Clarify the Common Core standards for your eighth grade mathematicians with this series of classroom displays. By rewriting each standard as an achievable "I can" statement, these posters give students clear goals to work toward...

Statistics come front and center in this unit all about analyzing discrete data. Real-world situations yield data sets that the class then uses to tease out connections and conclusions. Beginning with the basic histogram and...

Manage your calorie intake with a daily food plan journal. After reviewing a reference sheet with suggested amounts of each food group based on a total calorie pattern, learners can jot down what foods they have eaten during the day as...

“What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages?” Ah, the central question of Lord of the Flies. As part of their study of William Golding's riveting novel, readers complete an anticipation guide and respond to a series of survey...

There is more than one way to approach a problem. Explore the habits of mind as they relate to the methods of approaching learning, and to how young writers can develop success once they learn to foster each skill.

How can the growth of leadership qualities be measured? Make the development of leadership behaviors visual! Class members periodically recognize the leadership behaviors of their peers by adding color-coded sand to a jar labeled...

Interestingly enough, movement is not a characteristic of living things. The first activity in a series of 20 introduces learners to the concepts of living versus non-living things and then focuses on biologists and what they study....

"Bullying and Prejudice" and "Do You Cyber Bully," two lessons from a complete Bully Free program, serve as samples of the approach used in a unit designed to bring awareness to and to combat bullying. Each lesson asks class...

Two sample lessons from a curriculum unit on bullying provide high school seniors with an opportunity to assess their online and cell phone behavior and to consider how they can offer support to bullied students. Each plan includes an...

"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...

The main character in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, is the focus of a crossword puzzle that asks readers to identify key events and characters in Janie Starks' life.

Small groups investigate plots of land to discover how abiotic and biotic factors interact. After recording their findings, scholars share observations with peers and self-reflect on the learning process. 

When it comes to the law, is justice always served? Teach scholars about how law sometimes enables prejudice of entire groups of people with a unit on World War II that includes a warm-up activity, analysis of primary sources,...

With its focus on nature, individualism, imagination, and rejection of traditional authority, Romanticism has great appeal to young high schoolers. After examining classic paintings and poems as well as current works, class members...

Let the class' knowledge of geometry flow like water in an aqueduct. Future mathematicians research ancient Roman aqueducts and consider the geometric concepts necessary in their construction. They then use GeoGebra to create models of...

Make math class feel like a day at the beach (minus all the sunburns, of course). Given information about a pail, a soup can, and a plastic pyramid mold, pupils calculate the volume of sand that can fit in each. They then design sand...

Small groups analyze the attendance at a movie theater and determine the amount of money made for per show. Team members calculate the number of shows it would take for a theater to make a profit after purchasing a new digital projector....

Can people predict the number of future divorces? Scholars research and analyze data on the number of divorces and teenage pregnancies in Virginia over time. They use the data to create graphs, determine the best-fit equations, and make...

Play some games, develop a law, and then call it a day. Learners first perform a small number of trials for a probability experiment, then predict the result for a larger number of trials. They then compile data from the entire class to...

Working in groups, pupils plot three points on the coordinate plane representing three different parabolic paths. Using a calculator, they determine the quadratic regression equation for their models. Each team then figures out the...

Imagine seventh graders developing a school wide plan to promote respect in their school. That's the vision behind the second lesson in the R-E-S-P-E-C-T series. In preparation for designing a school-wide media campaign, class members...

Following a viewing of Disney/Pixar's Inside Out, scholars list the five emotions depicted in the film—joy, sadness, anger, fear, and disgust. Learners complete a handout and discuss their answers. To close the lesson, peers share a...

Word choice can drastically alter the tone of a piece of writing. Ninth graders read Karen Russell's short story "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves" and use textual evidence to help them analyze how word choice affects their...

Once conceived, a guided set of literary analysis lessons will assist you day and night. Ninth graders look closely at "The Tell-Tale Heart" and analyze how Poe uses point of view to create questions about the narrator's sanity and...