Scholars examine the first Thanksgiving through books and interviews while they complete a KWL chart. Pretending they are part of the feast, learners craft a scrapbook page that features images related to their experience. Pupils reflect...

Here is a great way to get pupils to express a scientific concept in a fun way. After hearing the story of Walter the Water drop and learning facts about the water cycle, the class will write a creative expository piece describing what...

A instructional activity centers itself around the topic of family roles. A whole-class discussion uses puppets and posters to go in-depth into the following character traits; caring, responsibility, respect, and cooperation. The...

In order to truly understand The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, you'll need to provide middle schoolers with background information about the Holocaust. After contributing as many words as they can associate with the Holocaust, such as...

What does your class know about the 1960s? Introduce your unit on S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders with a K-W-H-L chart, which encourages kids to list what they already know about the time period, what they would like to know, how they...

What would you do? To prepare readers for the death of Mr. Pignati, one of the characters in Paul Zindel's The Pigman, individuals complete a problematic situation worksheet and then compare their responses to others in their group.

To prepare readers for the major concepts in Victor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, an account of his life in Auschwitz, class members respond to a series of statements on an anticipation guide.

During this instructional activity, which is all about making connections, learners watch a documentary about the teenage brain and connect it to Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science, their own lives, and the world.

What would you do? To prepare for the final scene from Arthur Miller's The Crucible, readers are presented with a series of moral dilemmas and asked to consider what they would do in the same situations.

The increasing number of unsportsmanlike conduct penalties, red cards, and ejections from games points out the need for activities that help young people recognize behaviors that exemplify good sportsmanship. For homework, class members...

What are the three most important items for survival? Readers of Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, ponder this question individually and share their list with a group, that must then reach consensus on the three most...

Here's a great way to make vocabulary words drawn from Edward Bloor's novel Tangerine memorable. Kids create a word square, and in one quadrant write the word. A picture goes in a second quadrant, the definition in a third, and a...

What to do and what not to do when training and playing sports. That is the focus of two activities designed for teens. In the first activity, individuals read research about factors that contribute to safe sport participation and share...

Losing isn't any fun. It is, however, a part of competing. Two activities encourage middle schoolers to consider what good sportsmanship is, how they can be a good sport, and ways to handle situations when some are acting...

Scholars become familiar with a tool designed to ensure a safe and healthy summer. Following the "5-2-1-Almost None" rule, pupils eat five or more servings of fruits and vegetables, keep screen-time under two hours, be physically active...

"We Can Manage" is the theme of the first of two activities in a Kids Health resource that asks scholars to design a leaflet that educates others about diabetes, and suggests ways they can support peers with diabetes. The second activity...

To be Puerto Rican, in the words of one politician, is to be "foreign in a domestic sense." Young historians consider the American role in colonialism and its impacts on Hispanic Americans through the first part of the twentieth century...

Raise awareness of eating disorders with a two-activity lesson with middle schoolers reading articles to gather background information and then create audio messages and advertisements that promote healthy self-esteem and body image.

Lather up! That's the takeaway from two activities that focus on skin cancer. To begin, class members read articles to gather information about sun exposure, tanning, and skin cancer. They use this information to design a pamphlet to...

Over the course of 10 days, scholars take a pre-assessment to place them in one of three leveled groups. Whole-class and in small groups, pupils take part in read-alouds, field trips, hands-on activities, and complete learning contracts...

The novels of John Green cover the gamut of teenager emotions. A guide to his works provides classroom lesson plans for the novels Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, The Fault in Our Stars, and Paper Towns. Each lesson...

Here's a sobering stat: more than 300,000 kids go to emergency rooms each year for bike injuries. Two activities help scholars learn how to avoid injuries and follow bike safety rules. Class members read three background articles related...

The firsthand accounts of what it was like to be an enslaved person in the mid-1800s riveted a nation and the issue ultimately led to civil war. Using excerpts from Frederick Douglass's autobiography, budding historians examine what it...

The teenage years are tough. Internal and external pressures lead 1 in 15 high schoolers to attempt suicide. Two activities focusing on suicide prevention provide class members with information about when and how to get help for...