Young scholars practice cooperation by working together for a common cause. After a short demonstration, learners fill in a T-Chart describing how cooperation looks and sounds. Small groups work together to pick up tiny beads and put...

Challenge games and cooperative games are in abundance. This is the lesson plans home page  for a wide range of challenge games that promote teamwork, cooperation, trust and communication. There are many links included in this page...

Three activities can foster communication in your class. The first activity must be done non-verbally. The second takes a bit of team work, planning, and cooperation. Finally, the third activity is built around listening and trust. Get...

Taking a day off of school can feel like a lot more work than going because of the time and effort that goes into making sub plans. Make your life easier with a daily plan for a guest teacher designed to meet the needs of sixth...

Ensure that your kids don't even consider saying "Not me!" when it comes time to read by engaging them in this set of lesson plans based around "The Little Red Hen." The class reads the story together before starting in on additional...

Welcome to the Great Marshmallow Challenge. To conclude a unit study designed to help scholars develop teamwork and collaboration skills, groups are charged with developing a free-standing structure using only one marshmallow,...

Links to two different versions of this mapping activity are available. In "The Small Version," youngsters design a town, keeping the water supply in mind. In "The Large Version," they also design a town, but they consider services and...

What is an emergency, and how can having a plan help make emergency situations safer? Pupils are tasked with creating a short presentation that can help teach younger children about emergencies, community helpers, and first...

Celebrate the whimsical world of Dr. Seuss with a lesson plan that features the memorable tale of The Lorax. After listening to a riveting read-aloud, scholars take part in a grand conversation about the story and environment....

Most of us have heard of Rosa Parks, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and Martin Luther King, Jr. But what about Claudette Colvin, Virginia Durr, Freedom Summer, or the Birmingham Children's Crusade? A five-lesson unit prompts class...

New roads, new businesses, new developments, new mass transit systems. All growth has both positive and negative effects on communities. Government classes investigate the principles of Maryland's 1997 Smart Growth program and...

Fourth graders participate in a variety of activities designed to promote cooperation and positive conflict resolution. In cooperative groups, they create a comic strip or poster, play cooperative musical chairs, write a journal entry...

The second lesson of a pair about Paul Laurence Dunbar, this plan focuses in particular on his poem, "We Wear the Masks." After a short historical introduction, class members conduct a series or readings, marking up the text and...

A game of Cooperation Tag and a Rock, Paper, Scissors Champion Challenge plays to the positive impact of good sporting behavior on one's social-emotional development. Scholars participate in these games with their peers then thoroughly...

Grand Canyon II is an advanced level game for a Ropes Course. It challenges a group of learners to swing on a rope from Cliff One to Cliff Two, without touching the ground. There are penalties for touching the ground. This...

Does Bud use his rules to survive or thrive? That is the driving question of a lesson plan following the reading of Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis. In an argument essay prewriting activity, pupils use textual evidence to...

What was everyday life like in Colonial Virginia? To find the answer cooperative groups work collaboratively to read an informational handout and complete a graphic organizer. The speaker of the group then shares their new-found...

Scholars ponder the beliefs of Confucianism. After reading several sayings made by Confucius, participants complete a chart filling in what each saying means using their own words. Using the same quotes split in half, pairs match...

After completing three body paragraphs of an argument essay about life's rules to live by from Bud, Not Buddy Christopher Paul Curtis, it's time to begin writing the introduction and conclusion. Independently, pupils draft the final two...

As part of their examination of forest ecosystems, class members examine how foresters, biologists, botanists, geologists, and hydrologists work to together to develop a management plan for sustainable forests.

Can two lines intersect at more than one point? Using yarn, create two lines on the floor of the classroom to find out. Cooperative groups work through the process of solving systems of equations using task cards and three different...

“. . . one of the great challenges to humanity is acknowledging and overcoming a natural tendency to think less of and discriminate against people who are different from us . . .” Launch an examination of competition and cooperation, of...

Follow up a reading of The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me by Roald Dahl with this collaborative lesson on teamwork. Starting with a fun team game, learners go on to investigate examples of teamwork in the story before...

Skywriters is an introductory challenge games from ropes course material. It focuses on communnication, team cooperation, trust, and problem solving. There is a link to several more challenge games.