Let nature guide your engineering designs. By taking apart a flower, pupils learn about reverse engineering. They use the results to brainstorm designs for new products or ideas. This is the seventh installment of a nine-part Life...

Imagine living in the hold of a sailing ship for 63 days, enduring rough seas and autumn storms. As part of a study of the voyage of the Mayflower, class members examine an online resource that details life about the ship, watch a slide...

Shh! No talking during the discussion! Using the resource, scholars engage in a silent discussion called a Chalk Talk activity to analyze the purpose of a newspaper article. Additionally, they read a model newspaper article and try to...

A Reading Adventure pack explores the busy life of bees. After reading a fiction and nonfiction text, scholars complete three hands-on activities. Participants invent a robot that can do the work of bees, cheers to hardworking bees with...

After reading about polymer materials, engineer trainees examine how plastics have been integrated into everyday products. In groups, they compile a list of products made entirely without plastics and then, as a closing activity, try to...

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...

Going on a scavenger hunt sounds like a great way to spice up any lesson plan. To better understand how beneficial insects are, the class goes outdoors to search for and observe a bug that has big benefits. Included in the lesson plan...

When mathematical errors happen, part of the learning is to figure out how it affects the rest of your calculations. The activity has your mathematicians solving for the area of a circular pipe and taking into consideration any errors...

Mrs. Flynt has designed a 12-day moon observation activity that is best assigned when daylight hours are shorter. Middle school moon experts record several factors, including the altitude above the horizon, the azimuth, the phase, and...

Your young learners will delve into the language of primary source documents in order to identify the characteristics, benefits, and costs of nonviolence. The activity includes a mix of activities, including an anticipatory activity,...

Morning routines are the subject of this series of activities designed for language learners. Kids practice crafting questions and responses using the provided morning routine targeted vocabulary words.

What do a zoo and a farm have in common? Second graders read about each place, and compare and contrast the details using two multiple choice questions.

Get to the know the common house mouse and the Norway rat with an activity that reinforces reading comprehension skills. Scholars read a three-page document detailing key information about mammals, specifically rodents, and use their...

After completing an assessment task where they express numbers as the difference of squares (i.e., 9 = 5^2 – 4^2), class members note any patterns that they see in the problems.

Help a company maximize their profits! A detailed project-based learning activity examines two production scenarios. Your young scholars write a linear demand function. They then apply the function to develop a revenue, cost, and profit...

After watching Treasure in the Sea, a documentary about Channel Islands National Park and the video First Contact, about the voyage of Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo to the Channel islands, groups research and then compare the...

Collect a set of collections. Professional development material provides teachers with information about collections that are in AP Computer Science. Materials include teaching strategies, sample labs, and worksheets. Educators use the...

Scholars submit their final performance task, a letter to a publisher about an athlete's legacy. As a culminating activity, they share their work with classmates in small groups. 

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" serves as an exemplar for a mini-lesson on semicolons. Working alone or in small groups, class members first circle all the semicolons in the letter, and then consider how this...

Take the concept of burning calories to a more literal level in the second of seven lessons about energy in the realm of food and fitness. Using simple materials, groups will burn breakfast cereal and a pecan to see which one gives off...

Mostly for teacher's use, here are instructions for making a traditional electromagnetic motor and a detailed explanation of how it works. 

As part of a unit, this lesson familiarizes youngsters with components of a rain garden. They speculate about the role of an assigned component in contributing to a rain garden, and ultimately, in the health of the local watershed. Each...

Acting as journalists on a team to determine the most influential city-state of Renaissance Italy, your young historians will research, discuss, and compare the rise of Venice, Florence, and Genoa, and their influence in shaping a...

As your young historians study Westward Expansion, practice in-depth primary source analysis with the documents and guidelines presented in this resource. They will examine a lithograph and excerpts from two letters written by a Nebraska...