Turn the act of following directions into a fun and engaging game! Especially designed for students with cognitive or intellectual disabilities, this lesson plan uses a game format as a natural reinforcer. Write a set of directions onto...

"Who says a pen has to be called a pen? Why not call it a frindle?" Inspired by this quote from the award-winning novel written by Andrew Celements, this instructional activity allows children to invent...

Does the fastest one always win the race? Look deeper into The Tortoise and the Hare with a set of discussion questions for before, during, and after reading the story.

As the first American president to win the Nobel Peace Prize, and only one of four presidents to do so in United States history, Theodore Roosevelt's foreign policy achievements and preservation of peace are often overshadowed by his...

Play a memory game with science vocabulary words to prepare for an upcoming test! Build  both understanding and retention of new vocabulary words by setting up a matching game for your learners to play in small groups of three to...

The 2016 election is over, and now it's time to dig in to some data! An activity revolves around data gathered from the First Vote Project in North Carolina wherein thousands of students voted. After diving in to the data using...

Learners of all ages can practice their spelling abilities by participating in a fun group game. They utilize a pile of letters written on paper to "build" a word instructed by the teacher. The fastest pair of spellers wins a point!...

Does having higher self esteem encourage learners to take better care of themselves? It absolutely does! Does having high self esteem mean that one likes everything about themselves? No, but that they like most things and can work to...

Young mathematicians concentrate on learning to fluently count. Following the rules of the classic game Memory, children take turns flipping over cards in order to find pairs of numbers that cross a decade (e.g. 29 and 30). For younger...

Strengthen the bonds of friendship within your class with a reading of E.B. White's award-winning novel, Charlotte's Web. Focusing on the unique characters in the story and the relationships they develop, young readers draw...

Introduce Nancy Farmer's award-winning science fiction novel, The House of the Scorpion, with an anticipation guide that asks readers to agree or disagree with a series of statements that reflect the major concepts in the story. Follow...

Welcome to the Great Marshmallow Challenge. To conclude a unit study designed to help scholars develop teamwork and collaboration skills, groups are charged with developing a free-standing structure using only one marshmallow,...

What are the job requirements for the office of president of the United States? What attributes should a candidate possess? Are the qualities needed to govern the same as those needed to win? What can an analysis of the...

Students observe the water cycle and experiment with cleaning water. For this hands-on hydrology lesson based on a Magic School Bus book, students conduct two experiments to see the how water moves through the water cycle and then they...

What positions should the volleyball players be in for a free ball? What position should they be in for a hard hit? Then where do they each move, transitioning to offense? Lesson 11 goes over these questions regarding positioning and...

Seventh graders determine if a "lucky charm" will increase their chances of winning a game. Students calculate the experimental probability of each player in a game. They observe and collect data from each activity. Students compare the...

Students debate important court cases. Divided into three groups, students accept a position as first debater, second debater and the third group is neutral. At the conclusion of each debate, students vote to determine the winning side.

Over the course of three days, middle schoolers explore the concept of connotation. They differentiate between the connotative and denotative meanings of sports team names, develop their own team names, logos, and text, and revise a news...

After a class discussion that reviews the concept of antonyms, learners get into groups of four. Their first task is to come up with as many antonyms as they can. One person writes an antonym pair and passes the paper to the next...

To launch a reading of The Dark is Rising, the second novel in Susan Cooper's award winning contemporary fantasy novel sequence for young adults, class members engage in a guided imagery exercise that asks them to visualize the...

Pupils watch the video "Behind Closed Doors" and discuss their reactions. They, in groups, review popular magazines and identify any unrealistic body images that are presented and then explore how these images promote a negative self-image.

Pupils build a stack of pennies as tall as possible, recording the number of pennies they are able to stack before the tower falls. Then, sharing answers, they determine the average number of pennies that could be stacked.

Students define and identify propaganda. They analyze the multiple sides of an issue (problem resolution skills), then discuss the racial environment of Alabama during World War I. They reate a poster reflecting the concerns of the time...

Students discuss the I Care rules for handling conflicts. They role-play various scenarios using the new rules to handle the conflicts, and complete a rubric to assess each group's conflict resolutions.