How is energy transferred within an ecosystem? What would happen to a food web if one of the organisms was removed? Elementary or middle school ecologists examine these questions and more in a comprehensive 5E learning cycle lesson....

Students work in groups of two to develop questions and sample answers that are relevant, accurate and use higher level of thinking skills about a literary unit. Students present their questions and answers to the class as a review of...

Readers respond to a series of questions focused onJuliet Marillier's young adult novel Wildwood Dancing, and crafted to reflect the levels in Bloom's Taxonomy.

In this multi-faceted introduction to pi, participants perform a bevy of pi-related activities. Ranging from measuring household items to singing pi songs and reading pi stories, this fun and non-intimidating resource serves to bring up...

Provide your class with this reading guide for chapter two of Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. They grapple with new vocabulary words like swamper, cesspool, and mollified before checking out literary terms and answering a list of questions...

As part of a study of Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, class members respond to, and craft, higher-level comprehension questions based on passages from the text. 

Students draw conclusions about historical changes in Boston by comparing and contrasting the features and details on Boston maps. In this Boston history and geography lesson, students view several sets of dated maps chronologically and...

This New York Times "Learning Network" exercise on reading informational text poses 6 questions about a high-interest article on teen fashion. The article meant to be review with is resource, "More than meets the iPhone Lens", is rather...

Check out a resource made up of two separate exercises. The first page lists a series of higher-level questions about "The Inn of Lost Time" by Lensey Namoika. Use the questions to encourage discussion or as an assessment. Since they...

Students listen to the story The True Story  of the Three Little Pigs and explore a variety of questions related to conflict resolution. In this trade book activity activity, students listen to the teacher ask a variety of higher...

Fourth in a set of several little lessons on density, this one compares the density of fresh and salt water. First by demonstration, and then by a hands-on activity, learners find that adding salt increases the density, as is evidenced...

Promote critical thinking and literary analysis with a short activity. Readers of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart respond to a series of questions modeled on Bloom's Taxonomy.    

Learners apply higher level thinking skills to determine rules for sorting and classification. In this pre-algebra lesson, students nominate classmates who they think satisfy the unspoken "rule" established by the leader. As learners are...

We can see the result of electricity  but not the process itself. The simulation compares electric circuits to a water tower and water wheel cycle. Young scientists adjust the height of the tower, the amount of resistance, and if...

There's only one way to multiply, right? Not when it comes to polynomials. Reach each individual by incorporating various representations to multiplying polynomials. This lesson approaches multiplying polynomials from all angles. Build...

What are some simple uses for an electromagnet? Scholars explore the electromagnetic circuitry in a doorbell through an interesting simulation. They control the core material, number of loops, amount of current, and strength in a spring....

What makes a poem difficult? Explore that topic and more with your class as you work through the lesson detailed here. Using materials from Poetry Out Loud, a national recitation contest, individuals or small groups examine poems and...

Students are introduced to the genre of detective fiction. Based on their reading level, they are given a different series of books to read. For each story, they are to make predictions and practice decoding messages. To end the...

Students have the opportunity to use higher-level thinking skills and to apply their talents to previously learned material. It provides an opportunity for visual, auditory, and tactile/kinetic learners to utilize their particular...

Foster critical thinking skills by using the DR-TA Strategy with Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal.” Class members read portions of the essay, stop and discuss what is happening, make predictions based on evidence from the text, and...

Do you have a lot of different reading levels in your class? Pair kids up by level and have them choose a book to read independently. They will make predictions, ask questions, make connections, etc. Consider creating a general reading...

Students write a poem from the perspective of the first-person persona. Through the words of the poem, demonstrate a higher level of thinking by providing insight to the personality of the poem's speaker, the "I" who is featured in the...

Knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation. Class members use Bloom's taxonomy to craft six levels of discussion questions for Chris Crowe's novel, Mississippi Trial, 1955. Model questions from Chapter 3, a...

Explore the measures of central tendency through a challenging task. Given values for the mean, median, mode, and range, collaborative groups create a set of data that would produce those values. They then critique other answers and...