Can anyone grow up to be president of the United States? As part of their study of the 2020 election, groups research the constitutional requirements to become president. The class then brainstorms a list of qualifications beyond those...

How can you tell if a number of items is reasonable? Combine math and language arts with a fun lesson plan based on Jeff Shepard's The Right Number of Elephants. After reading the book, kids discuss amounts of other items and...

This chapter-by-chapter guide to The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, designed to be used in either a classroom or homeschool setting, contains vocabulary lists, discussion questions, and writing prompts.

How could you decide which of your late mother's possessions are important enough to take to college with you? Decide which items would be the most valuable to you with an activity based on Kyoko Mori's Shizuko's Daughter. After...

Reading snail mail is a great way to go back into history and to understand others' points of view. The resource, the second in a five-part unit, covers the Dreyfus Affair. Scholars, working in two different groups, read one letter and...

A five-question worksheet asks learners to consider who they admire, the qualities this person has that they admire, and why they find these characteristics admirable. To conclude, pupils select three of the qualities they admire in...

What is your leadership style? Tweens and teens independently complete a Four Leadership Styles worksheet. Once completed, they use a leadership code to identify their prominent leadership style. Class members gather by style, brainstorm...

The reading of a contextual essay launches a study of Black Americans who served in Congress from 1870 through 1887. Young historians identify the African Americans who served during this period, investigate the ways they won national...

Despite some advances made during the Reconstruction Era following the Civil War, the period from 1887 through 1929, African Americans serving in Congress suffered severe setbacks due to Jim Crow Laws and voter suppression. Class members...

The fourth installment of the seven-instructional activity unit focused on African Americans elected to and serving in the US Congress looks at the period from 1971 through 2007. Class members read a contextual essay that provides...

Suffragettes, suffragists, and anti-suffragists. A two-day, richly detailed lesson plan has young historians investigate the twentieth-century suffrage movement. Groups examine primary and secondary source materials about Jane Addams and...

Separating political rhetoric from propaganda is no small feat. Class members are challenged to examine two different sources about a candidate in an upcoming election and determine whether the primary purpose of the source is to inform...

"What should we have for dinner?" "What am I eating?" "Where did it come from?" These three questions are at the heart of Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. Pollan's book provides some very...

As part of a reading of Elie Wiesel's Night class members engage in a directed reading/thinking activity that includes crafting predictions, verifying these predictions, and interpreting portions of the text.

What makes a good question? Middle schoolers explore the use of questioning through QAR, the question answer response strategy, while reading Where the Red Fern Grows. They learn about the four types of questions: right there, think...

An art history detective; I want to be one of those! The class puts their heads together to hone their deductive and critical thinking skills in order to determine which Native American tribe created and used parfleche boxes. They'll use...

Critical thinking is an important aspect of mathematics — it's time to put your brain to work! Use this assessment to challenge pupils and test their skills. Concepts assessed include function notation, factoring, completing the square,...

Lesson 16 in the series of 28 is a mid-module assessment. Learners simplify expressions, write and solve equations, and write and solve inequalities. Most questions begin as word problems adding a critical thinking component to the...

Can you judge a book by its cover? Decide who and what Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is about with a prediction activity. Before reading the first three chapters of the book, kids answer questions based on their interpretation...

In this logic learning exercise, 8th graders work in groups to solve 8 math problems requiring critcial thinking skills.

A Directed Reading Thinking Activity (DRTA) strategy for Great Expectations scaffolds and guides readers as they begin Dicken's novel. Step-by-step directions are provided, as are chapter one pair-share questions, a prediction worksheet,...

Whether you are teaching a newspaper unit in language arts, covering the First Amendment and censorship in social studies, or focusing on writing ethics in journalism, a unit based on the foundations of journalism would be an excellent...

Get your class thinking about climate change as a scientific theory. Guided by a handout, emerging earth scientists read articles and take notes about glaciers and sea ice. To conclude, they write an evaluation of the evidence for...

Engage conversation and explore the journey as you challenge young readers to interpret the german folktale, "The Fisherman and His Wife" written by literary brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm.