Which option would most children choose: One marshmallow now, or two marshmallows in 10 minutes? Learners watch the social experiment on video and discuss their observations. They then read articles and work in small groups to analyze...

Students explore their experiences and reflect on how one person can make a difference in our world. In this service learning lesson, students analyze themes in music related to encouragement. Students perform a service learning project...

Do research projects at your school look like a class of eighth graders staring at a blank screen? Use the Big 6 research method to guide middle schoolers through the process of finding a topic, searching for and evaluating sources,...

Get to know your students with this project. Each individual writes an autobiography that is at least seven pages long with major facts, visual facts, focal stories, and chronology. The lesson includes a point breakdown for the...

Need an extra challenge for your best readers? Check out a unit that uses Hannah Webster Foster’s epistolary novel, The Coquette, published in 1797, as the anchor text. The resource is packed with project ideas; each with its...

Use a series of extension activities to enhance your class reading of Chris Van Allsburg's holiday classic, The Polar Express. From a biography of the author to filmed book reviews and research about the railroad, kids can take...

The Blue Man Group, three bald performance artists painted blue, offer lessons designed to engage, intrigue, and excite the imaginations of all ages of learners. Groups craft a trickster tale, invent melodious mathematical instruments,...

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,...

Fourth graders work in small groups to become experts on different colonial trades in the eighth instructional activity of this unit. Working toward the long-term goal of writing a piece of historical fiction, young scholars read...

The twelfth instructional activity of this unit builds on the skills developed in the previous instructional activity, as fourth graders continue their quest to become experts on colonial trade by listening to interviews with historical...

Voices from the past. Young scholars listen to a podcast interview with a historical re-enactor as they continue their research in the eleventh instructional activity of this unit on colonial trade. Applying their close reading skills,...

What important facts about Dr. Seuss influenced the Read Across America movement...? This is the driving question of a research project that requires scholars to find information about Dr. Seuss' life and work. Class...

Bring digital storytelling to your language arts class! To begin, learners select their own topic, such as a poem that reflects a life experience they had or a historical figure who interests them. Then they work to create a storyboard...

Rather than waiting for the world to change, encourage your class members to become agents of change with a project that asks groups to select an issue found in Tyson Miller's Dream of a Nation: Inspiring Ideas for a Better America....

Students analyze the attitudes, ideas and beliefs of characteristics that assist humans in living a positive, proactive life that values self, family, community, nation and world. Students identify their own strengths as individual....

Designed to be used with a showing of the 1951 version of The Red Badge of Courage staring Audie Murphy, this learning guide includes discussion questions, suggestions for activities, and topics that can be discussed with parents.

This online resource is composed of a writing sample about teacher appreciation and a writing prompt for learners. You could use this as an in-class journal activity or you could have class members post their responses on the New...

Students collect information about themselves and their favorite things. Each month they add information in the form of reflections demonstrating growth in self esteem and self evaluation. At the end of the sachool year, students...

Learners explore the concept of philanthropic heroes. In this everyday heroes lesson, students compare and contrast media and famous heroes with everyday heroes. Learners discuss heroes in small groups and then come together in large...

Guide your readers to explore character traits. As a class, discuss and record the traits of a commonly-known fairy tale character. Then do the same with the main character in the class novel. Finally, have learners use magazines...

Students take home an Australian Teddy Bear home and draw pictures, photograph, write or verbalize stories of what the bear did at their home. They make a book that is sent to their partner class.

Seventh graders identify the parts of a friendly letter and write a letter to themselves as a part of a time capsule. In this letter writing lesson, 7th graders identify the five parts of a letter and write a friendly letter to...

Critically analyze advertising techniques, such as circular reasoning, bandwagon, testimonial, and repetition, with worksheets that effectively discuss and illustrate how the media aims to influence.