Eighty-eight years after women earned the right to vote, a women ran for president. Young analysts consider the role women play in politics, how they are portrayed, the standards they are held to, and if they are still treated unfairly...

Teach kids how to watch television, specifically the news, with this creative idea for learners of all ages from the Media Awareness Network. The elementary school plan focuses on presenting news as a story and uses Jon Scieszka's story...

Plot, setting, characters, and conflict are common to both drama and narrative stories. Kids create narrated tableaus that show their understanding of the plot, setting, and conflict of a story they've recently read. The lesson...

After reading about how engineering has made adaptive devices possible for people with disabilities, pupils work in groups to discuss different devices to determine whether or not they are adaptive. They also disassemble a pair of...

Words are everywhere in our lives, and our culture shapes how we understand them. Examine the use of words and their impact on society by first examining a word-inspired art piece, and then by creating a thoughtful word-inspired collage....

Drawing, writing, and analyzing, that is what's on the menu. Young artists draw a corner of the classroom, analyze the painting, Poppies by Andrew Dasburg, and then write a postcard describing their vacation to an imaginary hotel that...

Learners examine art by considering how the subject matter and artists design choices affect the viewer's experience. They use the provided close-up images and notes to analyze the painting, Poppies. Afterward, they use the painting as a...

How do we know so much about the past? A student-crafted presentation provides viewers with images of artifacts from St. Augustine, Florida that give historians and archaeologists clues into lives already lived.

Not only is Wassily Kandinsky fun to say, his art contains tons of angles. Learners discuss Kandinsky's music-inspired abstract art and four types of angles. They search one of his paintings for obtuse, right, straight, and acute angles,...

There is a difference between actions, motives, and the appearance of a character in a narrative text. Fourth graders explore character analysis through the dramatic arts. They create a series of movements, tableaus, and pantomimes to...

Are you in need of a new way to teach learners sequence of events and how to interpret a character's external motivations? Why not engage them in dramatic play? The class will use tableaux to convey the sequence of events in a familiar...

This can be used as a critical thinking exercise in congruence or as a teaching tool when first introducing the concept. Four octagons are arranged in such a way that a square is formed in the middle. With this information, geometry...

Identify the author's organizational pattern for expressing ideas. After reading an article on the California Gold Rush, middle schoolers determine the author's purpose for writing a passage of informational text. A full list of...

Learners work in groups to create a storyboard about their video. They shoot a video designed to teach others to connect the computer and camcorder and how to capture video in Adobe Premiere Elements editing program.

This lesson is intended for a music class but would be a great way to teach compare and contrast to any class. Kindergarteners dance the Hokey Pokey to four different styles of music and examine two paintings of Humpty Dumpty, then...

Kids compare and contrast knowledge of the Vietnam War. They consider what they know and how their knowledge has changed after listening to oral histories from the war. They compare the understanding of the war from the perspective of...

This lesson is preparation-intensive, but well worth the investment. You will construct five or six portable testing stations with which lab groups will gather data on the best position for collecting sunlight with a solar panel. This is...

These historical scenarios are designed to aid the class understand how slaves resisted their masters. They are presented with six scenarios which they then respond to by describing how they would resisted slavery in each situation. This...

Was the Titanic advertised as an unsinkable ship, or was it just what the public believed? In this analysis activity, historians examine both primary and secondary sources to determine the answer to this question and the reliability of...

High schoolers study the legal battles involving same-sex marriage. They examine primary sources and a video regarding the 14th amendment and its implications for gay marriage. They analyze a report of a California case that was sent to...

Art can be a vehicle for social change and cultural expression. Upper graders examine the art of photographer David Goldblatt, as it pertains to apartheid, South Africa, and the AIDS epidemic. Discussion questions and image links...

Can a neon sign be considered art? Kids consider two different works that use neon text as the basis for conveying artistic social messages. They then analyze a truism from Jenny Holzer's web site that holds meaning to them personally....

Seven major abstract art movements are analyzed by learners in groups. Each group analyzes various works by determining which work belongs to which movement. They then read Flatland, engage in an art and literary analysis discussion,...

Lao Tzu was the fabled author of the Toa te Ching, Lau Tzu is also the name of a large sculptural piece. Kids examine Mark di Suvero's larger-than-life sculptures in relation to the elements of art they've learner about. They examine...