Introduce middle schoolers to playwriting and the elements of drama with a six-session storytelling unit that encourages kids to expand their acting and writing skills. The 12-page packet includes overviews of the lessons,...

Young learners listen to a read aloud of Gail Gibbons book, Apples and the story A Red House With No Windows and No Doors. They compare characteristics of a number of kinds of apples, graph them and create a apple print picture. Learners...

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.

Students investigate how rocket liftoff demonstrates Newton's Laws of Motion. They participate in a class discussion, and construct a rocket powered by the pressure generated from an antacid tablet reacting with water.

Investigate the water cycle and how water moves from the land to the air and back to the land. Create a terrarium and observe the water cycle at work. Define weather terms including evaporation, condensation, and precipitation.

Looking for an excellent lesson that incorporates math, science, and technology? Groups of three students use a viewing tube to perform an experiment, and discover how to organize their data into an Excel spreadsheet.  This is a...

Know how to use your tools before you can become a great creator! Here, learners experience their drawing tools using various degrees of pressure as they draw contour lines. This is a preparatory skills practice intended for use prior to...

Study the beauty of the landscape around you with an innovative art lesson. After discussing the foreground, background, and middle ground of landscape art, kids work on making their own piece of landscape art. The lesson provides...

Middle or high school volcanologists watch the 1997 film, Dante's Peak. They make observations as they watch and then write a movie review, focusing on what was accurately represented. They also point out what facts were stretched by...

Find photos of bird beaks or show a prepared four slide PowerPoint, "Extreme Beaks" to introduce your class to this special animal adaptation. Provide them with a data table and supplies to try gathering food with tools that each...

Throughout time, innovators have taken basic ideas and changed them into creative and cutting-edge designs. Kids tackle the topic of innovations in relation to traditional or creative objects. They discuss traditional Navajo pottery then...

After walking in a nearby neighborhood, have your class create this amazing city street pop-up. They study the facades of the buildings they see, focusing on geometric line, shape, and architecture. They then draw, cut, and create a city...

Middle schoolers conduct a hands-on experiment designed to demonstrate how continents and oceans formed and why the manner of formation is relevant to a study of volcanoes.

Learners study the effect of history on fictional or dramatic works of art by reading, Arthur Miller's, The Crucible. They examine the ties between a nation's history and culture with the literature it produces.

First graders explore wildlife and habitats in the Arizona desert. Throughout a classroom discussion, 1st graders observe pictures of the desert and animals that live there. As they go on a nature walk around the school, students...

Juvenile geologists drill clear plastic straws down into a playdough sedimentary rock model, pulling out sample rock cores. As they analyze their cores, they apply the law of superposition and discover that originally horizontal layers...

As an introductory activity to Mississippi Trial, 1955, class members use color-coded dots to respond anonymously to a series of statements about prejudice and responsibility to their fellow-man that are posted about the room. The...

Cover one-point perspective through observation and practice. Class members examine several works of art that use one-point perspective, look at magazine images to find the vanishing points and horizon lines, and draw their own city...

Examine American Indian art and culture by observing contemporary art and creating original pieces. Class members discuss artwork included in the plan and use these images to help inspire their own work, which should represent...

It's time to start journaling. Scholars look at examples of science field journals. They work in pairs to examine and complete a note catcher about a field journal. They then add to an anchor chart by discussing the different features...

Students construct a fault model using the Fault Model Sheet imbedded in this plan. They create a 3 dimensional model of the Earth, and use dashed lines to illustrate where the fault lies. A discussion of faults follows the completion of...

Although the worksheet for the lab activity is not included, this is an activating activity for your class to do when learning about the greenhouse effect. They lay three thermometers underneath a lamp: one out in the open, one under a...