"The Hare and the Water," a Tanzanian folk tale, lends a global perspective to literary analysis. Learners spend the first two days reading and storyboarding. On day three, they examine folk tale elements (worksheet included), and design...

Pink and Say, a picture book by Patricia Polacco, and an anticipation guide, set the stage for a reading of Mississippi Trial, 1955, Chris Crowe's novel based on the true story of the murder of Emmett Till. Instructional routines, the...

Upper graders form a "Presidential Task Force," and attempt to make recommendations concerning the future of the national power grid. After a teacher-led discussion which proves that our nation's energy consumption will soon outpace our...

“There is nothing that becommeth a maid better than soberness, silence, shamefastness, and chastity, both of body & mind.” This line, from Thomas Bentley ‘s The Monument of Matrons published in 1582, typifies the way women were...

Social media and United States history combine as your young historians design a Facebook page for two major defendants of landmark Supreme Court cases. The resource includes a detailed rubric for research and page design, as well as a...

Encourage your class to consider a beautiful short film about a boy named Theo who happens to be visually impaired. Over the course of the lesson, pupils work in pairs, discuss their ideas and the film as a class, view the film,...

Study heat transfer with activities that focus on how heat energy works. Using a solar cooker, ice cubes, and heat transfer bracelets, kids experiment and record what they find by keeping ice cubes cold and vegetables hot.

Imagine using narrative essays to encourage change. This multi-week unit plan does just that. After reading a series of articles from Tyson Miller's Dream of a Nation: Inspiring Ideas for a Better America, class members examine the...

Middle schoolers aren't too young to feel strongly about politics, social issues, consumer rights, or environmental problems. Demonstrate the first steps toward social change with a project about action-oriented writing. Eighth...

Teach your class how to mentally solve whole number addition and subtraction problems using compensation from tidy numbers including equal additions. They use appropriate recording techniques and predict the usefulness of strategies for...

Pupils work in cooperative groups to explore communication needs of our world. They are assigned a demographic area and asked to create ways to solve communication problems with innovative ideas. They also explore areas that can help...

Provide pupils samples of different types of poems including haikus, narrative, nonsense, shape, and rhyming poems. In groups, class members read the poems, establish their general meaning, identify poetic devices, and rate the poems,...

The Nashua River serves as the focal point of an investigation of the treatment of and care for natural resources. A reading of A River Rand Wild: An Environmental History by Lynne Cherry, launches the study and class members consider...

Second graders identify homophones as words that sound alike but have different meanings. They, given a pair of homophones, are to explain the meanings of the words using gestures, role playing, or drawing a picture with their partner.

A great way to learn about molecular structures is to make a model. Gumdrops and toothpicks are used to construct crystal models. The models are based on theories of crystal shapes that occur because of positive and or negatively charged...

Choosing a poet or a theme, eighth graders conduct research in the world of poetry. They conduct Internet research and select five poems that fit their poet or theme, and create a seven slide PowerPoint presentation on their selected...

Eager ecology learners read about characteristics of the Lake Erie water snake and the round goby fish. They find that the goby is an invasive species, introduced to Lake Erie in 1990, and has since had an impact on the water snake...

Students consider the role of climate change in the occurrence of vector born diseases such as malaria. In small groups, they research a specific vector to complete an information chart on climate changes in the region where the vector...

Students discover that volcanic eruptions are geologic events that take place within the upper part and on the surface of the Earth's lithosphere. They explain how volcanoes are related to the Earth's lithosphere. They focus on the May...

In this state facts worksheet, students explore the state of Texas. Students complete ten multiple choice questions involving facts about Texas.

A world without adjectives would be a sad place indeed! Make sure adjectives stay around by teaching your class about what they are and how using them can make a boring story truly interesting. Learners put this idea into practice by...

Encourage critical thinking with a grammar exercise that focuses on adverbs and adverbial phrases. Kids read the first parts of 16 sentences, then decide which question to answer (how, how much, where, or when) based on the context, and...

Lost! (or misplaced) a modifier. Last seen dangling at the end of a sentence! Reward offered! To underscore the humor, class members are each given a sample sentence to illustrate (A woman passed by, leading a Springer Spaniel, in a...

Modeling population growth gives learners an opportunity to experiment with real data. Comparing the growth rates in this real-life task strengthens learners' understanding that exponential functions change by equal factors over equal...