Encourage social skills including listening, speaking, and taking turns with a card game that challenges scholars to discuss topics and summarize in groups of four. 

Communicating clearly is one part of a successful conversation, but listening to others is just as important. Individuals with special needs plan calm responses and reactions to differing opinions with a collaborative activity.

R-e-s-p-e-c-t, find out what it means to your class! After a grand conversation about what is, and how one can show respect, scholars take part in a plethora of activity choices such as role playing, a game of Simon Says, wood working,...

Here's a resource teachers won't want to wash their hands of. Given a task where a full bar of soap is on one side of a balance and 3/4 of a bar of soup and a 3/4-ounce weight is on the other side, young mathematicians must determine the...

Four is the perfect number—if you're talking about parallelograms. Scholars determine a possible fourth vertex of a parallelogram in the coordinate plane given the coordinates of three vertices. They read a conversation...

Three heads are better than one. After reading a conversation between three friends about how to compare fractions, scholars analyze and discuss each presented strategy. These include using unit fractions, using benchmark fractions,...

If the fractions don't have a common denominator, make them have one. Learners first read and analyze a conversation of pupils trying to add 2/5 and 1/2. They compare the process of adding fractions to the process of adding quantities...

Could you develop your own way to add fractions with unlike denominators? An in-depth task has scholars examine a fictional conversation between several people in which they discuss a method of adding fractions with unlike denominators....

A tea party in Wonderland? An East Egg brunch with Gatsby, Daisy, Tom, and Nick? Breakfast with Miss Havisham, Lady Macbeth, and Abigail Williams? Or dinner with Andre, Hamlet, and Randle Patrick McMurphy? Class members select a favorite...

When van Leeuwenhoek saw cells and single-celled organisms for the first time, he knew these small things were a big deal! Share his discoveries with young learners through a narrated video, model-building activity, and scale study....

Don't think negatively about exponents. Young mathematicians dissect a fictional conversation between pupils trying to evaluate an expression with a negative exponent. This allows them to understand the meaning of negative exponents.

Sometimes the indirect path is best. Scholars determine whether the sum of a rational number and an irrational number is irrational. Reading a transcript of a conversation between classmates leads to an indirect proof of this concept.

Why do you weigh more in space? Each individual in your class explores this question and others as they determine the mass and weight of different objects using two types of scales. They perform conversions and discuss their...

There's something about the classic volcano demonstration that can grab any learners' attention. Scholars begin with a reading and grand conversation about volcanoes, construct an erupting volcano using vinegar and baking soda, then...

What one person thinks is a pest may not be a pest to someone else. Here, scholars examine the characteristics of living things and pests through grand conversation and a variety of activities. Class members play a game of pest or not a...

Groups of two to four work collaboratively to engineer a birdhouse that will stay cool in the summer heat. Teams examine several different-colored roofs, testing the efficiency of each with a heat lamp. Then, groups sketch their ideas,...

The fourth standard for reading literature in the Common Core calls for young readers to be able to determine the figurative and connotative meanings of words and phrases. Use this resource, a continuation of a series of Common Core...

The road to a better understanding of engineering lies with bridges and tunnels. A set of four engaging activities teaches learners about engineering concepts related to construction projects. They perform an experiment to find the...

Honor Dr. Seuss on his birthday with a read aloud of the story Oh! the Places You'll Go! and a variety of activities that inspire scholars to dream of their future endeavors. Readers take part in conversations, research the...

Explore a basic pattern to practice writing expressions. In collaborative groups, learners examine a contextual pattern and write an expression to model it. The task encourages groups to describe the pattern in multiple ways.

Within collaborative groups, scholars factor a degree six polynomial. They can factor the polynomial using many different strategies — a great way to prompt mathematical discussion.

Teach solving absolute value inequalities through inquiry. Groups use their knowledge of absolute value and solving inequalities to find a solution set to an absolute value inequality. Working collaboratively encourages discussion,...

Explore the effect of outliers through an analysis of mean, median, and standard deviation. Your classes examine and compare these measures for two groups. They must make sense of a group that has a higher mean but lower median compared...

What makes a good sample? Your classes collaborate to answer this question through a task involving areas of rectangles. Given a set of 100 rectangles, they sample a set of five rectangles to estimate the average area of the figures. The...