Teach your middle schoolers to use their ears to their highest potential! Pupils practice active listening skills and reflect on how careful listening might prove to be important in and out of the classroom.

A richly detailed, step-by-step plan is designed to help high school seniors create a postsecondary plan for pursuing their career goals. Using the template provided by the California Career Center website, individuals complete their...

Encourage your class to recognize the diversity in the beliefs and backgrounds of their peers. Learners use the acronym FRAME to consider culture, background, and life experiences.

Change is inevitable. Kindergarteners discuss coping skills to properly manage changes that can occur outside the family.  Scholars reflect on their life changes after starting kindergarten. They discuss their feelings and draw a...

Maintain or modify? That's the question scholars answer as they reflect on their focus and engagement in that day's lesson. Were learners focused and contributing, or do they need to modify their level of participation?

A lesson on taking notes challenges scholars to listen and write important information they can use later. Pupils begin with practice notes, write new notes with guidance, then test their note-taking skills independently. Peers share...

Many of us have multiple identities. There's who we are at home, school, friends, and strangers. And often these identities come with different names. The third activity in the First Days of School series examines how names reflect...

Learners examine health issues that are associated with our fast food culture, and the advertising of it. They begin with a snack-food survey to assess their own eating habits. Pupils are encouraged to think critically throughout the...

As part of their study of the Progressive Era, class groups examine a 20th century version of "The Three Little Pigs" through a New Era lens and identify how ideals such as the value of hard work, creativity, and problem solving,...

S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders is the anchor text in a unit that asks readers to reflect on their own identity, their place in their family, in groups with which they identify, and in school. 

An activity focused on tolerance encourages class members to consider how they might respond when they or someone else is the target of oppression and discrimination. After researching how some key figures responded to the...

Following an online activity, scholars listen to a read-aloud of If You Were at the First Thanksgiving by Anne Kamma. Pupils discuss their family traditions and complete a T-chart comparing the holiday then and now. Collages are made to...

Today, many young people find it hard to understand why it took over 150 years for women in the United  States to get the right to vote—why there was even a need for the suffrage movement. As they read a series of primary source...

A lesson challenges scholars to get organized. A thoughtful discussion sheds light on time management and the benefits of staying organized. Learners then reflect on their current time management skills, organize notebooks or...

In a lesson designed to prepare scholars for taking tests, they begin with a review of how to plan and review notes. They Identify ways to prepare for upcoming tests and strategies for studying and memorizing information. Class...

Scholars think of a special place, then represent that place through pictures or written words— a poem, song, or short story. Peers show off their organizational skills by reviewing their binders and notebooks, comparing strategies, and...

Developing engaging opening and closing class routines is essential in post-COVID, face-to-face classrooms. The 7th routine of 15 in the Building Community series invites participants to begin class by reflecting on a success (rose), a...

Masks, a pandemic, remote learning, and isolation; scholars reflect on the past school year and consider what positive things they would like to see continued in the current school year and what negative things they would like to...

The final lesson of a three-part series on Kate Chopin's The Awakening has scholars investigate life as a woman in late nineteenth-century America. They research the role of women in society through the eyes of the characters in the...

Some things remain the same, such as the world being on the brink of war, or college attendees writing home requesting money. As part of their research into events that led up to President Wilson's declaration of war on...

If called, would you go? Should the US government have the power to impose a draft during any war? The Selective Service Act of 1917 (aka the Conscription Act of 1917) authorized the drafting of men into the military for only the...

Effective researchers use a variety of techniques to find what they need online. Pupils who complete the activities listed here should already have an arsenal of strategies for searching. They will learn about and practice two new...

Explore contemporary American Indian art. After viewing a set of images, class members discuss the design elements of techniques present, as well as how these artists represent history and culture. Learners examine the parfleche and...

Planning on using primary source materials? Introduce your class members to SOAPS, a worksheet that models how to analyze and reflect on primary source materials. Readers name the document, identify the subject (S), the...