Sometimes a test page loaded with text can make a student's face go blank. Help them decipher what a text question is asking with a series of tips focused on reading comprehension, vocabulary, and language arts mechanics.

Help your students undertand the critical problems around healthcare. By focusing on the political and private process of healthcare, students will watch a video, analyze issues, and write an essay on their findings. Additionally, they...

Accuracy, transparency, trustworthiness, and impartiality are four unspoken rules of journalism. Scholars delve deep into the subject by discussing the pros and cons of relying on social media for news. They also play an online game to...

Break an article down with a SOAPSTone chart. Class members determine the speaker, occasion, audience, purpose, subject, and tone. The chart includes a question for each of these elements, provides some clarifying text for each, and...

Research skills are extremely important and they can be linked to any subject. Get your class thinking about scientists that study the polar region, what they do, and how they get funded to continue their research. Each child uses a...

One photograph can represent so much more than the images on the film. Eighth graders select a photograph from the Civil War era and conduct additional research based on the subject matter from the picture. Once they complete the...

Biographies deserve special attention when training youngsters how to use the library because they are alphabetized by subject rather than by author. Guide children through the process of finding biographies over a two-visit series. On...

Lesson ten in this unit for the book Bullfrogs at Magnolia Circle, prepares third graders to begin writing an informational paragraph about the adaptations of bullfrogs. First, young writers work either independently or in pairs to...

The twelfth instructional activity of this unit builds on the skills developed in the previous instructional activity, as fourth graders continue their quest to become experts on colonial trade by listening to interviews with historical...

Voices from the past. Young scholars listen to a podcast interview with a historical re-enactor as they continue their research in the eleventh instructional activity of this unit on colonial trade. Applying their close reading skills,...

Fourth graders work in small groups to become experts on different colonial trades in the eighth instructional activity of this unit. Working toward the long-term goal of writing a piece of historical fiction, young scholars read...

In the tenth instructional activity of this unit, young scholars learn to categorize information as they continue researching their colonial trade. During guided practice, the teacher models how to read informational text slowly while...

Fourth graders view examples of help-wanted ads as they plan and create their own writing in the fourteenth instructional activity of this unit on colonial trade. The engagement of the class is captured when the teacher shares an actual...

In instructional activity 13 of this unit on colonial trade, young researchers learn about apprentices as they prepare to write help-wanted ads for the specific trade they have been researching. To begin, the class listens closely as the...

In the first lesson plan of this unit on colonial trade, fourth graders gain background knowledge of different jobs performed by early colonists. The class begins with a slide show presentation that includes a variety of great...

Students research, using the Internet, specified Civil War battles in order to prepare an oral presentation for the class. They, in small groups, present using images and maps. They take a quiz on the subject matter and evaluate the web...

Students share opinions about the criteria they consider important in an online search engine. Using Google and Yahoo, they investigate various subjects and compare their search results. To synthesize their findings, students prepare...

Students examine human health by researching the internet. In this human sexuality lesson, students utilize the web to locate a website which contains information about a certain sexual aspect. Students create a group presentation on one...

How can Microsoft Excel help manage data in people's personal and professional lives? Using the Beginning Excel eBook, scholars learn the basics of creating, editing, and using spreadsheets. They explore spreadsheet design, formulas,...

Grab any two topics, some index cards, and a couple of kids, and you're ready to compare and contrast! The resource provides instructions for this method and three graphic organizers in addition to or in place of the index cards.

Six diverse activities make up a substantial unit on the women's rights movement in the United States, past and present. A few of the topics at hand: the fourteenth and nineteenth amendments, the Equal Pay Act, the Lily Ledbetter Act,...

When school and community leaders are at odds, what's a young person to do? Grouped pupils examine the details of a difficult situation during the 10th in a series of 12 leadership activities. Presented with a decline in community...

Big news isn't necessarily newsworthy everywhere! How do journalists decide what to cover with so much happening around them? A instructional activity on media literacy examines the factors that affect the media's choice of stories to...

Fourth graders learn how to find books in the library. In this library lesson, 4th graders observe how to use an online system to search for a book by title, author and subject. Students practice searching for books.