Telling young people to just say no can be difficult in a world that inundates them with messages to just say yes. A lesson on media messages encourages teenagers to analyze song lyrics and advertisements that mention drugs...

True friends stick together. In the case of The Wind In The Willows, the friends just happen to be a toad, mole, rat, and badger who team up to beat the weasels. The resource covers the first chapter of their raucous adventures. Scholars...

Before your students reached your morning class to learn about persuasive writing, they probably saw dozens of examples of persuasive communication in the form of advertisements. A short, introductory lesson inspires class members to...

High school is the time that many scholars get their first jobs. Help young entrepreneurs apply economic principles to crucial skills for their new jobs and for functioning in society in general. They use Excel to balance a checkbook by...

Scholars learn about the carbon cycle, play a carbon cycle game, and then write a story based on their role as a carbon atom during the game. After the writings, pupils analyze the carbon cycle by leading a class discussion on the material.

Develop children's basic locomotor and object control skills with an invigorating Adaptive PE lesson. A series of four, timed stations engaged the class in playing a game of Twister, walking on a balance beam,...

Students explore melody. For this music lesson, students define "melody" and identify the melody line present in increasingly complex musical pieces. Students sing or hum the melody line after listening to an excerpt of music.

Students investigate themes and settings in their favorite fiction stories.  In this creative writing lesson, students discuss the reasons a fictional story works well and discuss ways to create their own.  Students create...

Young citizens construct an understanding of urban planning in this cross-curricular unit. Covering every aspect of city development from the political, economic, and social influences to sustainable building practices, this...

How important are sound effects in films? In stage plays? In radio programs? To gain an understanding of the impact of these special effects, class members watch a short video spoof of the sound in a scene from Star...

Grammar, vocabulary, and comprehension strategies are all part of the journey toward understanding a text. The last in a series of three extra support lessons designed to accompany Theme 5: One Land, Many Trails provides a wealth of...

Challenge scholars to plan a vacation with a $5,000 budget. Learners review costs of transportation, meals, and entertainment while considering the number of people and destination. Worksheets provide information and...

Illusions and allusions certainly sound similar but there is a world of difference in their meanings. The narrator of this short video distinguishes between these terms, defines them, and offers examples that are sure to engage viewers....

Explore the folklore of Asia and the South Pacific with this language arts lesson series. Complementing a reading of Catching the Sun: Tales from Asia by Jan M. Mike, this resource supports learners with understanding cause and...

Put the tips and tricks in this guide into practice in order to encourage your pupils to blossom into poets. A wonderful reference material for teachers, this packet includes definitions of poetic terms and forms as well as step-by-step...

The second module in a series for high school seniors focuses on tracking the central idea of a text across genres and from multiple author and character perspectives. Twelfth graders read a speech by Benazir Bhutto entitled "Ideas Live...

Having prepared for an analysis essay about one of the characters from The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, tenth graders demonstrate their understanding in a mid-unit assessment. They focus on either Jing-Mei or Waverly in an informative...

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.

Designers communicate their vision for a set through a progression from thumbnail sketches, to drawings, to renderings. After examining a series of renderings, class members begin work on their own rendering paying particular attention...

A study guide for Native Gardens, a dramatic play, introduces theater lovers to a set of a neighbors and the problems they face. Discussion questions in the guide tackle themes of racism, ageism, and classism.

Take the class over the rainbow. Pairs or small groups follow directions to create a spectrograph. The pupils measure the angles formed by the different colors of the spectrum along with calculating the lengths formed by the spectrum and...

"How come there's no ending?" After a close reading of Frank R. Stockton's tale "The Lady, or the Tiger?" in which scholars examine each of the main characters' conflicts and motivations, writers craft their own ending using textual...

Seventh graders have a golden opportunity to learn how to read poems and short stories with a unit that introduces them to the techniques writers use to craft their works. They examine poems by William Carlos Williams and Edgar Allen Poe...

Massive storms, shipwrecks, survivors stranded on an island ruled by an aging magician, and strange creatures—Shakespeare's The Tempest appeals to today's middle schoolers. For this unit, seventh graders read selections from an...