Got milk? Only two cultures have had it long enough to develop the tolerance of lactose as an adult. Learn how the responsible genes evolved along with the cultures that have been consuming milk. This rich film is supplied with a few...

Scary stuff! Whether approached as the first horror story or a "serious imaginative exploration of the human condition," Frankenstein continues to engage readers. Here's a packet of activities that uses Mary Shelley's gothic...

George Bailey learns that it truly is a wonderful life when he discovered how many lives he has touched—not to mention how many new generations of lives the story touches every year. A study guide on It's a Wonderful Life ...

A simple question, with a not-so-simple answer. Working with whole and mixed number measurements in inches, feet, and yards presents a problem with many possible solutions. A great activity that challenges the minds of young...

Riddle me this! What do kennings, caesura, and alliteration have to do with the Nowell Codex? Introduce class members to Anglo-Saxon poetry and prepare readers for a study of Beowulf with a series of activities that...

Here you will find a model of a linear relationship between two quantities, the water depth of a channel and the distance across the channel at water level. The cross section of the channel is the shape of an isosceles trapezoid. The...

Young geometers and biologists investigate the math of nature in an activity that is just the bee's knees. Participants will study the tessellations of hexagons in a beehive, along with the natural rationale behind the specific shape....

Explore ocean habitats with a instructional activity that showcases the home of manatees and loggerhead turtles in Belize. Here, pupils compare and contrast the homes of ocean animals to those of humans, listen to an original...

Young geometers become pool sharks in this analysis of the angles and lengths of a trick shot. By using angles of incidence and reflection to develop similar triangles, learners plan the exact placement of balls to make the shot....

Here's an awesome unit that uses The Cay as the anchor text. The 16-page packet is loaded with teaching ideas, activities, and suggested adjustments.

Visit the Magic Treehouse and take your class on a trip through time with a reading of the children's book Mummies in the Morning. Using the story to spark an investigation into Egyptian culture, this literature unit engages...

This comprehensive resource applies simultaneous equations to a real-life problem. Though the commentary starts with a graph, some home consumers may choose to begin with a table. A graph does aid learners to visualize the shift of one...

From dragons to dwarves, from riddles to rings, the great adventure story of The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien has captivated generations of readers of all ages. An educator's guide explores the novel's literary elements,...

The scientific issue of carbon-14 dating and exponential decay gets a statistics-based treatment in this problem. The class starts with a basic investigation of carbon content, but then branches out to questions of accuracy and...

Your learners analyze population data to discern if it best fits a linear scenario. The idea of change by equal differences over equal intervals is enforced in this real-life task. 

Review the vocabulary from Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea with a magic squares activity. To find the magic number, readers match the numbers on a grid with the words and definitions from the novel.

Although this lesson plan covers the rather obscure topic of the Japanese "I-novel", it also includes a great deal of historical information and material for an in-depth discussion of universal literary concepts. Specifically, young...

Your Algebra learners analyze and solve an exponential equation in this popular, real-life model of the cooling of a liquid.  

On your mark, get set, GO! The class sprints toward the conclusions in a race analysis activity. The staggered start of the 400-m foot race is taken apart in detail, and then learners step back and develop some overall race strategy...

What are some of life's most tried-and-true lessons? Pupils listen to examples from the book Live and Learn and Pass It On by H. Jackson Brown, Jr. They write down their own life lessons to later compile in a class booklet. As...

As an introduction to the hypothesis and testing method of investigation, young history detectives engage in a special investigation of a family artifact. After watching a short video that demonstrates the method, they develop a...

This model of the amount of anibiotics in a person's system is represented abstractly by a finite geometric series. Learners translate this real-life situation into algebraic form and then extend their knowlege by answering questions...

Sometimes people who seem to lead what would be considered an ordinary life do extraordinary things. Such was the case with Oseola McCarty, who donated a large sum of money for a university scholarship fund in her name. Oseala lived her...

Deep mathematical thinking is found with just a coin and a number line. Combining computing some probabilities in a discrete situation, and the interpretation of a function, this simple task gives learners a lot to think about on...