Stay a while—and learn about rates of change. Scholars learn about rates of change not related to motion by watching an informative video. They see how to interpret derivatives in different contexts, paying particular attention to...

Scholars listen to several pieces of music in preparation for a discussion about how instruments and lyrics convey emotions. With Harriet Tubman as the focus, small groups create an original song or dance. A reflection piece concludes...

A 12-piece primary source packet sets the tone for a study of the role women played in the origins, development, and impact of blues music. Legends like Bessie Smith, Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Mamie Smith, and Ida Cox are featured, as are...

Who was the originator of the Blood Bank? What fur and grain trader founded the city of Chicago? Who invented the ironing board and lawn sprinklers? A 10-clue matching activity launches a scavenger hunt for information about famous, yet...

Find out if it is truly the solution. An informative presentation provides viewers with multiple examples of finding the particular solution to a differential equation. Learners find out how to verify the solution by differentiating the...

An interactive website traces the history of Juneteenth celebrations from their origin in Galveston, Texas, on June 19th to the present day.  Using interactive maps, learners can find information about the African-American...

It is transformational! With the beginning lesson on transformations, pupils learn about vertical and horizontal translations. Scholars see how to graph important points to show the translations and then to write the transformed graph in...

A 25-slide presentation teaches viewers how to identify the source of stories in newspapers and online news sites. The slides show how to locate the byline where either the reporter's name or the wire service that provided the story can...

Two lessons take a close look at drug prevention. The first lesson, split into two sessions, challenges learners to gather information from an article, answer questions, then create a poster that encourages others to stay away from...

To conclude a unit study of Octavia E. Butler's Kindred, groups use MovieMaker or the class website to publish an original story about slavery in America. The detailed project assignment sheet includes a list of possible topics,...

Scholars watch a video featuring journalists who covered the civil rights movement, then respond to questions on a viewing guide. The video features interviews with participants and original news footage from the 1950s and 1960s. In...

Picture this! Scholars quickly sketch an image of what they think a picture of Stairway to Nowhere would look like. They participate in a fill-the-gap exercise where they complete sentences by filling in the blanks of the transcript as...

Class members meet the original scrooge, the Dickens character whose name has become synonymous with a cold-hearted, tight-fisted, miser. Using the provided worksheet, readers closely examine context clues to determine the meanings of...

Provenance, source, date, location, and motivation. High schoolers learn how to verify the authenticity of news stories and posts by following a seven-step process. They then use the strategy to determine the original site that posted a...

In previous lessons, young journalists learned about how to trace the original source of scrapes and memes. This interactive lesson plan teaches them another important step in the verification process. Participants learn how to analyze...

Introduce middle schoolers to the different strategies used when reading prose versus poetry. Groups use a Venn diagram and a poetry analysis handout to compare the characteristics of an informational text and a  poem on the same...

Seventh graders have a golden opportunity to learn how to read poems and short stories with a unit that introduces them to the techniques writers use to craft their works. They examine poems by William Carlos Williams and Edgar Allen Poe...

"Yuns betta outten the lights!" Colloquial language is the focus of a instructional activity that asks middle schoolers to consider the pros and cons of using idioms. They read articles, match expressions with their meaning and place of...

The third lesson of five in an eighth-grade poetry unit has young scholars comparing Shakespearean sonnets with Petrarchan sonnets. To begin, they examine the different structures of the two forms and their different rhyme schemes. After...

While a woman didn't invent the parasol, three women received patents for their improvements to the original design of umbrellas. In the first of a two-part series on inventive women, class members investigate the patent system to...

Explore multiple perspectives through a jigsaw activity that will improve your pupils' understanding of the characters in Esperanza Rising as well as their understanding of strikes and human rights. Tapping into prior knowledge, and...

Is man's character his fate? Can actions change character? To track the development of the central ideas in Ethan Canin’s short story “The Palace Thief,” groups compare Hundert's actions in the original "Mr. Julius Caesar" competition...

The key to understanding is making connections. Scholars explore angle dilations using properties of parallel lines. At completion, pupils prove that angles of a dilation preserve their original measure. 

Can you follow a composition of transformations, or better yet construct them? Young mathematicians analyze the composition of dilations, examining both the scale factor and centers of dilations. They discover relationships for both...