B.B. King and Muddy Waters are two of the most famous blues performers of all time. In this music lesson, middle schoolers study the early careers and lasting musical contributions of both artists, each of whom carried the blues on to...

Contemplate what music learners listen to and why they listen. Can they find poetry within music lyrics? Specifically hone in on blues lyrics and ruminate upon the social issues prevalent in the themes. Particular song lyrics coincide...

Watching Great Performances’ Eric Clapton Crossroads Guitar Festival Chicago launches an investigation into and discussion of how the electric guitar and guitarists have changed the sound of the blues over time. An engaging way to...

The Blue Man Group, three bald performance artists painted blue, offer lessons designed to engage, intrigue, and excite the imaginations of all ages of learners. Groups craft a trickster tale, invent melodious mathematical instruments,...

Enable students to use the blues to explore urbanization, technology, and their effects on everyday life in the 20th century. Musicians were among the large number of people who, between 1914 and 1945, participated in the Great Migration...

Jazz, Blue Grass, Hip Hop, Swing. Gospel, R&B, Ragtime, Disco. So many music genres born in the USA. After reading an article about the fate of New Orlean's Jazz after Hurricane Katrina, class members investigate the life cycles of...

An online interactive activity encourages young readers to employ the monitoring/repairing strategy to become better readers. Class members identify unfamiliar words, decode them, and use them in other contexts.

Who or what is an Australian? Discover a plethora of student-centered, engaging activity ideas on the question of Australian identity, organized according to five major themes: people, symbols, place, sport, and words.

During a unit on density, pupils ponder whether or not temperature affects this property. By carefully inserting blue cold water and yellow hot water into a room-temperature sample, they will see the answer. Make sure to have done the...

Is the ocean blue at all depths? Nope! Explore the science behind the light spectrum in deep, dark waters. The lesson plan recommends watching The Blue Planet: Open Ocean—The Deep, but it's not integral, or you can substitute another...

Girls like pink and boys like blue. Working in small groups, learners discuss stereotypes about children in advertisements. Then, scholars create their own manifestos about how they plan to respond to the consumer market they see in...

What do modern voices sound like? Scholars explore the topic, reading two concrete poems from John Grandit's Blue Lipstick and analyzing them using a graphic organizer. Next, they read a third poem and work with partners to look for...

Introduce young learners to the read-aloud process with a short biographical passage about Ray Charles. After listening to the passage, class members respond to factual, inferential, and evaluative questions, and then create a timeline...

Here's a richly detailed unit, designed for second graders, that focuses on decoding figurative language, including similes, metaphors, personification and idioms.

An excellent activity that effectively pulls together the concepts of area, fractions, and equivalent fractions! Using 3x2 rectangular arrays, 3rd graders are introduced to the concept of area in terms of square units. Building on this...

Young engineers are instructed to design and build their own solar water heaters. Then, they calculate the efficiency and cost and compare them to commercially available models. This is a full unit for pupils to apply their knowledge.

Upper graders form a "Presidential Task Force," and attempt to make recommendations concerning the future of the national power grid. After a teacher-led discussion which proves that our nation's energy consumption will soon outpace our...

Does a public school have the right to restrict what t-shirts students wear? Discover what happened when this question was brought to the Supreme Court, and review other major cases in United States history involving judicial review....

Upcoming chemists use chemical reactions to determine relative pH in two different acids. This is a terrific lesson plan for middle schoolers that can stand alone as a practice in precision and lab skills, or as part of the unit on...

There's nothing negative about this mini-unit on integers! Engaging young mathematicians in a series of hands-on activities and collaborative learning opportunities, this resource offers an excellent way to introduce your class...

Introduce the topic of water conservation with a little drama. Dressed as snowflakes, hail stones, or rain drops class members dramatize the events in a narration of the water cycle. The series of lessons that follow focus on...

Now that your science class has experimented with pH indicator and identified acids and bases, they attempt to get the cabbage juice indicator back to its original color. This is done through neutralization of the acids and bases that...

Which sports drink provides the best pick-me-up after the big game or grueling workout? It may not be the one you'd think! Food science is the focus in a surprising lab activity. Pupils use colorimetry to determine the amount of protein,...

Young biologists discuss the reasons behind the current use of the plant identification system. They get into groups and identify the characteristics of each species of plant which is described. The keys needed for groups to make...