Practice reading with expression and appropriate phrasing with a scaffolded lesson. There is a detailed script here for you, but you could easily use it simply as an outline. Begin by modeling effective reading by displaying a large-text...

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...

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.

Concept muraling helps learners improve their comprehension of a text by giving them a way to organize their understanding of the key concepts in that text. Introduce readers to this process with a carefully scaffolded lesson that models...

Some things are complicated. Scholars continue to look at the model essay and rubric related to A Long Walk to Water. This time, they focus only on row three of the rubric because it is a more complicated portion. Writers think about the...

To conclude an eight-lesson plan study of the events that occurred in the early colonial period in Deerfield, Massachussetss, class members evaluate the point of view and bias found in late 19th and early 20th century retellings.

Draw back the curtain, add a spot of joy to your class, and let learners be lesson planed by a close reading exercise that models how to develop an interpretation based on evidence drawn from a text. Robert Browning’s dramatic monologue...

“It’s not about what it is, it’s about what it can become.” You’re never too old for Dr. Seuss and using The Sneetches and The Lorax is a great way to introduce readers to allegories, parables, and literary symbolism. The lessons...

Here is a phenomenal language arts lesson on media literacy for your middle and high schoolers. In it, learners produce a research product in the form of a public service announcement (PSA). First, they view examples of these PSA's to...

Our job as teachers is to facilitate learning by providing a comfortable & efficient environment for learning to take place. To enable this we provide 'scaffolding' to support the learner. Without this the building, the learning...

Show your class how to indicate which events in a persons life are more important by creating a timeline of Amelia Earhart's life based on the biography Lost Star: The Story of Amelia Earhart. Class members will not only have to...

You are a diplomat during the Age of Empire: prepare a briefing about your country. Young scholars take on the challenge using a role-play exercise to examine various empires during the rise of global interconnectedness. Materials...

Mentor texts are a great way to demonstrate how to write with purpose. Pupils will be reintroduced to two well-known books and then asked to think about them from the writer's point of view. They will see that the author had to use basic...

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...

Mr. Snowman wants to help emerging readers understand compound words, so he segments some familiar words to help them see that they are made of two distinct words. Learners repeat the words, both segmented and blended, and observe them...

Teach pupils to handle fractions fluently. The sixth installment in the series of 28 has class members apply the concepts learned in previous lessons to expressions with fractional coefficients. The fractions are both mixed numbers and...

Explore vocabulary and notation related to triangles and congruence. The fifth lesson in the 29-part series helps pupils build their knowledge of triangle relationships. Individuals identify corresponding parts of identical triangles and...

Ordinary and extraordinary readers will find much to contemplate in a activity on Crime and Punishment as they examine the dichotomies in Dostoevsky's novel. Scholars reflect on Raskolnikov's theory that extraordinary individuals are not...

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...

Square the scale factor when working with scaled drawings and area. The 19th lesson in a series of 22 introduces calculating actual areas from scale drawings. The lesson encourages pupils to use the square of the scale factor to find the...

What do unit rates and constants of proportionality have in common? The lesson plan addresses this question and introduces the concept of constant proportionality to the class. Individuals find that the unit rate and the constant of...

Aliens have taken over the United States! Citizens can only keep two rights laid out in the first 10 amendments of the Constitution and must figure out which ones are best. Young scholars research the importance of each amendment and key...

Pay attention! A lesson featuring Ada Limon's poem "Dead Stars" is designed to help learners develop their noticing skills. Class members first study the constellation Orion's image and list what they notice and how the image makes them...

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...