First graders identify and discuss different kinds of feelings and emotions. They take turns pulling a feeling out of a bag, and acting out their feeling while the other students guess the feeling. Students also complete a Feelings...

When Barak Obama was elected president, he was unable to affect change untill the official start date of January 20th. Learners examine this policy, America's need for change, and the duties of the president-elect in a political cartoon...

Are you planning to have a guest speaker talk to your class? Prepare in advance and help your class transform into an engaged and thoughtful audience. Before the visit, young writers work cooperatively to brainstorm what they want to...

Role, Audience, Format, and Topic are the four key elements of a RAFT assignment. In this single slide, seven RAFT options are provided for students to choose from, regarding an event that altered the person's (role) lifestyle during the...

Young learners love to pretend and role-play. Here is a lesson that allows them to do both. They get to pretend they are going to open and operate a restaurant. They set up menus, gather restaurant props, and role-play the jobs of...

What would your class do if a police officer arrested a student in class? This is exactly the anticipatory set that gets students engaged in a unit on the legal system. The plan is to get the officer to simulate an arrest, and then guest...

High schoolers use the internet to research and determine who their representative is. In groups, they discuss how the representatives set their priorities and identify the various roles they can play. They determine which role their own...

Fourth graders make change by participating in a role-play restaurant activity. In this making change lesson, 4th graders use their math skills to compare prices and compute bills in a role play restaurant activity.

Microsoft's Flight simulator is the focal point of this lesson plan. By participating in this activity, teenagers role-play what is necessary for piloting an airplane. They explore the concepts of flight. You will need to...

The use of role-play comes into play in a lesson on being safe when around traffic. Learners pretend they are walking on sidewalks and approach street corners that have a traffic light. They practice crossing the street only when the...

Bring to life the health risks of unsafe sex and drug use. Participants are involved in a simulation they don't understand until the end. One pupil is "in the know", secretly playing the role of being HIV-positive. Everyone else...

It's important for young people to learn about their ancestry and the role of storytelling as a means of passing along traditions, information, and lessons. Based on what they already learned about Native American oral tradition,...

Fourth graders investigate the bison's struggle for survival. They discuss the importance of bison while participating in an role playing activity showing how important the food supply and surroundings are to their survival.

Students examine cold, warm, and stationary fronts. They also examine the roles of relative humidity and the way air masses move. They are to create forecasts based on the information they collect. Tapes are shared with the class.

Students read about the life and work of John and Mary Jones. Using primary source documents, they draw conclusions about their role in the abolistionist movement. They also examine artifacts from their lives and analyze their portrait...

Students examine the role of John Jones and his fight to repeal the Black Laws of Illinois. Using the text of the law, they explore his reasoning for repealing the laws and the arguments he used to support his beliefs. They draw their...

Students examine the role of African-Americans in the Civil War. Using primary sources, they analyze the material and formulate their own opinions about the past. They write journal entries to share their opinions on photographs from the...

You might not be able to put a girdle around the earth in forty minutes but you can generate interest in A Midsummer’s Night Dream in that length of time. As an introduction to Shakespeare’s comedy, pairs of students assume the roles of...

Students role-play a scenario in which a car crash patient is inadvertently given the wrong blood type during a transfusion. They perform blood typing and explore the genetics behind ABO and RH blood types using simulated blood.

C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength provides the model for using dreams in narrative writing. After a discussion of the purpose of dreams in Lewis’s tale, class members craft a story in which their dreams play an essential role.

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...

Arranged into small groups, learners read a paragraph of the news story "Texas Kid Writes Book About Presidents." As one reads, others mark the text (underlining important information and writing notes in the margin of the story). After...

How did the world react to Austria's declaration of war? This activity, guided by the McDougall Littell text, World History, has historians examining the beginnings of WWI through cause and effect analysis. Groups reference the text as...

Read En mi familia and discuss families with your young Spanish learners. Who is in their family? What are the roles of each person there? Does one person generally cook? Youngsters learn the vocabulary for activities that people do in...