Candace Fleming's award winning Ben Franklin's Almanac is the anchor text for a classroom guide that provides teachers with a cache of pre, during, and post-reading activities.

Students work cooperatively in order to identify specific situations in which an almanac is the best choice for locating information. They answer specific questions, record the page on which the answer was found, and the key words used...

Benjamin Franklin famously had an aphorism for every situation—most of which we still use in modern vernacular. Introduce class members to Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanack with a presentation that details the characteristics of aphorisms.

Students love the opportunity of going to the library to jump into that one comfy chair in the whole room with a book, or be a lucky one to get to the computers before anyone else. But knowing how to locate books and other reference...

Bring Benjamin Franklin to life in the classroom with a set of five activities. Discover the type of person he was and his accomplishments through a study of his inventions and comments about life virtues. 

Here is a lesson which may be best suited for a library science teacher, or one that can be done by a regular teacher when in the library. In it, learners explore the best ways to use print and electronic resources to find information...

Middle schoolers apply concept of ratio and proportion to determine length of Statue of Liberty's torch-bearing arm. They view video of Statue of Liberty, determine how long statue's arm would be if its nose measures four feet six...

Young scholars explain the meaning of "use value" of nature's resources by researching and writing studenT books personifying an aspect of nature. They produce public service announcements regarding use value for their local community.

Students design to explore the world of objects as related to lace. Students will create a lace mural highlighting what they learn about the world of lace. Students brainstorm ideas via the internet websites.

Students gather geographic information about their community. They work together to create a community almanac.

Students practice using a World Almanac by completing the provided worksheet on animals.

Middle schoolers discuss the meaning of the word, almanac and then decide which statistics about the World Series they think should be included in the almanac, browsing some websites to get some idea of what statistics are available....

Fifth graders review information on Lewis and Clark by using a variety of resources. With partners, they travel between stations researching different information based on the expedition. They check each others work and share it with the...

Fourth graders use two separate sources to learn about index, glossary, and table of contents usage. In this library instructional activity, 4th graders use two books, Learning About Weather with Graphic Organizers, and The World Almanac...

Middle schoolers review library skills by rotating through teacher-created learning stations covering various topics. They discuss plagiarism, work on Almanac practice as a team, complete practice using indexes, and an abstracts handout...

Students explore issues and situations that make for a city and its local environments. In this local government lesson, students design maps, define issues and create brochures that illustrate their understandings of these concepts and...

A class discussion on reference materials opens up a lesson plan on how to use these important resources. They discover that dictionaries, glossaries, and thesauruses are called word reference resources, and they practice using them. The...

A virtual field trip takes enthusiastic travelers to the pyramids of Giza. Using Google, scholars explore the grounds of the ancient pyramids found in Egypt then complete three worksheets: a photo analysis page, a reflection sheet, and a...

Many phenomena in life are periodic in nature. A task-based lesson asks scholars to explore one of these phenomena. They collect data showing the sunrise time of a specific location over the period of a year. Using the data, they create...

Locating and synthesizing information is an essential part of the research process but can be overwhelming for many young writers. Eliminate some of the stress and confusion, this resource suggests, by separating these steps. To focus...

Students explore the extent of colonialism from the early periods in the 1500's to the later years in the mid 1900's. They explain how colonization differed in regions around the world and examine the lasting effects on the colonized...

Sixth graders study the geography of Tibet. They create maps of Tibet. Students predict population, land area, water area and coastline length of the United States and Tibet. Students compare and contrast the day-to-day lives of people...

Statisticians analyze a data set of student IQs by finding measures of central tendency and dispersion such as mean, median, mode, and quartiles. They practice using a graphing calculator to find the values and analyze box plots and...