Eighth graders create an original scene or short one-act play within specified guidelines. Assessment is based upon the performance of student-created scenes during class time. Rubrics for assessment and connection to state standards...

Fifth graders analyze the elements of an online story. In this online story lesson, 5th graders analyze the title, pictures, and other information for an online story. Students predict what the text is about and complete a prediction chart.

Difficulties with brain injuries still continue today. After reading Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science, class members read a series of modern personal essays about brain injuries and choose an essay to compare...

Who keeps animals safe? Who keeps us safe? Discover the helpers that make learning and growing possible through a medley of activities that focus on habitats—ours and those in the rainforest. Scholars are asked to identify one...

After completing Chapter 5 of Parrot in the Oven: Mi Vida, readers make text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections to Victor Martinez's novel by crafting journal entries addressing comments and questions to characters in...

Hold a discussion in writing about coping strategies to prepare your pupils for reading Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science by John Fleischman. After journaling, pupils come up in an organized fashion and write...

Explore online profiles and social media with your middle and high school classes. Use blogs to inspire your class to craft a well-written, thoughtful response to a prompt you give.  A few example prompts are given. 

Close up your study of Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science with a letter-writing assignment. Pupils prepare by journaling and sharing with a partner. They then compose letters that focus on a big idea from the...

Students assess the impact of music to portray emotions and tell stories. Examples are taken from the life of Rosa Parks and a piece of band music called "A Movement for Rosa". Evaluation is accomplished through in-class participation...

What would you do if you had to go to school all day every day? Tillie tackles this problem in Sharon Creech’s A Fine, Fine School. After a discussion of how Tillie got the principal to change his ways, brainstorm with your class...

Improve high schoolers' public speaking with an engaging activity. Class members select three personally relevant quotes from a list. They then write a short speech for each quote, explaining how the quotes are personally relevant....

Before you begin your unit on William Shakespeare's The Tempest, introduce the themes of the play with a lesson based on the biblical story of Joseph. Taking your high schoolers through selected text from Genesis 17-44,...

What does empathy look like? Encourage your pupils to put themselves in another person's shoes with several writing and discussion activities that relate to a featured short film. Over the course of the lesson, individuals collaborate...

Where were you when the world stopped turning that September day? Will, a ninth grade student in We All Fall Down, was at work with his father in the World Trade Center. Scholars read Will's story of the accounts told in first...

Often, science fiction makes a lot of connections to real life. An educator's guide for the novel Charisma by Jeanne Ryan, has readers discuss many of the real-life issues that come in the text. A brief summary helps garner interest...

The Pilgrims may have arrived in North America by way of the Mayflower, but chances are, your class members' ancestors came to the United States in another way. Guide them through an exploration of their own heritage, countries of...

The Olympic Games are indeed a significant and far-reaching cultural component in our international community today, but from where do they originate? Where do our traditions stem from, and how do we choose the sports that constitute...

Groups plan their escape carefully. Three three-tiered puzzles help a story character escape their situation, each involving integer sequences, transformations, and geometric constructions. The teacher resource includes...

Explore ways to make research and writing more interesting. The first in a series of three challenge activities designed to accompany Theme 2: Give It All You've Got involve creating sports cards, designing cereal boxes, and using other...

The final installment of a 22-part American history series examines the many faces that make up the country's story. From Henry Ford to Tulio Serrano, scholars use biographical evidence and Internet research to uncover the people behind...

Moving to a new country isn't easy, as Shirley Temple Wong learns in In The Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson by Bette Bao Lord. A series of language arts activities carry readers through the novel, addressing the story's themes,...

Connecting to literature and learning how to infer are two great reading strategies everyone needs to know. Here, the class will read along with the story The Miracle of the First Poinsettia, review folktales as a genre, and make...

Use this SMART board activity with any short story in your unit plan. The SMART board file contains a step-by-step guide to plot diagrams, including an interactive practice page and an assignment. This resource is beneficial for language...