Why do readers need to know an author’s purpose? How do you figure out what that purpose is? Guide your pupils through a series of activities that show them how to identify various techniques and structures used in persuasive writing....

Students explore the role of a police officer while investigating the Microsoft Word program. In this technocop instructional activity, students examine how to format  text using a computer program. Students follow...

Included here are step-by-step instructions for conducting a close reading of The Voice That Challenged a Nation by Russell Freedman. After an individual and class reading, class members read carefully through the text excerpt,...

Just how big would it really be? Young mathematicians determine if different toys are proportional and if their scale is accurate. They solve problems relating scale along with volume and surface area using manipulatives. The...

Show your youngsters how to discern between shapes of different sizes, types, and colors. After the initial introduction, learners choose the type, color, and size of the shape instructed during a game with the whole class.

In this math worksheet, students learn the tricks to multiply any number by 10, 100 or 1000. There are 75 problems on 3 pages, both written horizontally and vertically with instructions and picture illustrations to help students.

“The tempter or the tempted, who sins most?” Prediction, verification, judgment, and extensions of thought are all part of a Directed ReadingThinking Activity (DRTA) developed for Measure for Measure. The rationale, assessments...

Learning to cook, follow directions, and presenting information are skills every body needs to know. Learners complete a recipe-in-a-jar activity to hone these life skills. They follow the directions, choose and use correct measurement...

Switch, change, rotate! Players are in groups of three scattered around the playing area. Switch means the lead and back players change positions. Change means the entire group turns and goes in the opposite direction. Rotate means the...

Class members take center stage as groups perform scenes from Ian Doescher's William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope. Actors are encouraged to add stage directions to the script, as well as create costumes and props to...

Present tense verbs are the focus of a 24-page packet designed for language learners and loaded with activities, worksheets, and exercises. Step-by-step directions, materials lists, and variations for each lesson are included. A solid...

"O pun" the door on this activity. Have your pupils compare the puns and word play in scenes from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night to those in Gary Blackwood’s The Shakespeare Stealer. Warm up and introductory activities, as well as...

Explore informative and explanatory writing with this lesson. Using a cube labeled with directives to describe, analyze, compare, associate, apply, and argue the topic, middle schoolers work individually or in groups to answer questions....

Set up a listening center, record the provided script, and see how well your class can manipulate phonemes based on the instructions you've provided. This center-based activity builds the phonological awareness and phoneme manipulation...

Show your scholars that they make inferences every day and might not even know it. Through scaffolded instruction, they break down the process of drawing information from context. Using example sentences and didactic questioning,...

Reinforce reading comprehension with a instructional activity about The Archer and the Sun, a Chinese folktale. Kids learn some background information about Chinese culture before reading the story, and answer literacy...

What determines whether a function has an inverse? Learners investigate that criteria when they examine values in a partially completed input-output table for two different functions. The task is to complete the table so that one of the...

If you don't teach blind or visually impaired learners, this lesson may seem a bit strange. But, it helps them develop motor skills, orientation and movement skills, and listening skills, while building a better understanding of...

Make a game out of solving equations. This particular activity works well for pairs of learners. Follow the instructions to have player one pick a number and player two verbally give an equation. Participants need to make sense of a...

How does the president of the United States get the authority to exercise his/her duties? What responsibilities and tasks go into a hard day's work for the president? Here is a lesson plan that includes several instructional materials...

Get a detailed look at plate tectonics with a 14-slide presentation that highlights the Earth's layers, continental drift, seafloor spreading, the theory of plate tectonics, and boundary types. Each slide provides thorough...

The first activity in this leadership forum asks pairs of participants to design and build a paper airplane and then fly this plane from one partner to the other. The debrief of the activity asks these future leaders to consider how they...

Pupils multiply the vertical and horizontal distances from the center of dilation by the scale factor. The independent practice prompts the class to analyze the relationship between the image and pre-image. The lesson is...

An informative lesson contains a brief explanation of how the sum of the angles of a triangle is a line. The lesson continues with determining the missing angle in a triangle, or solving for a variable. Using the sum of the...