After looking at the history of cataract surgery techniques, your high schoolers will have a new perspective on medical and scientific advances. Kids alternate between watching short video clips, class discussion, and computer research....

Cling to a lesson on static electricity. Pupils take part in experiments where they see how paper from hole punchers, packing peanuts, puffed rice cereal, and other items react when placed near a rubbed balloon. They learn how electrons...

Whether used as a reading comprehension assessment, as the basis of a mini-lesson on reading strategies, or as extra practice, this exercise will prove to be valuable because of the answers and explanation key that accompanies the...

Here is a reading strategies instructional activity in which learners use post it notes to create a bulletin board. They post their new questions on the bulletin board and look back at questions they have already learned the answer to. A...

Making inferences and drawing conclusions is a key component to successful active reading. Encourage your class to use context clues and prior knowledge to infer different elements of a story, including the setting, plot, and character...

Most Americans profess their love for the US Constitution, but this was not always the case. An informative lesson overviews the debate between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists by summarizing the main arguments of each side. It...

Use this information, presentation, and infographic to build several lessons on telling the time and expressing the date in Spanish. The information is broken into topics and includes many examples and exceptions to the standard rules....

Did she cheat on her husband? Did the hospital switch the babies? Should they have children? As much as this sounds like the plot for a soap opera, all of these questions fit into a single lesson on genetics. Scholars read about three...

As part of a unit study of Bud, Not Buddy, readers compare Buddy's list of rules to live by with those that Steve Jobs enumerates in his commencement address to Stanford's 2005 graduating class.

Are you planning to have a guest speaker talk to your class? Prepare in advance and help your class transform into an engaged and thoughtful audience. Before the visit, young writers work cooperatively to brainstorm what they want to...

Imagine the surprise when small groups present their Evidence Charts to the class and discover that each group has studied a different version of the Cinderella story. Irish, Ojibwa, Egyptian, Chinese, Korean, Persian, Mexican, and...

The fourth in a five-instructional activity unit examining human rights and personal responsibility asks class groups to investigate a current rights issue, and using the provided graphic organizer, summarize the issue, consider which...

A timely and provocative instructional activity inspires high schoolers to tackle the Syrian refugee crisis. They analyze a compelling photo essay before discussing and writing about it.

Building on knowledge from the previous instructional activity, the second instructional activity in this unit teaches scholars to identify and interpret rate of change and initial value of a linear function in context. They investigate...

The 13th lesson in a unit of 22 introduces the concept of the interquartile range (IQR). Class members learn to determine the interquartile range, interpret within the context of the data, and finish by finding the IQR using an...

Should the excavation of what is believed to be the cave of the Lone Woman of San Nicholas Island be allowed to continue? As a practice exercise designed to prepare pupils for a timed writing exam, individuals read two Los Angeles...

Middle schoolers complete a writing assessment task to demonstrate their ability to craft a narrative based on a variety of informational texts. They view West of the West's documentary Magic Isle, read three print resources about...

Class members perform complex operations on a plane in the 17th segment in the 32-part series. Learners first verify that multiplication by the reciprocal does the same geometrically as it does algebraically. The class then circles back...

Have fun with history and turn your kids into news reporters of the past. Each group will research, script, and deliver a news report on a historic event they are studying in class. They'll identify the main characters of the historical...

A seven-step instructional activity introduces the emergence of computer sciences and the contributions women made to the profession after World War II. Several science experiments offer pupils a hands-on learning experience that...

When your class members have completed the novel Esperanza Rising, they will be ready to write an expository essay on how Esperanza responds to events and what this says about her character. Set your pupils up for success by...

What can we find out about the data from the way it is shaped? Looking at displays that are familiar from previous grades, the class forms meaningful conjectures based upon the context of the data. The introductory lesson to...

Box in the similarities and differences. The 19th instructional activity in a unit of 22 presents class members with multiple box plots to compare. Learners use their understanding of five-number summaries and box plots to find...