Why do ground squirrels build their homes in the ground? What's so unique about these burrows? Have individuals read about this burrowing animal, and then respond to five short answer questions that assess their comprehension of the...

Working in groups, class members develop survey questions to be used on campus to identify groups that feel excluded or disrespected. After assembling the questions and conducting the survey, class members analyze their findings and...

Who was Walt Whitman, and what link does he have to president Abraham Lincoln?  After Lincoln's assassination, Whitman wrote "O Captain! My Captain!" This poem and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" are the focus of...

Lost! (or misplaced) a modifier. Last seen dangling at the end of a sentence! Reward offered! To underscore the humor, class members are each given a sample sentence to illustrate (A woman passed by, leading a Springer Spaniel, in a...

"That man is not truly one, but truly two." The Strange Case of  Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde offers readers a change to craft a poem combining words and phrases from Robert Lewis Stevenson's novella to create a poem...

Like Yuki, Mrs. Sakane, and Ken, characters in Journey to Topaz, class groups must reach a consensus on 12 items they would bring if forced to relocate.  The activity provides readers with an opportunity to make text-to-self and...

How do your pupils feel about reading? Hand out this survey to find of if your students read often, enjoy reading, talk about what they read, and more.

Help your class use critical thinking when it comes to unfamiliar words. With vocabulary from Kyoko Mori's Shizuko's Daughter, kids write the word in the center of a graphic organizer, and find its category, comparisons,...

Here are several activities intended to allow learners to understand who they are and how they can reach their personal career goals. They discuss community, support, personal achievement, and believing in oneself. It is a positive...

The teen years are nothing but a series of personal, social, and academic changes. Help kids understand what to expect as they mature and give them ways to make good decisions. After discussing they types of changes they'll go through,...

It can be difficult to refer back to a text when analyzing it, so annotation is a great tool for kids to track what they are reading. A thorough and well-organized instructional activity guides learners through the process of annotating...

Investigate the effect of false positives on probability calculation with an activity that asks scholars to collect simulated data generated by a calculator. To finish, participants analyze the probability of certain outcomes which lead...

Did you know that prior to the American Revolution, Alabama was a part of the British empire and called New West Florida? Class members research the economic, political, and social realities of this territory and compare...

Explore ethnicity and identity with a research and writing assignment. Class members conduct online research, looking in particular at images and carefully noting down their sources on notecards. They read about identity and compose...

Introduce your class to the writing of the indigenous Americans and, even more well known, their story telling. An engaging presentation describes what kinds of texts would be included in the oral stories performed and some common...

What did you have for lunch? Did it contain all four food groups? Help your special education class make good food choices and recognize foods in each of the four food groups. They look at images and discuss the foods on the food pyramid...

What are the best foods to eat, and how much is too much? Kids discuss the importance of eating the right amount of each of the four food groups. They discuss the food pyramid and make meals by cutting and pasting foods from a magazine...

Third graders investigate environmental stability through consumption and recycling. They look into how much of a recyclable good it takes to create one new product. Pupils compile a list of these quantities, then create posters that are...

Plants never grow at the same rate, and that is the antithesis for this word problem involving multiplication of fractions. On the worksheet, Raul notices that Pablo's seedlings are 1 1/2 times as tall, and Celina's seedlings are 3/4 as...

Go on a shopping trip to practice estimation, price value, and shopping skills. The class heads off to the market to purchase several items for the activity. While they are there, they discuss the cost of various foods and even...

Being able to give positive reinforcers to a child starts with knowing what the child likes. Intended for children with blindness, this instructional activity gives you a way to determine the types of music your learners like best....

When you can't see, it is extremely important to be able to reorient yourself. Learners with visual impairments work though an activity to build spacial awareness based on moving left and right. A marker (bracelet, bell, or weight) is...

Here is a wonderful way to teach children with visual impairments how to count and build number recognition skills. Included, you will find a set of instructions on how to create a counting book from card stock, jump rings, and cotton...