Early settlers in the American Midwest experienced constant struggle. This reading passage describes for young learners the hardships of homesteaders as they journeyed west and sought to start a new life. When finished, students identify...

Sometimes, you just need to get to the point. Scholars examine an excerpt from The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, analyzing it and gathering details to determine the central idea. Completing the Surfacing Issues Tool organizer and...

Sorry, Charlie. Scholars take a close look at Apology by Plato. Activities analyzing the text help pupils understand, make, organize, and write about claims. Learners work in groups, complete claim tools, and evaluate thinking by filling...

Fifth graders prepare for their end of the unit essay assessment by continuing to look at what makes an earthquake a natural disaster. They complete a graphic organizer and write a topic sentence. To finish, they view a model essay and...

Class members have an opportunity to experience how to use a public key to encrypt information and a private key to decrypt it. Groups create their own public key and encrypt information then develop private keys to decrypt this...

Action is the heart of change. Encourage class members to not only identify critical social justice issues in their school or community but to take action as well. As individuals or as groups, they research a situation, develop a...

Individuals discover how to draw cubes on triangle-dot paper. They use cubes to build structures and draw corresponding isometric drawings on dot paper in the second lesson of the series of five. The activity also introduces the concept...

Give your classes practice at modeling using quadratic models with a resource that uses area and integer problems to allow individuals to create second degree polynomials. Young mathematicians solve equations using factoring and then...

To conclude their study of immigration and human rights, class members create a civic engagement project centered on an issue of immigration and designed to influence US immigration policy. They examine examples of attempts to...

Sixth graders use short reading passages to identify, explain, and discuss the author's purpose for writing. After a lecture/demo, they utilize a graphic organizer embedded in this plan to organize their writing ideas.

Third graders read excepts from the story, Thank You, Mr. Falker in order to gain practice in understanding an unfamiliar story by focusing on the details. They use a worksheet, embedded in the plan, which directs them to certain...

For this ninth lesson plan in a larger beginning-of-the-year unit, close reading skills are used independently to find the gist of the story That Book Woman. Rereading for important details is the targeted skill to unlock a deeper...

Students examine paragraph structure, the writing process, and then design a model for the process. In this writing skills lesson, students explore paragraphs using the SmartBoard. Students create a class T-chart about paragraph...

Young historians practice in-depth, quality analysis of primary source texts in this three-lesson unit, which examines excerpts from the slave narratives of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and Caleb...

Over three days, scholars listen to and read the poem, "Covers" by Nikki Giovanni. Learners complete a graphic organizer by sketching their visualizations from each stanza then discuss their pictures with a peer. Pupils answer...

To gain an understanding of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, class members investigate the Jim Crow Laws, the Emancipation Proclamation, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments of the US Constitution, and the 1898 Supreme Court case,...

The memoir A Long Way Gone tells the story of a child soldier during the civil war in Sierra Leone. A crossword puzzle helps reinforce key ideas found in the memoir. The puzzle addresses characters, key events, and other details...

How did Martin Luther King, Jr. sway people with his speeches? Scholars carry out a close reading of the Montgomery Bus Boycott speech and use the Close Reading Guide to help them work through the powerful text. While reading, they...

How confident are your readers in responding to short reading passages? Find out with a activity that reinforces reading comprehension skills and requires self reflection on one's ability to read and answer questions pertaining...

The end of the year has arrived, which means it's time to find out what your third graders have learned with this practice Common Core assessment. Presented with one narrative and one expository reading passage, young learners...

The end of the year has arrived, which means it's time to find out exactly what your fifth graders have learned over the past few months. With the help of this Common Core-designed assessment that includes two narrative passages and...

With the end of the year quickly approaching it's time to find out exactly how much your sixth graders have learned. Specifically designed for the Common Core ELA standards, this practice test gives students five reading passages,...

Keep an eye on the growth of your sixth graders' reading and writing skills with the help of this practice Common Core assessment. Working their way through the six included fiction and nonfiction reading passages, learners answer a...

Everyone has a different point of view, even when it comes to the enormity of the universe. Two separate text passages explain the scope of a galaxy, prompting young readers to write an essay about each author's argument and how the...