High schoolers investigate the practices related to safer sex and define what it means in our society today. Guiding questions are used to facilitate classroom discussion. The goal is for high schoolers to define and identify the...

Sixth graders discover what it takes to become President of the United States. Using a database, they complete a scavenger hunt to determine what George W. Bush has in common with past Presidents. They also create a spreadsheet which...

"Those who knocked these buildings down will hear from all of us soon!" - George W. Bush. Scholars investigate and analyze the events of September 11, 2001 in ushering in the Bush Doctrine on foreign policy. Using primary documents as...

If you're looking to set your class up for writing effective arguments, try out this idea. While originally created with freedom as a guiding idea, the activity could easily be adapted for other themes. As a class, create a chart of...

Students work on a K-W-L chart about electrical storms, lightening, and thunder. They discuss how meteorologists forecast storms and research their answers which are shared in a whole class setting. Using art supplies, they draw dwelling...

Students examine the work of the photojournalist W. Eugene Smith. They analyze photo-essays by Smith, construct a pinhole camera, and create their own photo-essay.

A thorough lesson plan takes your first grade class through Jane Yolen's beautiful Owl Moon. It crafts the unit with clear objectives, high-level guiding questions, cloze activities and sentence frames, and extension...

Although unlikely in today's English classroom, this lesson focuses on introducing research papers to seniors in high school. It briefly reviews the parts of an essay, and mentions showing learners example essays, but no examples are...

Beyond reading and arithmetic, one of the most important skills for graduating seniors to have is fiscal literacy and responsibility. Start them on the right financial track with nine lessons that focus on a variety of important...

There are so many ways to be smart! Can your class identify their intelligences? The third of five career and college lesson plans designed for sixth graders challenges them to assess their unique skills. Once they determine their...

What is a haibun? With this interesting lesson, writers will experience the Japanese writing form haibun, identify elements important to Japanese writing styles, analyze a haibun, and compose their own. Different from the typical journal...

Class members use the think-pair-share strategy to compare the views of W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington and to consider how each man's backgrounds influenced his philosophy.

W.W. Jacobs' story "The Monkey's Paw" provides plenty of foreshadowing which readers use to make predictions in this tightly composed, sound instructional plan. Your class reads the story, recording predictions and checking for veracity...

Family and friendship are two very important themes of the historical fiction novel The Orphan of Ellis Island by Elvira Woodruff. From video clips and writing prompts to reader's theater and family interviews, this resource...

What did segregation look like in the beginning of the 20th century? Middle and high schoolers view images of segregated areas, read passages by Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois, and come to conclusions about how the influence of...

Imagine drawing with zeros and ones. The third lesson in a unit of 15 introduces the class to creating black and white images. Pairs get together to create an encoding scheme in order to make these images. They move on to a...

Singing, clapping, moving up and down with the melody, it all sounds like a great music lesson plan. Kinder-musicians sing three different songs to practice memory, speaking, and movement skills. They'll move to the melody, build memory...

Take your class through a moment in modern history in this presentation, which details the rise of Saddam Hussein and the dynamics between Iraq and its neighbors during the Persian Gulf War and the current Iraq war. Though slightly...

This lesson plan is preparation-intensive, but well worth the investment. You will construct five or six portable testing stations with which lab groups will gather data on the best position for collecting sunlight with a solar panel....

Building on the previous activity in this series of lesson seeds, this plan focuses on the use of dialect in Theodore Taylor's novel, The Cay. Class members examine specific lines of text, use their reading journals to respond to the...

Building upon prior lessons in the series, this reading and writing exercise requires pupils to look back at their own writing, track character development in the novel The Cay, and analyze how Phillip has changed. The reading focus is...

An infographic is fantastic way for learners to illustrate their understanding of content, express themselves creatively, and teach others in a manner that is both engaging and informative. While originally designed for a lesson on...

How can you teach a text to a group of readers who struggling with the language? The second in a set of three ESL lessons related to Theme 4: Problem Solvers engages English language learners by introducing vocabulary and grammar...

Start off your young English language learners with this packet of materials, which covers three weeks of instructions. After completing the unit, kids will have practiced the letters K through Z, read several story books, talked with...