Finding the central idea is the focus of this lesson. Middle schoolers write descriptions of different animals using details and descriptive language. They watch a video of kids using descriptive language, and then use showing language...

The Statue of Liberty is one of the United States' most iconic monuments. Learners examine the poem "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus, which is engraved on the Statue of Liberty's pedestal. They then respond to a series of text-based...

Prepare your pupils for full-fledged political discussions with a scaffolded seminar process. Before talking about the topic, class members have a couple of days to respond to a question in writing, using the two listed reading...

You don't have to travel far to learn about rocks, just step outside, pick up a stone, and begin investigating. After taking a class walk around the school grounds collecting rocks, young scientists practice their skills of observation...

High schoolers examine the New York Times review of the film adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and explore the elements of scriptwriting. They read the article about the film adaptation screenplay and examine a sample...

Students brainstorm a list of potential uses for micro-video technologies. After reading an article, they analyze the development of a new pill-sized camera. In groups, they create a children's book that shows them the various systems of...

Explore how photographs can represent a whole story to a viewer. Middle schoolers work on narrative writing techniques in this lesson, focusing on photographs from the New York Times to write first-person descriptive narratives....

Who is Herman Melville? Read and discuss "Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street." Then, discuss the film adaptations of Melville's work and translate a passage of the text into modern-day English. Discussion questions are...

In this fiction books activity, learners complete seven multiple choice questions about the book, "Smoke Screen." These questions contain concepts such as choosing the correct author, who published the book, when it was on the New York...

This versatile resource from The New York Times website provides a short opinion piece on smart phones and the amount of time we spend playing games on them as well as several possible writing prompts pupils could consider in response to...