Sixth graders take a pre-test and summarize teacher's discussion of cells, tissues, organs in their notebooks. They read selections on organisms in their textbook and perform a dissection of a chicken drumstick with the thigh attached....

In this social studies template, students can write an essay on a President's Day stationary page. Students draw a picture on the second page.

Introduce and challenge the essay organization skills of your junior high writers with the paper reconstruction activity in this demonstration.  Theydetermine what the word organization means, and discover the basic organizational...

This site provides a guideline for writing a comparative essay for the AP World History Test. It also provides practice exercises and samples.

Invisible Man is a core text in high school literature classes and one of the most cited works on the AP Literature and Composition exam. Instructors new to using Ralph Ellison's novel and those who have long included it as part of...

A great student reference tool and graphic organizer in one worksheet! Young writers can read a detailed description of each section of a standard five-paragraph essay before completing a graphic organized with their own writing. The...

A speaker, a message, an audience. After analyzing these elements in Queen Elizabeth's speech to the troops at Tilbury, groups analyze how other speakers use an awareness of events, and their audience to craft their arguments....

Fifth graders prepare for their end of the unit essay assessment by continuing to look at what makes an earthquake a natural disaster. They complete a graphic organizer and write a topic sentence. To finish, they view a model essay and...

What led to the United States Civil War? Interested historians consider a variety of political, social, and economic factors using primary sources and an essay prompt in an authentic high-stakes test. Primary sources include political...

Whether the planks hide the beating of a hideous heart or they break away to the madness beneath, their presence makes itself known in the final instructional activity of a literary analysis unit. Having gathered textual evidence from...

What does your character reveal about you? Scholars carry out several activities to determine the reveal of character in Flowers for Algernon. Readers answer text dependent questions, complete diary entries, write reflections, and use...

The Gulf War, the Vietnam War, and the Korean War all featured pivotal moments in United States foreign policy. Individuals consider how these conflicts changed the course of American diplomacy using an essay prompt and documents from a...

Need a clear, yet detailed review of thesis statements for your young writers? This PowerPoint presentation offers a great review that is sure to clarify the concept of thesis statements for your class. While all three stages of the...

Prepare for an interview project with a set of worksheets about asking questions and quoting people. After completing a grammar exercise about quotation marks, kids write out the questions they want to ask their interviewee, and record...

Three major faith traditions have shaped world history: Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism. Using secondary sources from textbooks, as well as primary source documents, such as Aztec legends, pupils explore the interplay of these...

Students research an event or a person from a decade in American history when the civil rights movement was an important focus. They create a multimedia project based on the research.

Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery" provides middle schoolers with an opportunity to hone their close reading and literary analysis skills. After annotating their copy of the story, writer's craft an essay in which they analyze...

This activity is better utilized as a peer-editing exercise and not as an activity on how to write counterarguments. Writers take their argumentative rough drafts, peer edit in groups of four, and review the author on common essay...

Eighth graders discuss photojournalism and then compare present day to historical photographs. They discuss how photos capture daily life and historical events, compare historic photos to those seen today, then take and make a photo book...

Prepare your class for applying to scholarships with this lesson. Although very bare-bones, this plan provides a writing prompt for learners that will surely get them thinking about how to present themselves to the outside world. The...

Students explore The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. In this reading and writing lesson, students read chapters 7-12. Students write an essay on two essay questions related to these chapters.

Students explore Fahrenheit 451. In this literature lesson, students read Fahrenheit 451 and select an essay question related to the book to which to respond.  Students write an essay related to author's purpose, characters, book...

How do you reference information correctly? Avoid plagiarism by accurately summarizing a New York Times article with your middle or high schoolers. Young researchers then insert properly attributed quotations and paraphrases into their...

Explorers set up Windogradsky columns with local mud so that they can culture microorganisms. After three and six weeks they make observations of the mud and the organisms growing in it. In this way they observe succession and relate...