This discussion guide accompanies the fiction book Midnight Magic written by Avi, enforces story elements, inferences, and theme/plot. Have the class work on it over time, it will engage even your reluctant readers. 

Thomas Jefferson lived a controversial life. A series of lesson plans shares information about Jefferson's Sons, a novel about the infamous founding father. Discussion questions and other tasks explore different points of view and cover...

As a part of an architecture unit, 10th graders research and draw a building's exterior. They view images of buildings Frank Lloyd Wright has designed, attend lecture, conduct research on architectural design, and then draw an exterior...

Understanding the vocabulary in a text, especially a text like Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science that includes quite a few technical terms, can be the key to understanding the text as a whole. Learners focus on...

Inspire critical thinking with this activity, which prompts young scholars to compare lesbian, gat, bisexual, and transgender rights with the rights guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. By collecting topical articles...

Sixth graders are able to identify personal pronouns and understand their function. They are able to use personal pronouns correctly as subjects and objects in sentences. Then they look at sentences given by the teacher, and they list...

What is love? Why is it important? Explore this concept with an interactive activity that brings together Bloom's taxonomy and Willa Cather's My Antonia. After completing the novel, pupils toss a Bloom's cube and then answer the...

Augment your eighth grade language arts curriculum with a thorough set of reading comprehension activities and assessments. Focusing on a variety of skills, including vocabulary in context, text structure, main idea, and author's style,...

Young scholars, through observation and discussion about the Coffin of Djed Mut, make connections between hieroglyphs and the English writing system. They create their own visual story using symbols that represent words.

Students research the five tribes of the Iroquois Nation focusing on housing, food, clothing, transportation, religion, and language. They research using Internet sources and book mark sites for reuse.

Fifth graders analyze photographs in order to write descriptively.  In this descriptive writing instructional activity, 5th graders use the Internet to research and view photographs of the arctic.  Students use descriptive...

Discover the natural beauty of California. With a conservation bent, this activity delves into some of the attributes that make this state unique. Learners discuss Yosemite and the forest habitat. They focus on the things plants and...

Students explore life and work of Martin Luther King, Jr., reflect on section of King's "I Have a Dream" speech, discuss inequities that still exist in the United States, and create picture books about their own dreams of freedom for...

To prepare for a reading of Robert Cormier's Tunes for Bears to Dance to, kids research vocabulary drawn from the novel and share their findings with their groups.

A whale of a activity is sure to intrigue your elementary oceanographers! Learn about the mammals of the sea with a series of activities about whales, dolphins, and porpoises. Kids complete worksheets about the anatomy of a whale, create...

In the preceding lesson from the unit, beginning biologists discovered that microorganisms are everywhere, so the question follows, why are we not sick all of the time? Class members read and discuss an article in small groups about...