Tenth graders complete a variety of activities related to the first two chapters of the book The Outsiders. They define metaphor, simile, idiom, and hyperbole, and take a vocabulary pre-quiz. In small groups, they write a character...

Need topics that are sure to engage your debaters? This list of public policy questions includes such topics as school mascots, regulation of major league baseball, physician-assisted suicide, and violence in video games. A great...

Experiment with light and dark in a series of interactive activities that lead up to reading and writing poetry. Class members have the opportunity to observe their feelings while sitting in the light and dark and to play with shadow...

Playing pretend with real objects or concepts is a wonderful way for learners to make object-to-action connections, as well as practice daily living skills. Learners with visual and intellectual disabilities use a wide variety of real...

Focus English language learners' attention on word stress and phrase stress with a pronunciation chart that breaks the sounds into moving and non-moving vowel sounds. The chart tool uses colors and key words to indicate...

What a creative lesson! Learners make sushi dishes using printmaking methods. They use a  variety of techniques including those involving under glazes and clay. There are instructions and pictures to make this process easy for both...

Explore how illustrations add to a story. Young learners will look at picture books to see how the pictures tell the story. They create illustrations to go with a chosen story, and then flip the activity so they have to write a story to...

Reinforce comprehension of informational text. This is a one-on-one lesson intended to build an internal dialogue the reader can use to boost overall comprehension. They work independently with a tutor or teacher to read a nonfiction...

Identify and develop strategies for proofreading with your class. They read and identify the grammar rules for capitalization, end punctuation, and commas, correct errors as a class, and complete three worksheets. This resource includes...

Examine the key strategies to proofreading a piece of writing for errors in sentence structure, usage, mechanics and spelling. Eighth graders practice putting into correct passage commonly confused words (too, two, to) when writing to a...

Follow this lesson, which is written more like a script, to practice reading a poem with your class. Pupils read "The Road Not Taken" and respond to five multiple choice questions on a provided worksheet. The plan leads you through a...

Each color holds its own feeling and these feelings are used to describe the four seasons. Youngsters create a color palate based on the four seasons, assigning various colors to each season. They each create four clay tiles, painting...

Students work through a Haiku Organizer to determine the characteristics they use to write eight haiku poems on a theme that they choose. They design presentation folders of their completed work.

Identify and analyze the use of figurative language used in select pieces of writing. These pieces of literature will represent at least two pieces by one writer and at least two pieces by different writers. This lesson would be a great...

Examine the text structure of a memo with this worksheet. Eighth to twelfth graders decide if the purpose of a memo is to motivate an action or to provide information to the reader. They explore new vocabulary and make predictions prior...

Students design a campaign to encourage paper recycling at the school.  In this recycling lesson, students try to persuade other students and staff members to adopt a new recycling program.  Students work together in groups to...

Sixth graders explore figurative and literal language. They study literary devices through short pieces of Shakespeare's work. Then investigate Shakespeare's works and life.

A delightful instructional activity on poetry is here for you and your middle schoolers. Learners are instructed to write a Halloween poem. They get to choose the age range for the audience of the poem. So, it may be scary (for older...

"Stolen from Africa, brought to America,/Fighting on arrival, fighting for survival." Bob Marley's "Buffalo Soldiers" provides high schoolers an opportunity to explore the rich history of the Rastafarians in Jamaica and the Buffalo...

Gustav Holst's The Planets provide young musicians an opportunity to examine how composers can create a suite: a collection of smaller pieces grouped to explore a single topic. After listening to "Jupiter," they examine "Mars" in...

Discuss strategies for defining word your young readers don't know. They read sentences with key words covered by sticky notes and guess from the context what the word might be. They peek at the first letter and guess again.

How do you teach time? Using various stories, 2nd graders will learn about the concept of a daily schedule to develop a sense of self. They will complete a time of day chart and learn about the basic concepts of time beyond a minute....

High schoolers analyze a character of Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury to catch a glimpse of a family and the changes they, and the Old South, undergo. The use of time as it relates to the structure of the plot is covered in this...

Included in this resource are a variety of activities to do while reading Willa Cather's My Antonia. The activities, which range from mapping out Nebraska to writing activities about pioneer living, are all designed with one...