Tweens and teens learn coping skills to help manage strong emotions such as anger, fear, and sadness with a lesson that asks them to generate a list of self-calming strategies they use and to consider the suggestions in a short video and...

Future counselors and mental health professionals engage in two activities that give them insight into careers in human services. First, groups of four compare and contrast health and wellness apps and share their findings with...

RESPECT! High schoolers learn what it means, how to earn it, who deserves it, and why in the first of five lessons in this section of the Overcoming Obstacles course. After brainstorming a list of people they think to deserve respect and...

Black berets, black leather jackets, raised black fists, chants of "Power to the People!" These are the images that many associate with the Black Panther Party. Often forgotten are the programs the party created during the Civil Rights...

The author study gets an update in a research project designed for high schoolers. Scholars search for information about literary figures that connects them to their times, their works, their themes, and other writers. Researchers also...

"What is the theme of this story?" Now there's a question that can strike fear in the hearts of learners. Here's a lesson that uses photographs to introduce the concept of theme. Scholars examine six photographs and then attach a theme...

"How come there's no ending?" After a close reading of Frank R. Stockton's tale "The Lady, or the Tiger?" in which scholars examine each of the main characters' conflicts and motivations, writers craft their own ending using textual...

Teach young scholars how to determine the theme of a story, an insight the author wants to share with readers, with a instructional activity that uses Guy de Maupassant's "The Necklace" as an anchor text. Learners examine the internal...

Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Cask of Amontillado" is a bit of a puzzle. Critics have long debated Montresor's motives for killing Fortunato. Young scholars examine examples of the three types of irony (verbal, dramatic, and...

Scholars, high schoolers, class members! With the help of this lesson, you too can identify the three persuasive appeals (ethos, pathos, and logos) the characters in William Shakespeare's tragedy Julius Caesar used to convince...

Characters play a significant role in why we like certain shows and movies but are the characters we watch representing the diverse society in which we live? Scholars examine this question through thoughtful discussion about popular...

Scholars examine a list of questions and sort them into corresponding groups based on similarities. A gallery walk allows peers to see how their peers sorted questions and leave notes. Costa's Level of Questions is the topic of a...

Kate Chopin's short story, "The Story of an Hour" and John H. Young's "Our Deportment, or the Manners, Conduct, and Dress of Refined Society" offer high school juniors an opportunity to compare the role of women in the 19th century with...

Need a hero? Super! Groups create their modern-day marvel and craft a narrative with all the elements required in such a tale.

After reading Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," class members compare the characteristics of Ichabod Crane and Brom Van Brunt. Next, they read an article about ghosts that supposedly haunt the campus of Oklahoma...

Middle schoolers engage in a lesson that teaches them to distinguish myths from facts about United States immigration. Class members take an immigration quiz, watch a "What Would You do" video, and discuss how they could be an ally to...

Learning how to summarize can be a challenge. Guide your writers through the process of summarizing a story using the children's tale; I Want My Hat Back for practice. Class members then use this "Somebody, Wanted, But,...

After reading background information about Kate Chopin, pupils complete their shared reading of her short story, "The Story of an Hour."  Participants then consider the irony of the ending.

Attitudes toward women have changed radically in the last hundred years. The first activity in a six-part unit that uses Kate Chopin's short story "The Story of an Hour" as an anchor text begins with a shared reading of "The Role of...

A paragraph from John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley provides English language learners with an opportunity to practice strategies for answering guiding questions about the academic text. Class members locate keywords in the annotated...

Introduce high school freshmen to the characteristics of informative writing with a 5-day lesson plan that distinguishes informative writing from other modes. Scholars learn how to search for and cite reliable resources, then research...

Good news articles are engaging, informative, and often compelling. In the first lesson of the four-part series, young journalists analyze and evaluate news stories about former NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom. They learn about the...

"Warning: Conducting this lesson may be harmful." Such statements, called "Trigger Warnings," are the focus of a two-part lesson that looks at censorship, especially the pros and cons of trigger warnings. Class members read two articles,...

To understand the history of Native American education, high schoolers examine the record of young scholars who attended the Carlisle Indian School from 1879-1918. They also examine sources that contain information about indigenous...