An introductory lesson to a unit on water pollution, young environmentalists are asked to brainstorm examples of pollutants in water. This lesson will help develop a sense of what water pollution is and where the pollutants come from.

Youngsters write and construct their own autobiographies based on The Hundred Penny Box by Sharon Bell Mathis. They engage in pre-writing steps, narrative writing, and peer editing. This is the second part of a two-part project lesson.

Develop an environmental case study! Elementary learners discover how a case study is used as an analysis tool. The goal of this activity is to show pupils how techniques of persuasion (including background, supporting evidence,...

Mermaids will sing to your class members as they engage in an activity related to T.S. Eliot's famous dramatic interior monologue. After engaging in a socratic seminar about literary devices in the poem, individuals choose one...

A terrific lesson on homophones awaits your youngsters. First, pupils access a website that contains lists of homophones. Then, it's time to get creative! Everyone gets a piece of poster board and they create a homophone cartoon -...

The second lesson in the series begins with a starter activity discussing wild versus domesticated animals. Then, scholars play a card game, with optional variations, to emphasize artificial selection. Next, they attend a field trip to a...

Enough with the talking, let's build something! In the fifth step in the engineering design process, young engineers build a prototype to test their ideas. The activity walks them through the process of evaluating it step-by-step....

A "Magic Minute" activity asks class groups to develop a commercial to advertise a way to turn a time-waster into a time-saver. Ad groups begin by brainstorming time-wasters and then problem-solve was to turn them into time-savers. After...

From Pythagorean triples to the unit circle. Learners use the Pythagorean Theorem to find Pythagorean triples and then relate their work to the unit circle in a fun algebra project. Their discovery that x^2+y^2 is always equal to one on...

Behaviors are often based on assumptions. That's the big idea in the third lesson of a series of critical think resources. Through a series of worksheets, learners examine the conscious and heretofore unconscious assumptions that...

Let your class voice their opinions with a group debate activity. Before reading John Milton's Paradise Lost, they work in small groups in assigned roles to form a position about authority and rebellion, comparing a...

Show young readers how to put some personality and voice into their storytelling with an in-depth assignment. Kids practice saying the same thing, such as counting from one to ten, in different tones and perspectives, and then work on...

Go down the rabbit hole with a thorough novel unit for Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. With a cause and effect chart, K-W-L organizer, and reading comprehension questions, the resource is a great addition to your summer...

What do Jerry Yang, Patrick Ewing, John Muir, Charlize Theron, Peter Jennings, and Saint Frances X Cabrini all have in common? They are all immigrants to the United States. Famous and not-so-famous immigrants are the focus of a resource...

Improve your young poets' descriptive writing with this lesson on personification. A SMART board and PowerPoint presentation guide your class through the process of identifying human qualities attributed to various non-human objects. A...

Encourage effective internet research and e-mail correspondence as scholars investigate a US capital city they've never visited to find pertinent and relevant information. They begin by picking a city, then visit that city's chamber of...

Students choose a project from one of the public art programs and work on it as a collaborative project. The goal is to encourage students to research art programs in their city, and communicate with students from another city.

Get your future professionals working in teams as part of a college and career readiness lesson plan. Discuss times learners have been on teams. What worked and what didn't? How did they settle disagreements? There is a teamwork handout...

One way to get your class to evaluate and synthesize multiple multimedia sources is through a research project. The idea here is that class members will watch videos and listen to scientific debates in order to create a casebook about...

Fifth graders photograph examples of the five elements of art: line, shape, color, pattern, and composition.

Students discuss parachutes and write a procedure to determine the effect of different size parachutes and different masses on the time it takes the masses to fall. They record all their data from their experiment then write three...

Learn the stories a formula holds. An interesting lesson takes a unique approach to teach how to use formulas. Beginning with a formula, learners predict what the variables stand for and then use the formula to make calculations and tell...

Gain a little interest in functions with a real-life task. Young scholars analyze home loan data with a geometric sequence and series. They use the models to make predictions about the total loan payments at certain intervals in a...

Take poetry off the page and put it into terms of movement, physical space and, finally, music with this series of three lessons from the Smithsonian Institution. This resource introduces students to two poetic forms that originated as...