Second graders make a KWL chart and brainstorm what they need for the project of growing potatoes. They choose one potato and plant it in water or peat moss cups and choose a location in which meets the needs of the plants and make their...

Students experiment with variety of materials to investigate, develop inferences, and differentiate between concepts of motion energy and heat energy, and the part played by friction in the transformation process.

Students define several vocabulary terms related to chemicals and toxicology. Students calculate chemical concentrations in water and explain the toxicological principles that govern safety of substances. Students conduct an...

High schoolers develop reading strategies: inferring meaning from context. They work together in order to negotiate the meaning of the various vocabulary items. Students predict the personality of the main character in each of the books.

The students recall events from Dr. Seuss' story The Lorax and make connections to environmental issues affecting their lives. They are expected to reflect on the facts of the story and respond verbally stating the inferences they made...

Students identify and acquire an understanding of what the Civil Rights Movement consisted of, the issues that sparked the Movement, the people who participated and the events that occurred during the Movement. They also identify how to...

Students consider works of art in their historical context. For this art in historical context lesson, students are encouraged to think about and record their prior knowledge of the historical period and to make inferences about the...

Learners explain the concept of paleoclimatological proxies. In this oxygen isotope lesson, students interpret data and make inferences about climate changes in the geologic past.

Students explore the contributions of African Americans of the 20th century. In this African American history lesson, students examine portraits of Muhammad Ali, Romare Bearden, Lorraine Hansberry, Judith Jamison, and Leontyne Price in...

Learners compare and contrast side-scan sonar to other methods used to find objects underwater. In this underwater search lesson, students describe side-scan sonar and make inferences about the topography of an unknown landscape. This...

Students explain the concept of gene sequence analysis. In this gene instructional activity, students draw inferences about phylogenetic similarities of different organisms.

Students collect and display data in a Venn Diagram. In this statistics lesson, students collect data, compare the data and make inferences about their data. They use the Venn diagrams to identify what the data have in common and how...

Turn your classroom into a pig sty with a instructional activity based on the Appalachian folktale The Pig Who Went Home on Sunday. Similar to the story of The Three Little Pigs, the folktale tells a story of four pigs who leave...

How do robots assist ocean explorers in collecting data and images? The final installment in a five-part series has science scholars examine underwater images collected by robots and identify the organisms shown. Groups then calculate...

Was that supposed to be funny? Scholars analyze The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County to determine if Mark Twain's story is indeed based on humor. Learners work through short response questions, vocabulary, and active reading to make a...

A lunch-time activity encourages pupils to step out of their usual lunch bunch and connect with someone new. To begin, individuals examine a group photograph and identify what they believe is the gender, race, religion, and sexual...

Young historians learn more about the history of Angel Island Immigration Station through their analysis of primary source images. Guided by a list of inferential questions, scholars learn how to make and record observations on a...

Imagine what life might be like in a different galaxy. That's the challenge young scientists take on in a warm-up activity designed to prepare them for a close reading of Ruth Stone's poem "In the Next Galaxy." After class members share...

Why does Charles Dickens have Ebenezer go from scrooge to light-hearted and generous? From "Bah, humbug!" to "God Bless Us, Every One!" After rereading Dickens' preface to A Christmas Carol, learners analyze quotations from the tale that...

Readers of  Lord of the Flies hunt down direct and indirect examples of how William Golding brings his characters to life. After instructors guide learners through the process of collecting evidence of these two types of...

Young scientists meet Edward Alexander Bouchet who, in 1876, was the first African American to receive a PhD in Physics. This two-part lesson first looks at the debate between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois about the type of...

Young historians learn how to make generalizations based on primary sources in a lesson that uses the autobiographies of two women born into slavery. The class watches a historical re-enactment of scenes from the lives of Harriet Jacobs...

The final lesson plan in the Crime and Punishment unit looks at the societal injustices depicted in Dostoyevsky's novel. Scholars examine the schisms between men and women, between wealth and poverty, between religion and skepticism, and...

A study of Jan Felipe Herrera's poem "Every Day We Get More Illegal" opens the door for a discussion on immigration. To begin, class members examine the photograph "Desert Survival," record their observations of the image, and then...