Young scholars reach out into the community and learn about different environmental science careers in this inquiry-based instructional activity. Beginning with a short research assignment, children gain background knowledge about...

Bring a time machine into your classroom with this writing activity, in which young writers project themselves back in time and have a variety of choices from that point forward. They either write a conversation with a historical figure,...

Learners explore animal habitats.  In this cross curriculum animal survival and writing lesson, students view a website about wild horses on Shackelford Island and discuss ways in which the horses have changed to this...

Mastering techniques from the resource, pupils give life to their writing, revising their storyboards to include sensory details and transitions. To finish, they participate in a peer critique process and use the feedback to further...

Using adjectives to create vivid descriptions is the focus of exercises in this resource. A cloze reading activity asks class members to add missing adjectives to passages from Mark Teague's The Lost and Found. They then read...

Introduce young thespians to all aspects of the theater. A syllabus for a one-semester drama course provides lessons that take learners from the history of drama to the many facets of play production.

Middle schoolers complete a writing assessment task to demonstrate their ability to craft a narrative based on a variety of informational texts. They view West of the West's documentary Magic Isle, read three print resources about...

Karen Russell's short story "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves" has a unique structure that adds value to the story. With the fourteenth activity in a unit about literary analysis and textual support, analyze how Russell has...

Reading, writing, and rings! A lesson from NASA combines space science with authentic reading and writing tasks. Included in this lesson are pre-reading activities, four mini informational booklets on Saturn, a structured...

Use this writing and photography lesson plan in your descriptive writing unit. Elementary and middle schoolers write and create a story line incorporating photos from Inspiration or their own personal photos. They experiment with...

Poetry is a very personal and introspective art form. Give your class the opportunity to understand how a poet's voice can speak to them on a personal level, and that every reader can respond to an author differently. After a poetic...

When faced with a challenge, how do your pupils respond? Starting with character analyses, learners participate in a instructional activity about appearances and perseverance. They watch a short film, talk about common English...

If you've used any of the New Class Museum lessons exploring the theme, Unmonumental, then check this out! Included are three different final project ideas that tie into the other seven Unmonumental lessons. Kids create community through...

Second graders practice their creative writing by using descriptive words.  In this language arts lesson, 2nd graders utilize their best descriptive writing to elaborate on one of 20 different bean bag characters.  Students...

Students identify strategies the author used to vividly convey qualitative and quantitative aspects of life in China, then use those strategies in writing of their own. They examine the author's writing style and techniques to learn some...

Fourth graders write from the perspective of a child in the colonial period. For this writing lesson, 4th graders create a fictional character living in the colonial period and write about daily life from their perspective.

Students practice their creative writing skills and build cooperative learning skills. In this creative writing project, students review parts of a story. Students reinforce the concept of sequencing and develop stronger writing...

Spice up your writing! Your amateur writers will benefit from concentrating on understanding and improving verb use in writing. An introductory activity addresses weak verbs. A second exercise helps them see the importance of strong...

Sad, depressed, miserable, inconsolable, forlorn: so many synonyms have a lot of variety with their connotations. Through the guided imagery activity, writers explore the use of connotation and its influence on imagery and description by...

Put a silly spin on making amends with an apology poem. Budding poets think of a time they were made to apologize although they didn't mean it. They then turn their experience into a poem that offers details and ends with an explanation...

How can a screenplay create meaning and drama in ways that other forms of writing cannot? That is the question class members must answer as they compare the cantina scene of the screenplay for George Lucas's Star Wars: A New Hope...

Use a hot dog as a metaphor for good reading, and make your class drool! Writers identify the parts of a paragraph, linking them to parts of a hot dog. Then, they translate this knowledge into a well-written paragraph. While a check-list...

Two exercises boost scholars' knowledge of a onomatopoeia with excerpts from famous poems. In exercise one, participants circle onomatopoeia words. Exercise two challenges writers to choose three words to use in an...

Students compare two paintings, depicting urban life in America in the 1940's, answering a series of questions, then create a short story about the paintings' characters. They compare 'Nighthawks' and 'Nightlife.'