You might just be responsible for launching a future career in rocket science. Pupils use Alka-Seltzer® tablets as the power source for a film-canister rocket. These rockets must able to carry a clay payload and hit a target on a wall.

Read the story The Great Smelly, Slobbery, Small-Tooth Dog: A Folktale from Great Britain by Margaret Read MacDonald and choose from multiple activities to learn about the tale's theme—kindness. With so many options, your kind kids will...

Turn the pupil into the teacher to help your learners pick up and retain vocabulary from Ordinary People by Judith Guest. Each individual selects a word, studies it in depth, and then teaches their word to the rest of the class, one...

What did medicine look like a hundred years ago? Two hundred years ago? Invite small groups to conduct research on the history of a chosen medical advancement before reading Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science....

How can we heal our hearts through forgiveness?  The third activity in a series of six prompts readers to answer questions about Words by Heart by Ouida Sebestyen. Not only does it activate background knowledge on the...

The anticipation guide for Words by Heart is the first of a series of six, contains lesson plans for the activity as well as a handout to be completed individually, in pairs, or as a class. It sparks interest for the text...

Blundering, audacious, obscurest. Class members develop strategies for teaching each other vocabulary words drawn from The Hobbit.

A K-W-H-L chart is a great way to scaffold prior knowledge. As class members begin their reading of Out of the Dust, Karen Hesse’s 1998 Newbery Medal winning verse novel, they chart what they already know about the Great Depression...

Class members create a table of the number of chords that can be drawn given the number of points on a circle. Pupils analyze the data created, find a function to fit to it, and use the function to make further predictions.

The San Andreas Fault moves about two inches a year, approximately the same rate fingernails grow—crazy! The third lesson in the series allows for hands-on exploration of various fault formations. Through the use of a Popsicle stick,...

How does sound travel through different mediums? Scholars explore this question by creating and observing sound waves as they learn the difference between transverse and longitudinal wave motion. Using their new knowledge, class members...

Slide the class into a skewed view. Learners alter the location of the median relative to the mean of a normal curve to create a skew distribution. They compare the curve to a histogram distribution with the same skewness. 

Test mathematicians' knowledge of adding fractions with a brief assessment that challenges them to play teacher while correcting a peer's work. Scholars examine Carl's mathematical response, identify where he went wrong,...

Three options offer young writers the opportunity to read a short story, answer questions, and write a response. A handy language arts resource focuses on reading comprehension and analyziing the story's lesson: look before you leap. 

Should the United States provide relief for those who are unemployed? Trace this question back to the Great Depression with your young historians, who will engage in careful reading of historical documents and classroom discussion...

Phrenology, the belief that parts of your brain control certain aspects of your personality, is described in Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science. While we now know much more about the brain, learners use this...

Familiarize your young learners with the parts of a computer and some basic key terms relating to technology. As the teacher demonstrates using an LCD projector, class members practice moving a mouse, opening the Internet, typing in a...

It will cost you little to ask class members to engage in a free writing exercise that helps even reluctant writers craft a poem.

Get your classroom rocking with this four-lesson earth science unit. Through a series of shared reading activities and hands-on investigations, young geologists learn about the three types of rocks and the unique properties of each.

Explore the characters in My Antonia by Willa Cather with a biopoem assignment. Pupils use the provided format to write their poems about any character from the book.

Make sure you are well-informed before embarking on a study of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. This resource includes an analysis of the text that a teacher can use to prepare a unit of study. It covers plot elements, themes,...

The work of Austrian artist Gustav Klimt is used to inspire kids to create their own mixed media works. Although designed for the special education classroom, the activity is sure to inspire all kids.

The sun provides the link between this art and science activity. Kids use sunlight (or light from an artificial source) to produce heliographic prints on fabric or paper.

Here's a art project that lets kids use bold colors to express their inner wild beasts, and maybe even attract a few wild birds. Using old picture frames, canvases, and screen mesh, young fauvists craft bird feeders and...