A discussion of bioluminescence launches an investigation of animal adaptations. After re-watching the opening minutes of Dark Water, class members listen to a reading of What Do You Do with a Tail Like This, and then create a new...

After watching the documentary Dark Water about a traditional Chumash ceremony and reading a Chumash origin story, viewers are asked to create a coat of arms and to craft an essay that details a family tradition or their own origin story.

After viewing The Last Roundup, a documentary that examines the transitioning of Santa Rosa from a privately owned island to a National Park, class members adopt the point of view of Tim Vail, a member of the family that once owned the...

Small groups create skits that illustrate the different perspectives of those involved in the transitioning of Santa Rose island from private ownership to National Park.

After viewing the West of the West's documentary Cache, individuals craft either a newspaper article chronicling the discovery of the cache on San Nicolas Island, a historical narrative of the placement of the cache in the cliff side, or...

After watching West of the West's documentary The Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island, class members imagine how Juana Maria/Karana may have felt about living alone on the island for 18 years and craft a blackout poem or a narrative in...

Rate ratios with unit rates and rate units. Pupils take ratios and determine their associated rates and unit rates. The scholars identify the different aspects of rates, the unit rate, and the rate unit. The lesson is the 16th in a...

Dig into a classic math problem with your classes. Through an engaging task, learners work with rate and distance information to make conclusions. In the task, two people walk at different rates; one leaves first, and scholars...

After watching West of the West's documentary on Catalina Island, The Magic Isle, class members research how Walt Disney's and William Wrigley's different visions impacted the island.

As an assessment of their skill in crafting a compare and contrast essay, class members read and compare the portrayals of nature in excerpts from naturalist John Muir's My First Summer in the Sierra and from poet Emily Dickinson's...

How do you assess whether pupils have mastered certain concepts and skills? Designing a performance task that asks learners to demonstrate their skills and providing writers with a rubric that identifies these skills and provides...

Besides the dictionary definition, words also carry the added weight of meanings that are inferred or implied, meanings conferred on words, or connotations. To gain an understanding the importance of connotation, class members...

Class members will eat up an enticing interactive that lets users change the location of cuts made into a pizza to adjust the number of created slices. They create a counterexample for a conjecture on the number of slices.

Find out what's special about your pupils with a fun biopoem activity! As they fill out their name, words that describe them, what they love, and what they dream of, learners create an expressive poem about themselves.

How much gas does it take to drive around town? The class uses a variety of mathematical procedures to take a look at the use of gas for transportation. Class members use a different unit to determine the cost of driving a car as opposed...

"First Appearance," Mark Twain's tale about overcoming stage fright, serves as a model of a personal narrative and gets young writers thinking about milestones in their own lives. After examining student models and considering the...

Does pride really goeth before the fall, or can it be essential to one's development? Second graders read two of Aesop's fables that refer to pride in their morals, and write a short essay about whether pride is good or bad, based on...

How can you tell if your relationship is healthy or unhealthy? When can consent be withdrawn in a sexual encounter? Discuss important aspects of healthy relationships with high schoolers with a lesson plan that includes talk about...

Tone is a tough topic to teach to teenagers. But never, fear, help is here in the form of a unit plan that takes advantage of their interest in music to set the stage for a series of activities that lead them to understand how setting,...

To prepare for crafting their own memoir, class members examine poetry by Margaret Atwood, Billy Collins, Robert Hayden, and Claude McKay, stories by Richard Rodriquez and Willa Cather, and Barry Levinson's film Avalon. They examine...

Turning 11 comes with a range of emotions. Explore those emotions by reading the short story "Eleven" by Sandra Cisneros. Readers analyze the main character's reactions to the events of her day. Then, they write an essay describing what...

Join Congress as they assess their economic abilities for spending—and as they discover their limits. High schoolers use an educational resource to explore Congress's economic powers and learn to apply these concepts to their everyday...

What does the Constitution have to do with my life? This is a question teachers hear on a day-to-day basis. Teach high schoolers just how relevant the US Constitution is to them today with essays, real-life connection activities, and...

How can you teach a text to a group of readers who struggling with the language? The second in a set of three ESL lessons related to Theme 4: Problem Solvers engages English language learners by introducing vocabulary and grammar...