How can you tell if someone is happy? The lesson works with elementary and middle school scholars to activate their schema and pay attention to details to make inferences in their daily lives, poetry, and other literature. Cleverly...

A project-based lesson has pupils create a bulletin board to share artwork, nonfiction articles, and messages based on social justice themes. The finished board is displayed in the community to create a place for discussion. 

Eugenics philosophy takes survival of the fittest to a whole new level. With a research-focused instructional activity, young scientists examine the history of the eugenics movement and its impact on society. Pupils engage with a video...

Was Oedipus' destiny determined by fate or by his actions? Using details from the text, ninth graders delve into a critical thinking exercise based on Sophocles' Oedipus the King. Now that Oedipus has learned his true identity, readers...

"What are Henry's options?" "What do you think Henry will do?" To better understand the central conflict for the main character in Robert Cormier's Tunes for Bears to Dance to, class members engage in a compare-and-contrast activity that...

There are so many authors of short stories, and your class can have the chance to study quite a few. This seventh lesson in a series of fourteen continues the decision-making process for the final assessment: a short story author study....

Help readers make a personal connection to Homer's The Odyssey with a narrative writing assignment. Scholars select one of three prompts and craft a first-person narrative rich in sensory details that describes an experience they had...

World War I propaganda techniques employed by the United States government are the focus of this lesson plan. The resource includes an excellent handout of propaganda techniques, ranging from appealing to authority to repetition, lying,...

As class members continue their study of approaches to literary criticism, readers examine the symbolism and archetypal patterns in John Knowles' A Separate Peace, and how these parallels are used to develop a theme...

As part of their reading of Jerry Spinelli's Maniac Magee, class members consider what it would take to survive living on their own. Using the provided worksheet, individuals list their needs and decide where they would...

Viewers are a PowerPoint are exposed to the idea that pollutants are in more than just the air we breathe. the presentation provides information about the layers of the earth's atmosphere and takes a look at the pollutants in the...

It's hard to imagine that life on Alcatraz could be dull. A series of intriguing lessons take readers through the novel Al Capone Does my Shirts. Pre-reading questions introduce the text and a range of suggestions, from comic strips to...

John Hughes' The Breakfast Club takes center stage in a lesson about annotating nonfiction texts to keep track of evidence that may be used later in discussions and writings. Scholars consider the stereotypes and conflicts presented in...

Emerging biochemists more fully understand the flow of energy in ecosystems as they explore the laws of thermodynamics and relate them to energy transfer in food chains. They also investigate heat loss from the human body and how...

Pick a corner, any corner! Pupils use the Four Corners strategy and Peer Critique protocol to assess one another's draft letters to a publisher about an athlete's legacy. Scholars then use peer feedback to revise their letters.

Young scholars explore the patterns of text structure to anticipate the kind of information that a reading might present. The lesson examines some of the components of reading writing and using nonfiction.

Young scholars explore Cherokee legends. They read The First Strawberries by Joseph Bruchac, and then do several activities to help comprehension. They discuss the book and answer comprehension questions. In addition, they retell the...

In order to make evidence-based claims, one must be able to draw explicit information from text. From here, learners take that information, analyze the text to develop a deeper understanding, and connect with the information in order to...

Following the formative assessment of this unit, young scholars present the information they gathered on their specific colonial trade to the rest of the class. Working in groups, learners create posters describing the particular job...

Using this activity on blogs, you can lead your class through the process of setting up a blog, writing a blog entry, editing their work, and more. There is a link to the blog site used, and attachments of blog entries.

Explore the Bill of Rights in-depth with this resource packet that includes the complete text of the document, scenarios and discussion questions for each amendment, role-playing activities, exercises, questions for a Socratic seminar, a...

What is a philanthropist? We can all be philanthropists! After assessing the needs of the school and listening to literature about how they can help others, primary learners develop a class project and maintain a journal of their...

Jump back into expository writing and analysis at the start of a new school year! Start with a review of an authors' stylistic choices in diction, syntax, treatment of subject matter, and figurative language. Writers choose a text to...

Fourth graders read a nonfiction story that is presented to them with graphic features, and presented to them with only the text.  In this text features lesson, 4th graders decide what the benefits of text organizers are and create...