Middle schoolers aren't too young to feel strongly about politics, social issues, consumer rights, or environmental problems. Demonstrate the first steps toward social change with a project about action-oriented writing. Eighth...

What is an emergency, why is preparing for one important, and how can your pupils help others prepare for an emergency? Answer these questions and more with a short unit. Learners will participate in a variety of collaborative,...

Explore the backgrounds, qualifications, and platforms of the presidential candidates for the 2000 election. Though the lesson is outdated, the activities within the informational text could be good practice for your young learners as...

Teach middle schoolers how to develop healthy relationships with activities and lessons designed to create a kind and inclusive classroom. Pupils create guidelines to develop a safe and civil learning environment. They learn how to...

Do research projects at your school look like a class of eighth graders staring at a blank screen? Use the Big 6 research method to guide middle schoolers through the process of finding a topic, searching for and evaluating sources,...

Eighth grades can master the ELA Common Core standards! Show your learners the connection between classroom activities and assignments and the standards with this set of "I Can" statement posters. Each standard has been rewritten as an...

How close are your eighth graders to mastering the ELA Common Core standards? Keep an eye on progress with these charts, which include every eighth grade identifier and full standard text. As you move through the year and teach,...

Whether your young biologists realize it or not, humans play a significant role in marine ecosystems. To help them understand this fact children first create graphical representations that show homo sapiens' place in marine...

Take young scholars on a trip through history with this unit on the mathematics and architecture of the Mayan civilization. Starting with a introduction to their base twenty number system and the symbols they used, this eight-lesson unit...

Practice public speaking in this oral presentation lesson. Middle schoolers list the characteristics of a powerful speaker. They watch a video of two speakers, compare them and discuss the qualities of a good speech. Afterwards, they...

Students research Truman Library website and gather ten trivia facts. They prepare a short oral presentation on one of their questions, scoring each other on speaking and listening skills. Then they create a Truman campaign button.

You will learn how to synthesize ideas and details in texts and support the connections with textual evidence.

In this lesson, you will practice making connections between ideas on the same topic. Some of the ideas will differ from each other, so we will learn how to identify and synthesize important details and draw conclusions. W.9-10.7 Research

How do you narrow or broaden your research topic? Use this informative educational website to find out how to accomplish this goal.

Interactive lesson explains the content and organization of newspaper articles. Includes self-scoring exercises for practicing identifying the five W's (who, what, when, where, and why) in a series of brief news articles and a...

If you need help working with your students on questioning a text or if you are working on higher-level questioning skills, this is a simple and helpful site. Printable resources available from site.