Get your class outside, away from the television, and maybe even learning something about nature while they're at it. Individuals will chose an open, natural space to spend time in for several days. Each day they will complete a page in...

Learners practice remaining on topic during a conversation using printouts of chains as visual models for their work. Chains are placed in sequence while students stay on a shared topic of conversation, and a broken chain is used as...

Twelfth graders use computers and the Internet to research a specified area, word processors to prepare an essay, a digital camera, a video camera gather visuals, and a scanner to add visuals to a PowerPoint presentation as they discover...

Was Napoleon a tyrant or a hero? Answers could vary depending on the political point of view. Learners listen to Beethoven's Symphony #3 while considering Napoleon's undemocratic tyranny. They listen to the piece in five parts, each time...

Exactly how fair are the board games children grow up playing? Young mathematicians investigate this questions as they work their way through this five-lesson series on basic probability. 

It's time to make some connections! Scholars complete a close reading of the speech I Have a Dream by Martin Luther King, Jr. They use an I Have a Dream Speech Gist Note-catcher, and I Have a Dream text-dependent questions to guide their...

While reading Arthur Miller's The Crucible, start or end each day with a journal activity. The project includes a list of prompts for each act of the play. Pupils choose a prompt every time they write and connect their own experiences to...

To what extent can the surrounding environment influence one's behavior? Temple Grandin explores her connection to animals and her unique ability to understand their behavior with a lesson plan focusing on her book, Animals in...

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. 

Following the method used by Truman Capote, class members research a major character from his novel, In Cold Blood, and then conduct an interview with that character. The resulting research is used to craft a newspaper article about the...

Waves, currents, crests, and troughs. Using information provided in an article about waves and currents, readers define terms used to describe how energy travels.

Native American music is fun to listen to and great to play. Third graders get multiculturally inspired as they discuss musical sounds from around the globe, then play a few traditional Native American instruments. 

Students study DNA decoding and protein synthesis. They use the amino acid table to translate DNA, break DNA strands into three nucleotide codes, and translate nucleotides into amino acid protein codes. They research the importance of...

Color the town red. Demonstrate the concept of graph theory with a task that involves determining the least number of colors needed to color a map so that neighboring countries are not represented by the same color. Pupils...

Jack London's heart for adventure has come to define the spirit of America and its frontier. Selected passages from the foreword The Cruise of the Snark take eighth graders through London's construction and voyage of his ship before...

Earth's surface constantly changes thanks to a variety of geological forces; in fact, Australia currently moves faster than GPS technology. Scholars connect the idea of continental drift to earthquakes and volcanoes with the help of an...

Why is reading important? As part of the mid-unit assessment, scholars read, summarize, and analyze an article about the importance of reading. Additionally, they continue their discussion about whether their rules to live by should be a...

Class members are asked to consider how they would respond to situations faced by characters in Great Expectations. After completing one exercise as guided practice, individuals are presented with a second problematic situation and...

Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass serves as the anchor text for a lesson on symbolism. Readers use the provided worksheets to examine the symbols in the novel as well as in the world around them.

Signal words are one way that authors make the relationships between their ideas clear. Allow your learners the chance to investigate cause and effect in texts by identifying signal words. They locate and analyze cause-and-effect...

Some problems are so big it takes an entire community to solve them. So was the case in the children's book Humphrey the Lost Whale: A True Story by Wendy Tokuda and Richard Hall. This primary grade lesson uses a class read-aloud of...

Here is a quick activity on King David, the second king of Israel. It discusses his famous contest with the Philistine warrior Goliath and is followed by a few reading comprehension questions.

Scholars demonstrate what they know about the separation of powers through role play. Two individuals act out a skit as the remaining class members discuss and decide whether the interaction they observed is an appropriate example...

Plan ahead with a holiday-themed math word problem. Pupils read a description of a gingerbread chain, including measurements and connections, and decide how long the chain should be to cover the top and bottom of a 72 inch bulletin board.