Utilizing computer software, learners demonstrate the color spectrum. They investigate the life of the artist Piet Mondrian and define his style of artwork. Then they use Photoshop to recreate some of his designs while discovering the...

Develop an online newspaper covering the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The class publishes their newspaper on the school's Web site and analyze both primary and secondary sources.

Students investigate about the origins of some major U.S. brands. They explore local products that stimulate the economy. Students create a map showing where those products originate. Students discover the products that their local area...

Is your opinion significant? Help your class discover the influence their opinions hold and encourage them to make a positive change in their community. To start, they get in teams and brainstorm why their school should have more healthy...

Young academics create a current events journal by skimming newspapers for articles that fit defined guidelines for informational texts. After cutting out two articles each week to add to their journals, they write a brief description of...

Learners elucidate themselves by writing up to six entries in different formats. Some formatting choices include a dictionary, encyclopedia, or atlas entry, a magazine article, a newspaper article, and a table of contents. Some...

“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”  Readers of The Stranger rate Mersault’s moral development (or lack thereof) using Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development scale. Using...

Third graders practice dictionary skills. They use a digital camera and insert pictures from a floppy disk into a document. They play a game in which they are handed an anonymous definition of each other and must find each other in class.

Testing, testing! Following the provided script, class members are asked to create a radio commercial, complete with sound effects and background music.

Students explore the role of a police officer while investigating the Microsoft Word program. In this technocop lesson, students examine how to format  text using a computer program. Students follow detailed instructions...

Summer slide. Alas, not a term synonymous with a type of sliding board, summer slide refers to the fact that learning slips during summer break, especially in the areas of spelling and math facts. Enrich summer break with a...

Use picture cues as a tool in order to create meaning along with text. With a wordless comic, young illustrators discuss the main idea and character traits, and independently write a summary for a page of a wordless comic. This strategy...

A reading of Brenda Z. Guiberson’s, Cactus Hotel, launches a study of animal habitats. Working with parent volunteers or teacher aides, groups travel outside the classroom to select a habitat, take digital pictures, and incorporate the...

Students brainstorm all the possible scenarios that would help them tell a story in detail with the whole class and with partners. They create web outlines to create a name story and then illustrate it with creative grammar usage and...

Drama is ever-present in our daily lives and eloquently depicted on stage. Middle schoolers practice writing scenes based on different prompts and frameworks, and then perform those creative scenes for their classmates. The...

Similes and metaphors make writing more beautiful and detailed, but can be a little harder to decipher during a first reading. Use a passage from The Man Who Loved Words to show young readers how to think through passages that...

Use photographs to teach young special education or speech students how good speech looks, as well as sounds. Kindergarteners are photographed making the F, TH, W, R L, and S sounds. They then use the images to identify each sound that...

Students research the English Renaissance era. In this research instructional activity, students complete this activity before reading the story The Prince and the Pauper to learn about the history. They pick topics and work in...

Students discuss their favorite book. In this book discussion lesson, students name the title and tell what makes the book special. Students also review the setting, plot, conflict, and resolution. Students make a book that tells all of...

Explore cultures from around the world with an engaging pen pal resource. Through a series of classroom activities and written correspondence, children learn about the favoritec pastimes, schooling, geography, and weather that is...

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. 

You'll have oodles of Google Doodles. Scholars create their own Google logos using the Scratch coding program. After watching videos on how to add blocks of code in Scratch, they use their newfound knowledge to design a logo based on a...

Students observe how color creates the mood of a place, and generate sketches and drawings that capture their observations.

Free speech, privacy, and cyberbullying are the focus of a series of activities that prompt class members to engage in discussions about these interrelated topics. They view a segment from PBS’s series on bullying, read...