Tap into the wisdom and knowledge of older members of the community with this New York Times plan. To warm up, learners write about and discuss advice they have been given. After reading "The Life Report," an op-ed column that asks older...

Take your 4-H teens to the next level! Help them learn how to be an active part of their communities with a teen leadership development unit. Individuals, together with school and community partners, create and execute a service-driven...

Pupils produce their own self-portraits and use them to create a book in iPhoto. They explore the visual symbols used by artists to communicate their feelings, interests, and identity.

This kind of stuff knocks me out, it really does. I mean, five fun project ideas for The Catcher In the Rye? When you're done reading all this stuff you'll wish the author was a terrific friend of yours.

Even for one of the most accomplished men in American history, there was room for improvement. Challenge high schoolers to use Benjamin Franklin's Project for Moral Perfection to analyze text, make inferences, connect to historical...

Students collaboratively write a peace plan as they role play citizens of foreign countries. In this current events lesson, students take on the role of Israelis or Palestinians, research background information and current political...

Do research projects at your school look like a class of eighth graders staring at a blank screen? Use the Big 6 research method to guide middle schoolers through the process of finding a topic, searching for and evaluating sources,...

Looking for a way to keep AP learners engaged after the exam? AP Psychology class members engage in self-analysis and present themselves to their colleagues by choosing one of two interesting project choices. Individuals may prepare a CD...

Bring digital storytelling to your language arts class! To begin, learners select their own topic, such as a poem that reflects a life experience they had or a historical figure who interests them. Then they work to create a storyboard...

This online resource is composed of a writing sample about teacher appreciation and a writing prompt for learners. You could use this as an in-class journal activity or you could have class members post their responses on the New...

The non-fiction book Art Around the World by Heather Leonard serves as inspiration for learning how art reflects cultures and values. New vocabulary and background knowledge are fleshed out before reading the story. Afterward, the class...

Use this worksheet to help your learners reflect on their work on a characterization assignment. They answer five questions about personality traits of the character of their choice as supported by the poem.

With its focus on nature, individualism, imagination, and rejection of traditional authority, Romanticism has great appeal to young high schoolers. After examining classic paintings and poems as well as current works, class members...

How confident are your readers in responding to short reading passages? Find out with a activity that reinforces reading comprehension skills and requires self reflection on one's ability to read and answer questions pertaining...

The words of Henry David Thoreau on Civil Disobedience seem particularly relevant today, as are his writings and those of other transcendental thinkers who ask what it mean to live deliberately and what are the responsibilities of...

Combine informational reading skills with fictional text in an innovative historical fiction lessons. After reading a fictional text related to diseases, class members read non-fictional text to gain knowledge about specific infectious...

Phrenology, the belief that parts of your brain control certain aspects of your personality, is described in Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science. While we now know much more about the brain, learners use this...

Students explore their experiences and reflect on how one person can make a difference in our world. In this service learning lesson, students analyze themes in music related to encouragement. Students perform a service learning project...

S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders is the anchor text in a unit that asks readers to reflect on their own identity, their place in their family, in groups with which they identify, and in school. 

Students watch the movie "Cool Runnings", they identify and categorze examples of dreams and examples of goals reflected in the movie. They work in small groups and discuss the movie to begin to generate the concepts behind the terms...

Tackle some big questions about A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle with a board game project. As learners brainstorm for and complete their board games, they consider what helps and hinders Meg on her journey and why she succeeds in...

Hear ye, hear ye, it's time for a writer's roundtable! Scholars clarify their thinking about their narrative writing project by engaging in a fishbowl discussion about their plans. As members within the inner circle discuss the topic,...

Here's a formal plan for what many effective teachers already do: Provide a week's worth of aphorisms and have learners choose one to write about in their journals each day. They reflect on the meaning of each aphorism and project how it...

Make reading more enjoyable and interactive with literature circles! Here you'll find detailed lessons to begin the literature circle process. Ten lessons introduce each role learners take on. Literature circle roles include...