Drag queens in thigh-high shiny red leather boots! Welcome to Kinky Boots, the Tony Award-winning musical about a young man trying to save his family-owned shoe-making business. With an engaging story line and songs by Cyndi Lauper, the...

Musical theater is a trifecta, requiring cast members to be actors, singers, and dancers. Help theater arts students develop these skills with a unit designed to prepare them for a staging of a musical.

General music students learn about the history of popular American music by creating and performing a one-act musical. After researching and creating an American Musical timeline, class members write a song with lyrics using Jam Studio,...

Creative activities help bring literature alive. The first of a set of lessons designed to accompany selections from Theme 4: Problem Solvers uses activities such as skits, responses to music, and social studies projects. These...

Looking to engage scholars in poetry with hands-on activities? What better way than making masks? Readers analyze literary devices in poetry, examine Native American masks, create their own masks, and then write poems to tell its story!

Duke Ellington, jazz, and jive kick-off a fun and creative lesson on responding emotionally to music. The class will learn about jive talk used in the 1920s and the life and music of Duke Ellington. They'll listen to a selection of his...

Students investigate early African civilizations. They create Kufi hats, musical instruments, pottery and African masks, sing songs, play African studenT games, and participate in a feast and tour of a museum where their artwork is...

Kids make quilts as they learn about pioneer life and the concept of tempo. The Aaron Copland piece, Rodeo is used to convey rhythm and tempo in music. As the children discuss tempo and rhythm, they also discuss what life was like for...

Students improve their creative writing skills. In this writing skills lesson, students learn about picture captions, story writing, critiques, poems, reports, letter writing, creative writing, and a rap poem.

Eliminate all doubt when it comes to sentence structure with nine thorough lesson plans. Whether you want your young writers to vary their sentence structure or shore up their knowledge of conjunctions and semicolons, these lessons are a...

Bring history to life through literature. The first in a series of three challenge activities designed to accompany Theme 5: One Land, Many Trails does just that through unique projects connected to historical fiction and nonfiction...

Places everyone! Action! Imagine an entire cinematography course, already designed, that includes everything you need to launch your own film studio, in one tidy 66-page packet.

In his 2013 introduction to Fahrenheit 451, Neil Gaiman states, “Fiction is a lie that tells us true things, over and over.” In this extraordinary unit plan, readers "explore the power of written language to educate and...

Create trigonometric functions from circles. The first lesson of the module begins by finding coordinates along a circular path created by a Ferris Wheel. As the lessons progress, pupils graph trigonometric functions and relate them to...

How are films made? As part of their study of film, middle schoolers investigate the pre-production, production, and post-production process and consider the role of the director, the screenwriter, production designer, cinematographer,...

Self reflection is an important skill to reinforce in our children, and it's especially helpful to help them realize who they are in the context of their environment. A collection of lessons about self image and community encourage...

Dive into the mystery of sound waves!  Scholars brainstorm questions about how sound travels and why different items make different sounds. They then conduct experiments to answer their questions.

Students take home an Australian Teddy Bear home and draw pictures, photograph, write or verbalize stories of what the bear did at their home. They make a book that is sent to their partner class.

Students study the concept of geography in a year long unit. In this geography unit, students participate in different activities that explain the spatial sense of the world, the physical landmasses and bodies of water, geographic...

Students study the American sport and history of baseball. In this baseball lesson, students complete three levels of units to learn about baseball.

You think you love music? You have nothing on the Ancient Greek obsession. Every aspect of Greek life was punctuated by song: history, poetry, theater, sports and even astronomy. In fact, music was so important to Greek philosopher Plato...

People have been grappling with the question of artificial creativity- alongside the question of artificial intelligence- for over 170 years. For instance, could we program machines to create high quality original music? And if we do, is...

How is it that Beethoven, who is celebrated as one of the most significant composers of all time, wrote many of his most beloved songs while going deaf? The answer lies in the math behind his music. Natalya St. Clair employs the...

Arts education is part of the backbone of the 21st Century skills movement. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills had designed a map that provides examples of collaboration, communication, creativity, innovation, critical thinking,...