Gaining practice in translating a verbal description into a diagram and then an equation is the real point of this similar triangles exercise. Once the diagram is drawn, multiple methods are provided to reach the conclusion. An effective...

How is religious freedom connected to the conflict between China and Tibet? After reading an online passage of background information, your learners will divide into groups and both read and view an interview with the Dalai Lama. They...

An activity boosts reading comprehension by challenging scholars to answer questions about a narrative tale detailing elements—plot, characters, setting, theme, problem, and solution.

As an introduction to using a network to determine the fewest number of nodes that meet a given condition, small groups work together to determine the fewest number of ice cream vans, and their locations, to be able to serve the people...

Celebrate the whimsical world of Dr. Seuss on Read Across America Day with a collection of science, technology, engineering, the arts, and mathematics activities, each linked to a popular Dr. Seuss story. 

More than half the world's population eats rice as a daily staple ... imagine if that rice could prevent illness. Scientists genetically engineered rice to include vitamin A for just that purpose. However, room for debate still exists....

The beauty in this resource is the lengthy list of highly charged, controversial-issue research topics. Categories include issues of race, politics, law, environment, education, athletics, gender, and technology. After selecting a topic,...

Forty percent of food in the US goes uneaten while 14.5 percent of US households lack a secure supply of food. As part of the preparation for a performance task assessment, groups consider statistics such as these about food waste and...

Here is a resource where algebra learners show their understanding of a system of equations involving a circle and a line. Once graphed, learners see two points of intersection, one where the ordered pair is read, and a second where...

Is Aunt Nancy shrinking? Find out by calculating with the average height women lose each year. The activity practices multiplying and dividing with decimals and rounding the final answer.

Here's a resource teachers won't want to wash their hands of. Given a task where a full bar of soap is on one side of a balance and 3/4 of a bar of soup and a 3/4-ounce weight is on the other side, young mathematicians must determine the...

Combine math, creative writing, and leprechauns in a fun St. Patrick's Day activity! Using a bag of gold coins and marshmallows, kids write a math story about a leprechaun that includes a multi-step equation to solve.

The story "Santa's Dirty Socks" provides learners an example of a search algorithm that uses a divide and conquer system similar to a binary search algorithm. The included questions expand upon the concepts that follow the story.

Help young mathematicians build a solid understanding of division with this base ten block activity. With the help of these popular math manipulatives, children model different math problems in order to reinforce the...

Here is a great learning task that focuses on the development of areas in computational fluency including strategies in mental math. Young learners are guided through a list of addition expressions that help them visually understand the...

Your class is to find the percent of the lot that is not covered by a house. Make sure your pupils understand the problems before they begin. The lot is the whole of the percent problem and the house is the part. The exercise is good...

Oh, no! An asteroid is on a collision course with Earth!. Class members must rise to the challenge of designing a shelter that will protect people from the impact and permit them to live in this shelter for one year. In this first lesson...

Teach your class about colony collapse disorder and foster discussion about causes and solutions for the honeybee problem. Class members read and discuss an article and participate in one of two detailed activities about pollination and...

The learner puts reasoning and estimation to work. The directions are to place a decimal in the answer to make the equation true. Pupils are to look at the two problems, one multiplication and one division, and estimate an answer. No...

Before beginning The Winter's Tale groups read and discuss a scenario that parallels the plot of Shakespeare's play. They then brainstorm possible solutions to the problem.

In the novel, Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan, Percy is faced with a major decision. After reading, chapter 19, discuss the decision-making process Percy took, what he decided to...

Round and round they go ... where they stop, only scholars will know. By writing systems of equations, classes determine the number of cars a roundabout can handle given specific constraints. Systems use up to six variables and become...

Color the town red. Demonstrate the concept of graph theory with a task that involves determining the least number of colors needed to color a map so that neighboring countries are not represented by the same color. Pupils...

It is just magnetic. This resource presents the concept of Earth's and another planet's magnetic field and how spacecrafts detect them. Learners study a problem using magnetometers and participate in three experiments to come up with a...