Young writers craft letters to the government stating their opinion on different topics. They pick an environmental or ocean issue, research it, and craft their formal persuasive letter. Ensure your learners include supporting facts and...

Teach your class to talk back in a constructive and respectful way. This focuses in particular on talking back to the media and to advertisers when they have concerns. Learners participate in a brainstorm and then compose letters or...

Amelia Earhart's accomplishments and strength of character extend beyond her status as one of the first female aviators in America. Elementary and middle schoolers learn about Earhart's early life and the historical context surrounding...

Investigate popular scientific claims and gather evidence to defend or argue against an author's stance. Writers synthesize information and compose their own "Really?" columns modeled after those found in the weekly "Science Times"...

Pupils explore brochure writing. They work in groups to brainstorm and categorize important places in their community. In addition, they gather information from the Internet, take pictures using a digital camera, and create a community...

Students use their critical thinking skills to write about historical events. In this historical perspectives lesson, students read documents about historical events and make annotations and marginal notes. Students then respond to...

The Scarlet Letter is the anchor text in a four-week unit that examines Hawthorne's novel through the lens of the intolerances found in a supposed civilized society. In addition to their reading, class members watch clips from...

Are you looking for a way to teach sequence of events in your narrative writing unit? Bring this lesson to your middle school class, as it prompts young writers to create a narrative sequence map of events that have happened at school...

Experiment with multimedia storytelling. After watching a segment of American Family, first, middle and high schoolers tell a story about their families, clarifying the setting, characters, and script. They work on setting...

Taking good notes is key to success in academic classes. How to take good notes is the focus of this five-page packet that introduces the Cornell, the Five R's, and the SQ3R methods of note taking in one study skills lesson.

Listen to the sound of children's fingers flying across their keyboards as they perform these fun typing lessons. From creating alphabet books and multimedia presentations to researching presidents and writing class...

The options are vast with this Ancient Greece and Olympics research project! Using Scholastic online resources, historians have interactive and educational supports to guide them through researching and writing about the 2004 Olympics in...

Fifth graders demonstrate how to cite sources when writing a research paper. In this research writing lesson, 5th graders view a demonstration on how to cite sources using an included graphic organizer. Students practice citing sources...

Students explore ways to use technology. They create pictures with Kid Pix software to describe something about themselves. They create pictures os something they did over the summer and write sentences to accompany their pictures. They...

Fourth graders practice using a graphic organizer to record their notes and answer text-dependent questions while supplying evidence of how they found their answer. They focus on a machine called the wheelright, which was commonly...

Fourth graders work in small groups to become experts on different colonial trades in the eighth instructional activity of this unit. Working toward the long-term goal of writing a piece of historical fiction, young scholars read...

Wait, you mean researchers don't all use Wikipedia? Teach your class about intelligent research with a instructional activity about evaluating digital sources. The instructional activity starts with a quickwrite and includes...

Describe how plate tectonics account for various land formations. Learners discuss different marine sanctuaries and create a poster about tectonic activity in these areas. They share their posters with the class.

The writing of Haiku poems is the focus of this language arts lesson. In it, the basic elements of Haiku poetry are presented, and then a step-by-step set of instructions on how to create a Haiku poem along with an illustration is...

A dictionary is a very helpful tool. Teach your third graders how to locate words, define them, and understand what root words are. They look up 12 words, write their definitions, then determine the root word that helps categorize each...

Demonstrate the importance of evaluating and citing sources. Pupils can complete the suggested assignment provided here, or one of your choosing, while focusing on checking that the resources are credible and citing those sources...

Online resources take many forms: blogs, search engines, news websites, documents, wikis. In order to conduct effective research, pupils should become familiar with different formats so that they can more easily choose suitable sites for...

Teach your class some strategies for effective searching. Pupils should assess the whole results screen and then determine how to go forward with their searches. A table of strategies is included, as is a challenge. After they complete...