Jump online (to Sparknotes), and check out the study questions listed for Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World. Provide a list of the questions to your high schoolers, and get them in groups to discuss their answers. Potential answers are...

Different media sources portray news in a variety of ways. In groups of three, learners look at different news sources, bringing in all the findings the next day. Three handouts help scholars compare sources, define specific terms used...

What makes an effective advertisement? Read the advertisement for the Time Machine 3000, and discuss the format and heading with your class. A short series of questions help middle schoolers analyze this advertisement before they write...

Depending on your perspective, solitude can be lovely or very, very lonely. Kids take a look at the simple landscape illustrated in Antoine de Saint Éxupery's The Little Prince, and write a short journal entry about their...

Ah, the numerous number of numbers. Individuals research different ways of encoding numbers. After conducting their initial research, they find classmates who have researched a different article and the pair share information. The...

Energy transformations happen everywhere, every second of the day. The energy transformation common to most scholars is potential and kinetic energy. The three-week lesson covers multiple types of energy transformations through...

Language arts is made up of many parts. Learners review the parts of a sentence, as well as how to make a simple sentence into a complex sentence, before examining full paragraphs and identifying the topic, body, and concluding sentence...

It's a time of change. A hands-on activity engages young scientists in a lesson highlighting the change of seasons. They brainstorm indicators of season changes in nature and then look for them. Next, they record observations in a field...

Lesson 10 in a series of human rights lessons focuses on the skills of finding evidence and summarizing. Your young readers work to compare the two texts they have read in this unit: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights...

Picture that! Pupils view photographs of the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, discussing what they know and wonder about each image. Then, scholars watch a short video about the historic event and complete a KWL...

Setting goals plays a major role in becoming a self motivated learner. Students will read and discuss a story, set personal goals, and analyze a sacred prayer. This lesson includes: teacher evaluation, goal worksheet, prayers, story, and...

In need of a really good lesson that incorporates literature, art, and cultural themes? After hearing a traditional Chinese folktale and discussing cultural themes and symbolism, learners create original illustrations for the story. This...

After reading and discussing a news article from the New York Times regarding gay and lesbian issues of the last thirty years, students engage in several activities to explore current events. They create a timeline, either electronically...

Read and discuss the vocabulary related to a news article about a new recruitment campaign for the British army. High schoolers read the article, define key vocabulary terms, identify suffixes from the article, and complete a variety of...

What a fun idea! The class discusses, and then writes free-verse poems using sensory detail. They get into small collaborative writing teams to compose their poems. Next, they pantomime the actions from the poem while their teammates...

Momoyama and Edo are periods in Japanese history that can be defined culturally and artistically. Learners explore and discuss how the samurai used sword guards and grip enhancers. Pupils read the story "The Inch-High Samurai," examine...

How important is momentum? Pupils investigate and apply the definition of momentum as they conduct analyses during a series of one-dimensional collisions. They infer the relative masses of two objects by carefully staging and predicting...

Set up your class to read Esperanza Rising, by Pam Muñoz Ryan, through a class read-aloud and exploration of the setting. The detailed instructional activity outlines each step. First, class members read over the first few pages and...

Begin class with a short comprehension quiz and review and then move into a new genre: two-voice poems. The activity provides information about this type of poetry as well as a video example made by eighth graders that you can show your...

Class members investigate how positive and negative numbers are useful in the real world. Individuals first read a short passage and identify terms indicating positive and negative numbers. They consider situations involving positive...

Get ready to read The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963 with a lesson plan about historical fiction. Spanning several centuries, the resource prompts learners to guess the historical era of a story based on a word or...

Encourage close reading for young learners with a lesson based on Natalie Babbitt's Tuck Everlasting. The first part of the resource guides readers through a Directed Reading Thinking Activity (DRTA), prompting them to make...

Have some fun with functions with a short activity that asks learners to first sort scatter plot in terms of their correlation. They then sort graphs of different types of functions in terms of key features, such as slope.

Freedom of speech allows anyone, even those in school, to say and do what they feel—right? The 1969 Supreme Court case Tinker v. Des Moines serves as the backdrop for a study on First Amendment rights. Scholars use a short video along...