Reading about history is nothing like experiencing it firsthand. Encourage your eighth graders to do the next best thing with a historical narrative prompt, in which they describe the experience of a first-time traveler on the...

Have women always had the same educational opportunities as their male counterparts? Young historians read an 1819 essay by Emma Willard on the state of female education in the 19th century before discussing their views regarding women's...

Extend scholars' learning experience with a unit consisting of five shape lesson plans, an extension activity, assessment, and rubric. Begin by reading a story about shapes, then conduct an overview and assign pupils' their first...

Bone up on bone density. The second installment of the seven-part series has pupils read articles on two different websites to learn about bone density and its measurement, as well as X-rays and other imaging tools. A quiz assesses their...

Help your charges solve a variety of fraction and skip counting problems using a problem solving process. As a class they work through a fraction problem step-by-step, and discuss a real-life connection to the problem. Students then play...

If your class is reading A Day at the Apple Orchard by Megan Faulkner, be sure to use this guide for vocabulary in context. Go over the orchard-related terms (cycle, harvest, orchard, pollen, and ripen) before reading...

Give beginning readers a chance to practice with unknown words and context clues using the pictuer book Annabelle Swift, Kindergartner. Choose several vocabulary words to focus on as you read the picture book, or use the ones provided...

What does suspension mean? Learn this and other bridge-related vocabulary as scholars listen to Ryan Ann Hunter's nonfiction book, Cross a Bridge. This strategy can be applied to any book. Before reading, acquaint pupils...

Gradually build understanding of author's point of view through a scaffolded set of exercises. Moving from direct instruction, to collaborative work, and eventually to independent practice, these steps will assist your class in...

Help readers learn to create their own open-ended questions for any text you are working with. Using Bloom's Taxonomy, learners begin on the lower levels and work their way up to form questions that focus on synthesis instead of simple...

Amigo by Byrd Baylor gives learners a chance to practice with unknown words and context clues. Choose several vocabulary words to focus on as you read the picture book, or use the ones provided here (the book is in English...

Middle schoolers read maps and artifacts for information indicating the existence of a trade network in Old Babylonia and beyond. They list goods imported to and exported from Babylonia. They indicate trading centers on a map of ancient...

Travel back in American history to the era of slavery and abolition. After reading about the Underground Railroad, young historians examine a painting depicting the event, and write a narrative from the point of view of a person in the...

Learners study the decisions and solutions involved in winning the right to vote. After reading background information on the fight for women's suffrage, including one woman's story, and its eventual success in the United States and...

Regale your class with renditions of Aesop's fables from the engaging, and beautifully illustrated book by Jerry Pinkney. Guide discussion to practice prediction, compare and contrast various stories, explore the connections between the...

What makes a complete sentence? Words, of course! As your budding readers understand this relationship, guide them through this nursery rhyme activity. Scholars examine pictures of 10 familiar rhymes, mentally counting the words in the...

Hold a silent discussion about concepts related to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. After reading chapter seven, learners participate in a whole-class written discussion based on guiding questions written on the board by the teacher. 

Hunkering down in the trenches of World War I, Leland Linman decided to write a journal about his experiences. By reading Linman's entries in the fourth installment of an eight-part lesson series, scholars get a firsthand look at life in...

Students read and explore one of Emily Dickinson's nature poems, "A Bird Came Down the Walk-" through interaction with a variety of art forms. Clips of a hymn to hear meter and the viewing of bird images exposes them to the language and...

Working independently or in teams, your class practices connecting graphs, formulas and words. This lesson includes a guided discussion about distance vs. time graphs and looking at how velocity changes over time.  

Guide your kindergartners to create memorable, colorful number lines that they will use throughout the school year. Using sentence strip and a black marker or card stock printed in a teachers font, create traceable numbers from 1 to 20...

Students examine the major differences between earstern and western dragons and their association with the Chinese New Year. They view and discuss a video, read New Year poems, explore various websites, and create a lion mask.

Introduce your young readers to fiction written by women authors. For each story, they explore the way these daughters discover and claim their own identities. Individually, class members use the literature to examine their role in their...

Explore astronomy with a lab sheet for fifth grade scientists. After reading a short explanation about the earth's rotation, they solve a word problem about the differences in times across the world. Next, they make a model of the solar...