provides the text for an exercise that asks readers to think deeply about the items the Joads left behind and what these items might represent.