Challenging pupils' perspectives by having them walk in the shoes of the reader. An informative resource discusses how to identify an audience and anticipate their needs before writing an upcoming argumentative essay. 

The first activity of a five-activity unit designed for eighth graders has class members reading and watching a video of Edgar Allen Poe's narrative poem, "The Raven." They then craft their narrative poem, illustrate it, and share their...

Conduct research focused on improving a current technology by having students work in groups to investigate improvements that could be made to a particular piece of technology. They list the current problems and attempt to develop...

Cover one-point perspective through observation and practice. Class members examine several works of art that use one-point perspective, look at magazine images to find the vanishing points and horizon lines, and draw their own city...

Three annotated passages from Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay on "Nature" provide young philosophers a chance to improve their reading comprehension skills as they gain insight into Emerson's ideas.

An inaugural address represents the first moments of a new beginning. Using John F. Kennedy's speech as a model for guided practice, groups examine the ingredients of an inaugural address. Individuals then repeat the analysis...

Prepare your classes for election year debates with a series of activities that model how to watch televised debates and how to evaluate the moderators as well as the debaters.

Think like an engineer and an agricultural scientist over the course of 12 lessons in a STEM based unit. Young scientists take on the roles of animal physiologists, animal geneticists, agricultural engineers, animal nutritionists,...

What if you were paid to attend class? What kind of payment schedule would you choose? Learn how exponential functions will eventually exceed linear functions by comparing two different payment schedules for attending class.

On your mark, get set, GO! The class sprints toward the conclusions in a race analysis activity. The staggered start of the 400-m foot race is taken apart in detail, and then learners step back and develop some overall race strategy...

The Hopewell people of the central Ohio Valley used right triangles in the construction of earthworks. Pupils use the Pythagorean Theorem to determine missing dimensions of right triangles used by the Hopewell people. The assessment task...

A handy TFDC (topic/fact/detail/conclusion) graphic organizer (included) allows young writers to outline and record their main ideas and supporting details in the prewriting phase. They then continue to add details to the topic sentences...

Targeted toward parents, the slides included here could be adapted for classroom use or shown at Back-to-School Night. The focus of the presentation is Six Trait Writing: ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, and...

A learning task that involves creative ways of thinking permits children to use paper models as a way to visualize the fraction one-half. Learners can fold or cut their models in such a way that the unshaded regions, and shaded...

Guide your pupils through The Adventures of Tom Sawyer with a directed reading exercise. The teacher asks questions as the class reads a chapter to help lead learners toward making well-supported predictions.

We landed on the moon with less computing capabilities than you can find in this app! Here is a multiple function calculator that takes all the power you get from a handheld and adds the wonderful large screen that only a tablet can...

Touchdown! This is an exponentially insightful lesson that explores the growth of football games with different video game consoles. Class members discuss whether the increase of mergahertz can be described as linear or exponential....

Three activities make up an introductory lesson designed to create a strong foundation in comparing fractions to decimals and exploring and building decimal models. Pupils brainstorm and complete a Venn diagram to show how decimals and...

Trying to plan an engaging elementary science unit on natural resources? Conserve your energy! This five-part series of lessons and hands-on activities has exactly what you need to teach young scholars about the importance of conservation.

The 41 slides in a professional development seminar model how to use close reading techniques to examine the many layers of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. In addition to passages from the novel, slides provide biographical...

Scholars review prior knowledge before completing a hands-on simulation of the rock cycle. They write stories or songs summarizing their simulations to demonstrate mastery.

Watch scholars' understanding of fractions bloom. The resource presents a performance task where the fractions are equal parts from the same whole, and mathematicians must use them to solve problems about a grade level garden. Teachers...

Students study the concept of a scientific model and demonstrate climate change models.  In this scientific lesson plan students design a model using direct and indirect evidence and use it to make hypotheses.