Help your learners navigate the vocabulary of Shizuko's Daughter by Kyoko Mori with a lesson on categorizing words. After coming up with a list of things that grow from the earth, learners decide which categories each words belong in.

In the post-pandemic classroom, it's more important than ever to begin the school year by building a strong sense of trust and community. Using the Make Meaning and Big Paper teaching techniques, groups develop a definition of community...

Rise to the head of the class. Using mammal skulls, groups of pupils identify aspects of them. The teams make predictions on the classification of mammal the skull belongs to based upon the observations.

Where would this animal like to live? Pupils choose an animal and write an ad to advertise that animal's habitat or home. For a little fun, learners create the newspaper ads to provide enough detail for classmates to...

What makes a community? How communities differ? Young scholars research different types of communities, small rural towns, and large crowded cities. They respond to writing prompts, and write essays in groups to understand the wide...

Are the instruments in Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in the same family as those in George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue? Elementary musicians work on their music theory and their instrumental ear as they listen to clips of famous...

The test may say you have cancer, but sometimes the test is wrong. The provided task asks learners to analyze cancer statistics for a fictitious town. Given the rate of false positives, they interpret the meaning of this value in the...

How can you foster a thoughtful learning community for your class? First, the class brainstorms a list of behaviors that will help make the classroom a great place to learn. Then learners group similar ideas together and come up with...

In this general categories worksheet, students read three words in a group and determine how they are related. From a list of given words, students choose the word that goes with the other words in the group and names their general...

In this word groups worksheet, learners put words that are together into a group. Students put 9 problems of words into a group on this worksheet.

Classifying and sorting are great skills all kids need to know. They cut out each of the six images provided, then label each of two boxes. They glue the images in the appropriate box. Answers are provided. 

Here's a list-group-label vocabulary activity for The Catcher in the Rye that will knock readers out, it really will! Groups sort, label, and define a list of words taken from Salinger’s novel. Complete directions for the activity, the...

Scholars find their way through a maze filled with food items from each food group, including grains, dairy, fruit, vegetables, and protein. They know they have made it out when they see the MyPlate dinner plate. 

Who am I? Who do I want to be? The fourth session in this SPECS health unit explores self-awareness. Class members are asked to reflect on how and why they adapt their behavior to different situations.

Pair a novel study of Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell with a presentation on dolphins. The 37-slide PowerPoint shows different types of dolphins all around the world, includes a brief description of each, and provides a photo...

Seven major abstract art movements are analyzed by learners in groups. Each group analyzes various works by determining which work belongs to which movement. They then read Flatland, engage in an art and literary analysis discussion,...

The basics of number theory and set notation are explained in a highly approachable way in a self-contained lesson and worksheet. Introducing the vocabulary and concepts from ground zero and building to more complex ideas of subsets...

Turning 11 comes with a range of emotions. Explore those emotions by reading the short story "Eleven" by Sandra Cisneros. Readers analyze the main character's reactions to the events of her day. Then, they write an essay describing what...

Prepare yourself for a top-notch presentation on colonialism in Africa! Discussed are the reasons for African multilingualism. Maps and a country-by-country look at various colonists that made their mark on the African continent are...

Pupils examine how many kinds of living things (e.g. plants and animals) can be sorted into groups in many ways using various features to decide which things belong to which group and that classification schemes vary with purpose.

Fourth graders identify food groups, foods that fit into those groups, and look at the nutritional value of each food group. They also discover how to interpret and understand food labels. The whole class makes some burgers and fries,...

To stand up can have many different meanings. Examine the different usages in English and relate one of these meanings to a short film about homophobic bullying. Class members view and discuss the film as well as a short reading passage...

Explore characters in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer through biopoems. Pupils follow the specific formatting presented here to write 11-line poems about characters in the novel.

In this food groups worksheet, learners choose two words from the word list that belong in each of 7 food group categories. The groups are: dairy, poultry, grains, proteins, vegetables, fruits and junk food.