After reading Chicken Soup with Rice, by Maurice Sendak, incorporate some of these great extension activities into your lesson plan. Ideas include focusing on knowing the months of the year, or studying the illustrations and how...

Learners share a bowl of goldfish crackers. In this lesson on sharing, students see how a limited resource goes furthest when it is evenly shared. Learners are allowed to take as many crackers as they would like, and then in contrast,...

To recycle or not to recycle, that is the question. Your class can find the answer by taking a teacher created WebQuest, where they assume a role of a community member taking a stand on implementing a community wide recycling plan. The...

What was everyday life like in Colonial Virginia? To find the answer cooperative groups work collaboratively to read an informational handout and complete a graphic organizer. The speaker of the group then shares their new-found...

Introduce high schoolers interested in animation programming to fundamental programming concepts so that they can plan and write simple programs.

Should sanctuary cities receive federal funding, or do they defy federal laws? That is precisely the question scholars attempt to answer as they prepare for a class discussion or debate. After reading some brief background information,...

Using research notes on feudal roles in medieval Europe, learners work cooperatively to write a play about one day in the life of a boy or girl in the Middle Ages.

What caused the collapse of the environment on Rapa Nui (Easter Island)? Who constructed the Moai? What was their purpose? Class members assume the role of investigators and use evidence drawn from field studies, ships' logs, and...

How is a movie theater like a desert biome? Compare systems to ecosystems with a set of activities that focuses on accessing multiple intelligences and building upon knowledge. As learners discuss the ways elements of an ecosystem depend...

Before your learners excuse themselves to get a drink at the water fountain, prompt them to think about where that water comes from. A middle school science instructional activity encourages groups to research their community's source of...

As teachers, we have a lot of patience. Our scholars, on the other hand, may need some support. Give your pupils the emotional intelligence instruction they desire with a lesson designed to teach patience through grand conversation,...

Fourth graders analyze posters that communicate an "active living" message, otherwise known as a public service announcement. Children identify techniques that are used in creating media texts including topic, purpose, and...

Teach English language learners about the week-long holiday of Kwanzaa that is celebrated around the world during December. It includes holiday-themed reading comprehension passages, phrase matching, fill-in-the-blanks, and journaling...

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...

Learners follow five steps to compose an alliteration poem. They choose one consonant and brainstorm as many nouns, verbs, and adjectives they can think of to create rhyming sentences that come together in a poetic fashion. 

Simple yet convenient: this resource is a real treasure! Robert Louis Stevenson's adventure novel, Treasure Island, engages readers of all ages with its tales of treasure maps, buried gold, and pirates. With a sleek eBook, learners can...

Build a classroom community with a lesson that uses character clovers to examine scholars' roles. Following a whole-class discussion, participants list four roles they play and accompany it with the character traits that go along with...

Developing a positive self-concept can sometimes be a challenge. Seventh graders engage in an activity that helps them identify their individual strengths and helps them recognize how these strengths can contribute to being a successful...

Learners explore the concept of biomimicry. For this cooperative design lesson, students consider how cooperation is connected to nature and then collaborate to create their own cooperative designs for the future.

Students investigate the predator-prey relationship of owls and raptors. They examine a variety of resources about owls and raptors, develop a list of vocabulary words, dissect owl pellets and identify what owls eat, and play a...

As guided practice, class members work together to revise a model persuasive paragraph. Then they practice independently with their own writing. The included rubric looks at prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, nonfiction text...

Middle and high schoolers examine the impact of irony in poetry and prose. In this figurative language lesson, they read instructor-selected literature and identify uses of irony. Then they discuss how irony enhances literature.

Students listen to a read aloud of an excerpt of Janet Eaton Givens, Just Two Wings, before reviewing what birds use to fly, and the meaning of migration. They use hot lists of websites to research the Internet for information about the...

What is the difference between area and volume? Have your charges build models of square centimeters, square inches, square feet, square meters, etc. It's definitely challenging, but there is no better way to learn than by trying...