There are not many more apt examples of ethics gone awry than William Golding's Lord of the Flies.. Ninth graders focus the ethics of decision making with the examples provided in the plot. They focus on the...

Students research immigration to find out why people from Europe, Asia, and elsewhere left their homelands during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Then they determine what living conditions were like when immigrants first settled...

Upper elementary schoolers examine the concept of synonyms and how using a variety of vocabulary through synonyms can expand their writing skills. They revise a paragraph using synonyms located on the Visual Thesaurus and participate in...

What's the best resource to use when looking up words? Use Visual Thesaurus to see a word's meaning. The class accesses the interactive website and then compares and contrasts the difference between using a traditional dictionary and the...

In this wall reading worksheet, students read ten paragraphs and answer three questions for each paragraph in how the information relates to themselves. Students then answer twenty eight multiple choice questions about the reading.

A biography writing lesson plan with a tasty twist! Kids create a "visual biography" in which each pizza slice represents a paragraph, and toppings represent supporting details. They learn research techniques, note-taking skills, and how...

Youngsters analyze a book discussing a child's fear on the first day of school. They discuss the characters in the book, The Teacher from the Black Lagoon. Then they discuss their own fears and uncertainties about starting a class with...

Utilizing computer software, learners demonstrate the color spectrum. They investigate the life of the artist Piet Mondrian and define his style of artwork. Then they use Photoshop to recreate some of his designs while discovering the...

Explore Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" in this literature analysis lesson. Middle schoolers read and summarize the plot of the story. They then adapt passages for a contemporary audience and analyze the...

Students are introduced to different context clues.  In this context clues activity, students analyze sentences to find the meaning of a word using context clues.

Listen to the book Madeline, and identify rhyming words with learners as they hear them in the book. Learners will engage in a class discussion about rhyming words. After listening to Madeline, they will circle pictures of words that...

Do your learners need help setting financial goals? Do they need to practice setting long-term goals? Keep teens accountable by providing the goal contract and encouraging them to check in with their goals! Give middle and high schoolers...

Putting together an interesting story can be hard, but this set of worksheets will guide your writers into the depths of their own creativity as they characterize both their main character and villain. Using humor to keep learners...

They always say to write what you know. This approach is used to get middle schoolers prepared to write novels of their own. Using a favorite book as a model, potential novelists respond to prompts that ask about characters, plot, main...

Third graders and their teacher work together to understand cause and effect relationships in texts. The I do, we do, you do method is used as learners discuss and determine the cause and effect relationships found in several short...

I do, we do, you do is the method and delivery of this lesson on cause and effect relationships in text. Second grade readers work with their teacher, then their peers, and finally on their own to read, identify cause and relationship,...

If you're looking for a detailed lesson on event sequencing from informational text, you've found it. There is an entire script for you to draw from as you explore order of events and sequence words. Scaffolding is key here; learners...

Begin exploring main idea in a text by telling the class an interesting story. Can they recall the main idea after you finish? What clues told them this was it? Explain that you will apply this concept as you read a nonfiction book....

Find key details in books using this note card strategy. Each reader gets six cards with the classic who, what, where, when, why, and how detail prompts. After they read the book, they choose a card and locate a key detail...

Patricia Polacco weaves an engaging tale for budding readers in her book Some Birthday!, an excellent resource for vocabulary in context. You can use this text to introduce the following words: investigate, snarl, and squawk....

The ability to analyze an argument is a skill emphasized by the Common Core standards. Offer your class an opportunity to develop and hone their skills by providing them the testimonies in an Oregon court case. After reading the facts of...

What is a proverb? This is the leading question of this resource. First, explore proverbs and their meanings. Then, read aloud The Hidden Feast: A Folktale from the American South by Martha Hamilton and Mitch Weiss and partake...

Close up your study of Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science with a letter-writing assignment. Pupils prepare by journaling and sharing with a partner. They then compose letters that focus on a big idea from the...

Focus on chapter two of Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science with a questioning activity. After teaching and modeling several types of questions, learners work with partners and then independently to answer and...