“Anyone who thinks small towns are friendlier than big cities lives in a big city.” Mary Alice, the fifteen-year-old narrator of A Year Down Yonder, is forced to leave Chicago and spend a year with her Grandma Dowdel in a small rural...

Decisions, decisions! Small groups decide on their dream career then enter a scenario that challenges them to make another big decision—if stranded on a deserted island, who would be saved or fed to the sharks. Because decisions are...

Your first and second math class will develop a higher understanding of addition after using the number line. Word problems are provided, and learners use the number line to illustrate and solve each problem. For advanced learners,...

Molecules to the Max! refers to a movie released in 2009 about the world of atoms and molecules. A helpful discovery guide provides five posters on science topics typically covered at the middle school level. It also explains the...

Your classroom may feel like a zoo sometimes, but it's nothing like this! Stu Smith's book My School's a Zoo is an excellent way to introduce some fun vocabulary words in context, and it's available on YouTube in case...

A historic site marks a place where a relevant historical event occurred, no matter how many people know about it. Small groups choose their own historical sites, including a place where a class member was born, or even a...

It's time! The fourth lesson in a five-part series has teams of scholars build a circuit for an alarm. A switch lets them turn the alarm on and off and allows them to hide the alarm—just as long as they don't hide it in the classroom!

Detailing the stages of language, sound, word, and grammar acquisition for babies, this presentation is a great addition to a lecture that focuses on how the English language is developed in small children. Additionally, the slideshow...

Engage further in Esperanza Rising with a focus on close reading and metaphor. Class members zero in on the tenth chapter, examining characters and big ideas. Pupils discuss the text in small groups and as a whole class, and...

After reading The Cricket in Times Square chapter titled "Caught in the Kitchen," learners list three describing details about the characters and setting. Groups collaborate to find sensory details to support their character assertions....

Fifth graders calculate the perimeters, areas, and volumes of everyday objects. They discuss the word problem involving Puck from the Shakespeare play "Mid-Summer Night's Dream," and invent and plan a method for solving the problem in...

Students ask testable questions. They explain the relationship between insect behavior and insect trapping techniques. Students design their own insect traps to collect a new unknown insect, in the same way that entomologists collect the...

Space scientists use water displacement to determine the mass of a cubic centimeter mini meteorite, and then use it as a small-scale representative of an asteroid. They figure out the orbital velocity of an asteroid. Then they use a...

Review the parts of speech. English Langugae Learners use KidPix to create a paint picture for nouns, verbs, and adjectives. They use the KidPix slideshow tool to construct a slideshow of their work.

Did you know that modern Chinese literature “grew from the psychoanalytical theory of Sigmund Freud”? Designed for a world literature class, seniors are introduced to “One Evening in the Rainy Season,” Shi Zhecun’s stream of...

Fine dining can happen anywhere, even in the coral reefs. Budding environmentalists explore marine food chains, predator-prey relationships and the importance of a balanced ecosystem. These important concepts are facilitated through a...

How do engineers turn something that is readily available, like wind, into energy? Scholars create a prototype of a wind turbine and attach it to a motor. They test out their prototypes and decide on their effectiveness. They also...

Pattern recognition is a very important skill to foster in younger children. It helps boost algebraic reasoning, logical reasoning, and mathematical reasoning skills. Here are 11 different shape patterns for learners to complete. They...

Translate the first speaking and listening standard for yourself and your ninth and tenth graders! Learners can focus on communicating in small groups with the two activities presented here. Both activities center around group creation...

Looking for Common Core math center ideas for your Kindergartners? This a great one that is easy to set up, change up, and can be individualized to the learning level of each child. Start with a collection of zippered plastic bags...

What a big job for such a small particle. Young scientists learn about the role of nanoparticles in catalytic converters for cars. They conduct an experiment to create alginate-MnO2 catalytic spheres. 

Here is a post-experiment lab sheet that is to be used with an activity involving diet coke and regular coke. There is also a graph that learners must complete which goes along with an experiment on density and volume of a variety of...

Develop study skills and improve spelling at the same time. Every time I teach this mnemonic device, the kids thank me. It makes memorizing more manageable, and fun. To remember how to spell difficult words, make up a sentence using...

In this adjectives worksheet, students identify adjectives within sentences and color a picture to match the sentences. A list of thirty-nine adjectives is included for student writing.