Use this 5-day lesson to clarify the platforms of the two major parties, comparing and contrasting against students' beliefs. Begin by looking at unlabeled summaries of both party platforms, having learners identify most with one. Groups...

Create classroom community with this Bingo icebreaker, which has the group finding out interesting details about one another. For this version, individuals have a 25-square grid, each square containing one multicultural experience or...

A fun (and delicious!) lesson teaches measurement to your third graders. They work in small groups to first predict, then to measure the weight, circumference, and number of seeds found in a watermelon. Everyone gets to eat watermelon...

This lab activity does not have to be done with AP environmental scientists. It can also be done with middle to high school earth scientists. The procedures aren't complex. Learners determine the density of dry and wet sand in order to...

Looking for a powerful reading comprehension method? Try visualization! Learners use this strategy to increase comprehension of a chapter book selected by the teacher. As an assessment, individuals or small groups draw pictures of the...

Most middle schoolers probably feel that quilting is at best an activity left to their grandmothers. This lesson uses the Zome modeling system to get them to realize how shapes in quilting are really tessellations and repeating patterns....

Fifth graders creat a brochure about a specific author in which they are familiar with. They research information about the author using the Internet and other research sources. They create the brochure on the computer with a small group.

Let the resource stretch the minds of your young scientists with a lesson about tensile strength and stiffness of materials. Groups consider how easily materials stretch and relate this property to engineering design.

Students use their bodies to make assigned shape or letter. They click an icon from hyper studio template and cooperate with others from group to use their bodies to make the assigned shape or letter.

Students differentiate the differences of living on a farm or in a city. They do this with the use of coloring pictures and have group discussion about each picture to identify characteristics and identify where the picture is from. The...

Students explore resource management, specifically farming. After reviewing vocabulary words, groups of students explore what is conserved by each practice. They compare and contrast responses. Students describe farming procedures which...

Fourth graders identify bills and coins to $20 bills and make equivalencies. They organize bills and coins in groups from greatest to least and least to greatest. Students count out change.

Students examine information on a particular state or province. Groups of students use the internet to locate facts about an assigned state. They research information such as capital, state song, and major crops. students report their...

Students work in small groups to explore spatial relationships while building with color cubes. Students must identify positions of blocks to partner, recreate a model, and color a sketch of their structure appropriately.

Seventh graders break down the barriers in reading, speaking, listening, writing and understanding poetry. As a whole group, they establish their own criteria for line breaks by discussing questions and taking notes on a PowerPoint...

Students discuss how groundwater becomes polluted. In groups, they design and create models of groundwater pollution sources. They demonstrate to the class how the water may become contaminated from local and nonlocal pollution sources.

An internet investigation leads learners to discover whether or not weather and light house location are related to the locations of shipwrecks on The Great Lakes. They work in cooperative groups to plot the locations of light houses and...

As background for a reading of S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, groups rotate through four stations (video, music, website, information) to gather information on the 1960s. In addition, they interview family members about the 1960s and...

Students make a box and whiskers plot using the TI-73 graphing calculator. Each student would have their own calculator but they would work in small groups of two or three to help each other enter the data and make the plots.

Students design and create a garden. They select flowers in small groups and research them. They draw a diagram of the landscape for their garden and plant flowers and observe them as they grow.

Fifth graders use an Excel spreadsheet to show them how to enter the amount of pennies they bring each week to school for a fundraising project. They count their pennies each Friday and enter the total amount in the correct columns. In...

What's the difference between an accent and a dialect? Examine the difference between the two with your scholars. In groups, they compile a dialect dictionary. They interview adults to gather information about accents and ethnic words....

Review and restate the law of supply. In groups, learner practice reading a supply schedule and supply curve. They explain how and why changes in the cost of production change supply, then work together to complete practice problems to...

Middle schoolers have years of experience when it comes to how their bodies work. Surely they have some questions as well. Here is an opportunity for them to practice the scientific method in an attempt to answer some of those questions....