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....

When it comes to writing effective arguments, writers must do more than simply make a claim, counterarguments must be considered. Aspiring writers analyze counterarguments in editorials, and then learn how to write counterarguments in...

Celebrate Eric Carle’s beloved children’s books, especially those about animals. Teachers and readers alike engage in Carle’s books as they explore the art and color in each of his stories, and how these elements support comprehension.

Get in touch with your sense of self! The fifth and final lesson in a series of college and career lessons for fifth graders reinforces the relationship between interests and career choices. Pupils play a scenario-driven game, then dig...

This St. Patrick's Day, young writers imagine they found a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. After a class discussion and brainstorming, scholars compose a narrative essay making sure they incorporate transitions and at least three...

Work with fractional cookies. The three-part assessment task checks the pupils' ability to find the product of fractions and whole numbers, mixed numbers, or fractions. Learners determine the amount of ingredients needed and how many of...

How much can a cat eat? The five-question fraction assessment asks pupils to determine the fractional portion of a food box eaten by cats. Learners show their proficiency in adding and subtracting fractions using several scenarios...

Make the cookies healthy. The assessment task asks pupils to determine the number of cookies they could make based on a given amount of ingredients. Given two sugar substitutes, learners determine which substitute would be better and...

It all adds up to one. Pupils solve several items that involve finding sums of fractions in relationship to a whole. The assessment task uses fractions with unlike denominators to determine the amount of a tank of gas and the amount of...

Obviously, four is the perfect number when you're playing Four Square. Scholars first use multiplication and division to solve a set of problems on the number of balls needed, the number of games, and the number of players required for a...

Let imaginations run wild as participants design animal pens. A performance task challenges young mathematicians to determine the perimeter or a missing side length of different animal pens. They then design pens that meet given...

Here's an assessment task that's better than watching a show. Young mathematicians solve word problems involving multiplication and division with equal groups. They must find the total number of attendees on a trip to a theater based on...

Paste this resource into your lesson plans like you'd paste a tile onto a mural. Given a diagram of a tile mural with rectilinear figures, future artists determine the perimeters and areas of the figures. They must then develop their own...

Aim high with a task on window washers. An assessment task challenges learners to determine the number of windows two people wash. They do this using a given number of window rows on each side of a building. In addition, they find the...

Why do some stars in a constellation appear brighter than others? Using a get-up-and-move astronomy activity, scholars explore perspective and the appearance of constellations in the sky while developing an understanding of the...

While the Industrial Revolution may have fueled America's rise to the top of world markets, the child laborers often faced dangerous conditions. Using primary source images and other information, scholars consider what these children...

Weathering is not necessarily a result of the weather. Scholars conduct an experiment to explore the effect of surface area and volume on the weathering process. They create their own sugar cube rocks using the same number of cubes—but...

Call it soccer, call it football, but call it unfair! the US women's soccer team has called out the US Soccer Federation for unfair treatment in terms of salaries, support, and working conditions in a lawsuit filed in 2019. Young...

Young historians investigate how sexism impacted the 2020 United States presidential election. They examine media coverage of the six women candidates, engage in a four-corners debate reacting to statements about gender and the...

Middle schoolers complete vocabulary and word work activities including an online quiz. They read an online article while focusing on answering specific information questions. They discuss ways to improve the environment and present them...

Does standard deviation work for non-symmetrical distributions, and what does it mean? Through the use of examples, high schoolers determine the standard deviation of a variety of distributions and interpret its...

Just how far off is the least squares line? Using a graphing calculator, individuals or pairs create residual plots in order to determine how well a best fit line models data. Three examples walk through the calculator procedure of...

How do you create a residual plot? Work as a class and in small groups through the activity in order to learn how to build a residual plot. The activity builds upon previous learning on calculating residuals and serves as a...

Amaze your classes with the ability to find side lengths of triangles immediately — they'll all want to know your trick! Learners use the Pythagorean Theorem and special right triangle relationships to find missing side lengths.