Mystery is an exciting genre for young readers to investigate. The plots are so intriguing! Here is a series of lessons featuring Sherlock Holmes stories that invite learners to enter the world of the mystery genre.  Based on what...

  Explore the connection between a finite graph, a directed graph, and a matrix. Graph lines and identify the relationship of matrices in real-world scenarios. Then use this information to work with a partner to plan and design a...

So the mean is not always the best center? By working through this exploratory activity, the class comes to realize that depending upon the shape of a distribution, different centers should be chosen. Learners continue to explore...

Santa has his eye on you in a graphing activity that has young mathematicians plot ordered pairs on a Cartesian plane. After joining the points together, a picture of jolly Santa Claus comes to life.

Beowulf, the Old English epic hero, comes alive again in the activities found in a teacher's guide designed to accompany a reading of the classic poem.

Can colors help to convey a mood in writing? Explore this question with your class using the songs "Grey Street" by the Dave Matthews Band and "Blu is a Mood" by Blu Cantrell. After analyzing the effect of the color words in these songs...

Examine the lives of four women—Blanche Stuart Scott, Madeleine L'Engle, Margaret Evans Price, and Sybil Ludington—in a 23-page activity packet. Each profile comes with a set of vocabulary and reading comprehension questions. Further...

Students practice using graphing tools to make tables, bar charts, scatter graphs, and histograms, using census data. They apply the concept of measures of central tendency, examine the effects of outliers. They also write inferences and...

Fill-out a story map to help your scholars with pre-writing. They will use a story map template to pre-write. They also organize their ideas into steps which become the foundation for their first draft. Concrete objects are brought in to...

Practice basic map skills with the story of The Tortoise and the Hare. After listening to the story, class members create a map that indicates the starting line, the path the animals took, where they stopped to rest, and the finish line....

Dazai Osamu’s short story, “A Sound of Hammering” is the focus of a three-day investigation of modern Japanese literature and life in post-World War II Japan. The events in Osamu’s story mirror those in his own life, and give a...

Heads! A great way to practice probability is to flip a coin in class. The provided data allows your mathematicians to predict the probability of heads in ten coin flips. Bring coins to class and allow your own trial of heads or tails....

Home in on the quote on this page to explore setting, the author's and character's voices, and plot in Willa Cather's My Antonia. Pupils draw a picture of what is described in the quote, discuss the content, and make connections to their...

Three angles in a triangle, three-dimensional space, it all seems connected somehow. Given several different triangles, pupils use the three angles of the triangle as coordinates to plot points in three-dimensional space. They explore...

Here's a window into graphing calculators. Scholars use a graphing calculator to plot a quadratic function. They then adjust the window to make the graph look like that of a linear function and must recreate given graphs.

Data can tell us a lot about celestial objects that are just too far away to study otherwise. Learners examine data on the brightness of an asteroid to predict its rotation rate. Graphing the data reveals a periodic pattern that allows...

Supernovas burn for a short time but can give scientists extensive information about the universe. Learners analyze given data about the change in the light magnitude of a supernova. They look for patterns in the data and use them to...

Here's a colorful resource about spectra. An intriguing lesson plan teaches pupils about diffraction grating and about absorption and emission spectra. They see how to represent spectra using line plots and try out this skill in a...

Three astronomy activities in one resource! Here you will find one hands-on activity, one demonstration, both with discussion questions, and one activity worksheet. During these lessons young scientists discuss how stars are...

Reinforce the concept of fractions and decimals as part of a whole with a lesson that begins with a mixed review, then goes into a three problem guided practice, and ends with a collaborative activity. The guided practice and activity...

It's not just any circle—it's the unit circle. The fourth activity in the series is an introduction to the famous unit circle. While working through a series of activities, young scholars learn the components of the unit circle and how...

At over 450 pages, John Steinbeck's Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Grapes of Wrath can be a challenging choice for full-class, book circle, or independent reading. The activities in a 10-page sample The Grapes of Wrath...

While humans have always been on the move, the period between 1400 and 1800 saw vast migrations of people between the East and the West. These migrations—whether through slavery or a desire to colonize new lands—shaped the modern world....

What would the characters of Pride and Prejudice say to each other in a letter? Draft unsent correspondence between characters from Jane Austen's novel. A great way to explore characterization and plot structure in a creative lesson.