Help your youngsters find meaning in the text they read with this series of five intervention lessons. Offering explicit, step-by-step instructions for walking children through shared readings of leveled books, these...

Primary sources are valuable for understanding the context of historical events, but the diction and dialect in these documents can be difficult to understand. Middle and high schoolers participation in a transcription process in which...

There's a container for every matter—liquid, solid, and gas. Pupils design three different containers, each with the capability to hold one of the states of matter, and share their design with the class.     

Freedom of speech is absolute—or is it? The Supreme Court case Schenck v. United States has learners research what free speech really looks like. A short video along with paired work creates open discussion and thought on what speech is...

Remember the Alamo! Scholars investigate the Battle of San Jacinto during the Texas Revolution. Using models, maps, quotes, biographies, and the Oath of Allegiance, the Alamo comes to life as the stories of those who fought and died in...

After completing an online activity about the Mayflower, scholars draw a picture about what they know of the Thanksgiving holiday, including a one-sentence summary. A reading of If You Were at the First Thanksgiving by Anne Kamma is...

Fun is in the air as learners with special needs engage in sensory-filled activities. They discuss color, snow, cold, winter, and body parts while touching and smelling various objects. They discuss the parts of the body with relation to...

One photograph can represent so much more than the images on the film. Eighth graders select a photograph from the Civil War era and conduct additional research based on the subject matter from the picture. Once they complete the...

What's in your water? And, why is water quality so important? Enhance your class's level of water appreciation through a lesson that demonstrates the necessity of water quality. Environmental enthusiasts explore the EPA's Clean Water...

Take out a map, a paper, a ruler, and those coveted colored pencils for a lesson on Chinese culture and geography. This is a multifaceted approach to basic geography skills that incorporate story telling, class discussion, primary source...

Have you ever been told that your new car begins to lose its value as soon as you drive it off the lot? Aspiring accountants take on the concepts of depreciation and book value through an easy-to-deliver career and technology lesson. The...

A richly detailed, step-by-step plan is designed to help high school seniors create a postsecondary plan for pursuing their career goals. Using the template provided by the California Career Center website, individuals complete their...

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...

Explore the structure and content of the US Constitution in the second lesson of this five-part social studies series. A collection of activities, games, and videos complement a class reading of a document summarizing the US...

Expand your class's vision of the French-speaking world by conducting this research project. Pupils focus on building 21st-century skills while they look up information about a French country and put together presentations.

Encourage narrative writing with a clever exercise. Class members watch episodes from movies and describe what happened to a character, including details about the setting, plot, and characters. Writers then craft a narrative about a...

Scary stuff! Whether approached as the first horror story or a "serious imaginative exploration of the human condition," Frankenstein continues to engage readers. Here's a packet of activities that uses Mary Shelley's gothic...

How can understanding advertisements make people better consumers? With the fourth and final instructional activity from the Admongo series on advertising, scholars reflect on some of the questions they may ask about an ad before making...

Ratifying the Constitution was no simple task. Using primary sources, such as classic writings from the Federalists and Anti-Federalists, young scholars examine the arguments for and against the Constitution. They then decide: Would they...

What kinds of media do your pupils use to read and publish information? After a discussion about what publishing means, and about the freedom of the press, class members interview one or two other people about their publishing habits....

Eighth graders use a software program to recreate a mask they made in art class. Individually, they write a paper describing their mask with an loose illustration. They combine the pictures of each mask into a class book for others to view.

Students observe chickens hatching in a classroom incubation environment In this egg-hatching lesson plan, students make observations of the hatching process and later care for the hatched chickens.

Students investigate the One-Tonne challenge, and work out how they could reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by one tonne, through individual actions and by influencing other people.

The ninth in a fourteen-activity series, this plan marks a sort of midpoint in a unit devoted to the study of short stories. Pupils learn about theme and work on their short story projects by adding to their blogs, checking in with the...