Evaluate young mathematicians' understanding of area and perimeter with this series of three assessment tasks. Challenging students to not only calculate the area and perimeter of irregular shapes, but to explain in writing their...

As part of a study of saving choices and opportunity costs, class members listen to a reading of Lois Lenski's Cotton in My Sack, and then evaluate the spending choices made by the Hutley family.  

Why read about it when you can watch it happen? Bird cams make it possible for learners to experience the life cycle of a bird in real time! An engaging set of lessons provides activities to connect their learning to bird cam...

Studying levers couldn't be more exciting! Learners build their own catapults and test the results as they make adjustments to the fulcrum. They compete against other groups to create the most accurate apparatus.

Balloons will go where you want them to. Young pilots first add paper clips to a balloon to make it neutrally buoyant. They then use cardboard to steer the balloon in different directions, taking air pressure into account.

Motivation is key to learning. The author points out that it is important to engage intuition for aspects of statistics that pupils find counter-intuitive. Three strategies—using multiple representations, using intuitive analogies, and...

Proofs are usually an intimidating assignment. An engaging lesson focused on geometric proofs may reduce the anxiety! Pupils choose between several triangle proofs to complete and work on completing them. The...

What did gender have to do with the survival rates of the Donner Party? Using comparative box plots, classes compare the ages of the survivors and nonsurvivors. Using the same method, individuals make conclusions about the...

Wind it up and let it go. Individuals build a basic spool racer in the second portion of a six-part unit on energy. After receiving three criteria, pupils modify their designs to meet the new challenge. Pairs compete against each other...

Scientific models help explain ideas and concepts to non-experts. The online activity covers conceptual, mathematical, and physical models. Through four multiple-choice questions and three discussion questions, scholars gain a deeper...

One step at a time! A seemingly linear relationship becomes an entirely new type of function. Young scholars build their understanding of step functions by completing a three-stage activity that incorporates multiple representations of...

Where were you when the world stopped turning that September day? Will, a ninth grade student in We All Fall Down, was at work with his father in the World Trade Center. Scholars read Will's story of the accounts told in first...

Ambition is the keyword of a lesson that focuses on the contributions made by famous female artists. Specifically looking at European artists, Luisa Roldan and Elisabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun, scholars examine a piece of their work then...

Invite your class to consider how to respond to a conflict. Designed to be used alongside Secret Saturdays by Torrey Maldonado, a lesson plan focuses on a set of terms: conflict, escalate, deescalate, conflict resolution, denial,...

Turn your students into flocks of migratory birds for this fun lesson on animal migration. Prior to the activity, the teacher creates four different migration routes in the classroom or any available open space, labeling nesting...

It is all relative, or is it all conditional? Using an exploration method, the class determines whether there is an association between gender and superpower wish through the use of calculating conditional relative frequencies. The...

The theory of keystone species in an ecosystem was first established in 1969 by Robert T. Paine. Pupils open the final lesson in a five-part series with a game guessing which member of the alpine ecosystem they are based on clues. After...

Cellular respiration and photosynthesis relate closely, but many don't realize how. Scholars drag and drop the reactants and products to the chemical reactions for both processes. Then they answer three multiple-choice questions.

Using context clues and learning root words are two great ways to improve vocabulary. This resource taps into both of those strategies, offering up 12 fill-in-the-blank sentences, a word bank, and information on Latin roots. You might go...

This is a straightforward vocabulary exercise in which learners fill in each blank in 12 sentences with a word from a word bank. The activity is somewhat unique because it connects word roots to the meaning of the words, giving learners...

Readers identify main ideas and supporting details using informational texts. In this literacy lesson plan, they make predictions and read the text to find the main ideas. They use a table diagram to define the main idea and supporting...

Fourth graders explore an Ethiopian folktale, "Fire on the Mountain." In this literature lesson, 4th graders evaluate and record the evidence, as well as make predictions about what they think will happen. Students evaluate other groups...

Fourth graders read the book, Phoebe The Spy, by Judith Berry Griffin. They complete comprehension activities, make predictions about what happen next, and create a PowerPoint book report for the story.

In this spelling worksheet, students read ten clues to words with "graph". Students fill in the missing letters to complete the spelling words. There is no word list.