“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” Ambrose Bierce’s short story, is used to model how structural moves, the decisions an author makes about setting, point of view, time order, etc., can be examined to reveal an author’s purpose. Groups...

What? A long-lost poem from Robert Frost? Introduce your class to a poem recently found and published from Robert Frost's personal collection. The lesson includes background information on the author, the poem itself, and a list of...

Finding engaging ways to help your middle schoolers build their vocabulary is not easy to do. The lesson presented here offers a great way to motivate them to build vocabulary by making it into a game. Teams of pupils use a dictionary...

Leave no student behind with this differentiated geometry unit on perimeter and area. Over the course of five lessons, young mathematicians explore these foundational concepts through a series of self-selected hands-on activities and...

Imagine a project that informs and entertains. Replace book reports with a bulletin board that highlights all the important elements of a novel. Readers research the author, create a timeline of events in the story, write a...

A lesson looks at the Pilgrims and Wampanoag tribe during the first Thanksgiving. Scholars compare and contrast information presented by an online activity then discuss their findings. Learners examine the two group's daily routines and...

Do your young readers have difficulty visualizing what they read? Although the activity described here is for The Call of the Wild, the strategy could be used with any narrative. At the conclusion of each chapter of Jack London’s novel,...

Even though they may not be tested on standardized assessments, social skills are vital for students to develop during their years in school. Through a series of discussions, activities, and role-playing exercises,...

Nine questions make up a mixed practice worksheet. The word problems require scholars to show what they know about money, addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division using numbers up to 5,300.

Five questions make up a mixed practice learning exercise consisting of word problems that cover subtraction, multiplication, pounds, and distance.  

Second graders take a field trip to a nearby church or other historical building and examine it from a mathematical perspective. In groups, they calculate the seating capacity, describe the window patterns, differentiate types of...

A fast and fun way to practice shooting basketball. Small cooperative groups help each other tally up the most baskets made in a certain period of time. There are a couple ideas included to increase or decrease the difficulty of the...

Bruce Springsteen’s “My Hometown” and Billy Joel’s “Allentown” motivate young lyricists to craft poems about their own home town. Groups compare the two songs, identifying details, symbols, and conflicts. Individuals then picture a place...

Reinforce math the concepts of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, with a six problem worksheet. Each question is presented in word problem format that requires learners to perform operations of numbers up...

Five questions make up a mixed practice worksheet. Pupils use their skills in addition, subtraction, and multiplication to answer word problems consisting of numbers up to 130. 

Reinforce math concepts with a five question, mixed practice worksheet. Questions presented as word problems require scholars to show what they know about multiplication, division, money, and converting inches to feet.  

Sharing and cooperation are difficult skills for kindergartners to grasp. Using the story Stone Soup and a series of activities, kids learn about the benefits of working together, categorizing and comparing items, and eating...

A key challenge in teaching kids how to read informational text, particularly primary source documents, is finding suitable resources and then developing questions that guide readers. Never fear, help is here in the form of a series...

Reinforce math skills with a mixed practice worksheet. Five word problems cover addition, subtraction, and multiplication using numbers up to 1,300.  

The title says it all: Could King Kong exist? Investigate how increasing the dimensions of an object affects its surface area and volume to mathematically conclude whether a creature with the weight and height of King Kong could actually...

Your class experiences dozens of messages about beauty every day by reading magazines, watching movies, and listening to the radio. Have them analyze society's view of beauty in groups after discussing several resources, including...

Greed is the theme of this collection of multidisciplinary activities. As a class, read The West African folktale, Anansi Goes to Lunch by Bobby Norfolk, and take part in a grand discussion about it's plot and theme. Reinforce the...

Does carbon dioxide really affect temperatures across the world? This fifth installment in a six-part series investigates the relationship between carbon dioxide and global temperatures. Graphs created from genuine data help...