Students brainstorm independently first, then ask their best friend on the team, or seat partners, depending on the year & student mix, to add to their list of personal characteristics and/or to name three words they think of...

Learners practice creating similes and metaphors together as a class. Individually students create similes and metaphors and illustrate them.

Young scholars imagine and create their dream house.  In this comprehension and interpretation lesson, students read The Big Orange Splot, answer comprehension questions about the story and  complete a character traits...

Students create a haiku about the land formations they've studied.  In this haiku lesson, students identify the metaphor and meaning of a given haiku, brainstorm comparisons for a landform photo as a class and choose one to use in a...

Help young scientists connect with nature and learn about trees with a fun life science lesson. Heading out into the school yard, children choose a tree to adopt, taking measurements, writing descriptions, and drawing sketches of it in...

Combine landscape with collage to create unique art pieces. Class members examine works of art before creating their own pieces with photos of a special place. Learners create a panoramic image and add in figures.

Students write letter from historical figure's point of view using proper letter writing conventions, write about two props/artifacts that are representative of their subject's life, and use Internet resources to gather images to use in...

Learners create a word tree poster that illustrates the way a root word can serve as the basis for many related terms. Although designed for a Latin language class, the concepts here could be used with any class study of Latin or Greek...

What are the characteristics of a good research source? At the beginning of a research project, have your class brainstorm evaluative criteria for primary and secondary source material. They then use the generated list to guide their...

A reading of Stella Blackstone’s, Bear’s Busy Family launches a genealogy writing project. Young researchers use key words from the story, daddy, sister, uncle, etc., to write stories to illustrate and combine into a family book. While...

Eighth graders research and write reports on key figures of the Antebellum Period. The projects also include pictures, bibliographies, and timelines about their assigned figure. In addition, 8th graders present oral reports to classmates.

Create baseball cards for literary characters with this lesson plan. It introduces students to baseball cards, their components (stats, picture, etc.), and prompts them to draft and publish their own cards based on figures from...

Use this roaring 1920s history lesson to have young writers research primary and secondary sources. They use their research to examine the events or famous public figures of the time period. Next, they imagine they're in the 1920s and...

Have your class participate in a variety of sports and craft activities using this resource. With sports as the theme, learners work on art projects. Learners create soccer ball prints, a three dimensional football, and a sports collage.

After reading The Great Gatsby, groups return to the text and note passages where Fitzgerald uses symbols and color imagery in his narrative. They then develop a presentation that explains the context, the implications, and possible...

Thomas Jefferson remains one of the most fascinating figure in American history, both for his innovative contributions to the United States government and his remarkably contradictory personal life. A series of discussion questions and...

Second graders explore symmetry and congruent shapes. In this math instructional activity, 2nd graders identify examples of symmetry and congruent shapes in nature. Students take photographs and create a multimedia presentation of...

Fifth graders view prints of M.C. Escher's work. They look at examples of geometric figures and polygons and discuss places they have seen them. Students create their own tessellations. They write a report about the process they used in...

Students explore life and language development in the Elizabethan Age. For this English lesson students complete web-quests and other activities surrounding Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

Students conduct team interviews outside the classroom, either within the school or beyond, as part of a fieldwork project. They use reasoning skills as they formulate questions, plan, predict, hypothesize, and speculate about the...

Students write a persuasive paper following the expository theme format of introduction, first body paragraph, second body paragraph, third body paragraph, and conclusion that addresses the prompt of the final project adequately. They...

Students are able to evaluate their peers' essays to determine clarity, completeness, and persuasiveness. They are able to revise their own essays for greater clarity and fluency, adding explanation where needed and cutting extraneous...

High schoolers examine the role and influence of the major political, literary, and artistic figures in Russian history and in present-day Russia.

Students know the meaning of a given list of figures of speech and stylistic devices. They identify examples of these terms in the music and songs with which they are familiar. They examine how to apply the knowledge of these terms to...