Third graders work to determine the main idea, recall key details, and answer questions using an informational text on the topic of animal adaptations. Using the non-fiction text "Staying Alive: Animal Adaptations" (provided) the teacher...

The best way to analyze a piece of literature is to ask questions about the characters, plot, and theme. Encourage your learners to stump the teacher with the most difficult questions they can create using Bloom's Taxonomy and various...

A fuel cell is where the jailer keeps gas guzzlers. Scholars review chemical reactions, chemical bonds, and chemical structure in order to apply these concepts. Participants construct fuel cell kits, using electrolysis to run the car and...

John Knowles' A Separate Peace provides readers with an opportunity to develop their close reading and analytical skills as they look for what Knowles feels are the factors that shape our identity.

Being a statistician means never having to say you're certain! Learners develop two-way frequency tables and calculate conditional and independent probabilities. They understand probability as a method of making a prediction. 

Five out of four people have trouble with fractions! After comparing simplifying fractions to simplifying rational expressions, pupils use the same principles to multiply and divide rational expressions. 

Pupils figure out how to be resourceful when tasked with finding the area of a triangle knowing nothing but its endpoints. Beginning by exploring and decomposing a triangle, learners find the perimeter and area of a triangle. They...

How do you build a polygon from an inequality? An engaging lesson challenges pupils to do just that. Building from the previous lesson in this series, learners write systems of inequalities to model rectangles, triangles, and even...

What makes a poem difficult? Explore that topic and more with your class as you work through the lesson detailed here. Using materials from Poetry Out Loud, a national recitation contest, individuals or small groups examine poems and...

You can't go wrong with a lesson that involves candy! Learners solve and graph one-variable inequalities and use candy to graph the solution. Individuals associate open circle graphs with life savers and closed circle graphs with round...

What is a party caucus anyway? And what part do caucuses play in the primaries? Everything future voters need to know about the four stages in the presidential selection process is provided by this resource. The 2012 US...

A lesson challenges scholars to analyze editorial cartoons created by Fred Seibel, illustrator for the Times-Dispatch, during the Massive Resistance. A class discussion looking at today's editorial pages and Jim Crow Laws leads the...

A thoughtful discussion about self-reflecting leads to a conversation about skin color and making a list of words associated with "beauty." Budding artists use a mirror to examine their features and create a self-portrait. Peers critique...

Become a doctor for a day! Learners analyze synthetic urine and blood samples to diagnose diabetes. They use lab procedures to identify abnormal glucose levels, and, as a follow-up activity, they build a model to illustrate the...

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...

Close reading is key to the analysis and interpretation of literature. A close reading of the title and the epigraph of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” offers readers an opportunity to examine how even single words or names can...

Geometry meets earth science as high schoolers investigate the cause and features of the four seasons. The effects of Earth's axis tilt features prominently, along with both the rotation of the earth about the axis and its orbit...

Improve readers' comprehension with a pair of visualization opportunities. First they listen, eyes closed, as you read a description from Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach, and discuss ideas about what they "see." After you read...

Pupils draw the graph of a door opening and closing over time. They graph a given function on their calculators, create a table of values and interpret the results by telling if the door is opening or closing and evaluate the average...

"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union..." These familiar lines begin the Preamble to the Constitution, but do learners know what they mean? A close reading exercise takes a look at the language of the...

Students participate in a lab experiment to observe and measure the opening and closing of stomata. They focus on photoperiod, locate and identify stomata on a leaf and explain the role of stomata in the daily functioning of a plant.

Introduce a new type of function through discovery. Math learners build an understanding of rational expressions by creating tables and graphing the result. 

Statistics can be manipulated to say what you want them to say. Teach your classes to be wise consumers and sort through the bias in those reports. Young statisticians study different statistical reports and analyze them for...

Learning to craft quality questions is a skill that can be taught. Class members use the Question Formulation Technique to learn how to create and refine both closed-ended and open-ended questions. They then view West of the West's...