How high will it bounce? Groups determine the height different balls bounce off of different surfaces. By performing the necessary calculations, they determine the initial and final momentum of the balls. The included worksheet provides...

Looking to introduce some text-based questions into your ELA lessons? Practice the kinds of skills the Common Core demands with the seven text-based questions and the essay prompt provided here. Designed to be a three-day lesson, day one...

The United States Civil War resulted in the highest mortality rate for Americans since the nation's inception. Delve deeper into the causes for the drastic separation of states with a history lesson plan that features analysis charts,...

Your class continues to explore the history of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In addition to learning about the background of this text, learners work on the skill of identifying and understanding key academic vocabulary....

Here is a mid-unit assessment for a group of lessons studying the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The first half of this instructional activity calls for several forms of review. Your class will review the content of the...

A continuation of the previous lesson, which is part of a larger group of lessons on human rights (see additional materials). Here, in Lesson 7, your class will explore more articles from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. After...

Although this is part of a series, lesson plan nine has your class take a break from their close study of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) text to read the firsthand account “Teaching Nepalis to Read, Plant, and...

Lesson 10 in a series of human rights lessons focuses on the skills of finding evidence and summarizing. Your young readers work to compare the two texts they have read in this unit: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights...

As the final lesson plan in a larger beginning-of-the-year unit to establish routines and teach close reading skills, this plan is designed as an assessment piece. Using the story, The Librarian of Basra, learners independently...

Third graders practice the skills of identifying the main message in a story, describing the main character, and sorting the key details of a story into specific categories. The story they read is, The Boy Who Loved Words. Using a...

Ease into informational text with the lesson suggested here. Part of a unit series, the lesson draws from previous lessons and acts as a natural moment to add in informational text. Class members read one section of My Librarian is a...

Supervise the final drafting of a well-organized paragraph by following the steps outlined in this plan. Using the included sample paragraph as a model, class members brainstorm criteria for quality work and then compose their paragraphs...

Young scholars engage in a lesson which takes something constructed by the class, that would be normally classified as just sound, then work together to make what can be perceived to be music. Students construct a basic stringed...

This is not your ordinary farm! Using a case study, small groups study two proposed locations for a wind farm. After researching all the information about the sites, the groups choose a site. Each team member writes up the proposal...

Please, sir, can I have a few thousand dollars for my research? The last installment in a six-part instructional activity has the pupils develop a grant proposal. Class members apply their knowledge of skin cancer, ultraviolet radiation,...

Explore how resizing an object affects its area. The set of lessons challenges young mathematicians to design a mascot for electronic devices. These designs undergo resizing to determine how scale factors of dilation affect area.

What is the main difference between an engineer and a technician?  This is one of the driving questions in a plan that proves that analysis at every step of development is crucial to the engineering design process. The lesson...

Model an oil spill cleanup. An engaging engineering lesson has groups using aerogels to simulate an oil spill cleanup (vegetable oil in water). Along the way, they learn about nanotechnology and hydrophilia/hydrophobia.

Don't desert a resource on the desert! Scholars work in groups to build on their ideas from the previous lesson to design a sustainable guest village in the Saguaro National Park. Each group produces a PowerPoint presentation to share...

Candy rocks! A sweet lesson offers a different take on the rock candy experiment. Groups use a supersaturated sugar solution to create rock candy. Pupils then add other ingredients to the solution to test their effect on the...

Don't drop the ball on the resource ... drop an egg instead! A teacher-led demonstration has the class consider how to drop eggs into glasses when a tray is in the way. Hint: If you've ever seen a magician pull a tablecloth off a table,...

Close the unit on Esperanza Rising with an in-class analytic essay on how Esperanza changes over the course of the novel. Writers can use any of their notes and work from the unit as well as their drafts of the first two paragraphs of...

When your class members have completed the novel Esperanza Rising, they will be ready to write an expository essay on how Esperanza responds to events and what this says about her character. Set your pupils up for success by...

Here is a lesson plan that invites learners to engage in a kinesthetic activity that allows them to physically move and manipulate words in order to think about ways to understand vocabulary in context. After that activity is complete,...