Class members consider how technology affects social interactions as they continue reading an article about the digital revolution and adolescent brain development. Then, working in pairs, scholars answer text-dependent questions and...

What is and what will be the role of newspapers in the future? Keeping this essential question in mind, class members use print, electronic, and/or web editions of newspapers, to investigate topics that include financial...

A reading of Brenda Z. Guiberson’s, Cactus Hotel, launches a study of animal habitats. Working with parent volunteers or teacher aides, groups travel outside the classroom to select a habitat, take digital pictures, and incorporate the...

Do you remember the days when a cup of coffee cost five cents? At A.W. Dennett restaurant in 1894, you could buy a five-cent cup of coffee and as well as a five-cent slice of pie to accompany it. The menu from that year is a primary...

A reading of Peggy Parish's Amelia Bedelia launches a study of idioms. Groups then select several idioms, write the meaning of the expressions, draw or select images, and use GIMP or Photoshop to create an idiom book. 

Not all technology is digital. Teach learners about the low-tech maker movement with a photo essay about six artisans from California and two articles about the local creator movement. After tackling the photo essay in small...

First graders identify text features and how they communicate meaning to the reader. For this media literacy instructional activity, learners view the movie The Lorax and discuss how students from another country would respond to this...

How can opinions slant facts? Workshop participants learn how to examine primary and secondary sources and identify the author's point of view. They also examine how visual art impacts the meaning and rhetoric of sources. Full of...

Following an online activity, scholars complete a Grafitti Wall in which small groups write words and phrases on chart paper pertaining to Pilgrims, the Mayflower, and Thanksgiving. Pupils perform a close reading then answer a series of...

Imagine drawing with zeros and ones. The third instructional activity in a unit of 15 introduces the class to creating black and white images. Pairs get together to create an encoding scheme in order to make these images. They...

With its focus on nature, individualism, imagination, and rejection of traditional authority, Romanticism has great appeal to young high schoolers. After examining classic paintings and poems as well as current works, class members...

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...

Scholars time each other as they work through a sheet of all 26 letters. They test each other to see how many letters sounds they can identify in one minute.

Eighth graders consider cross-curricular connections between social studies, singing, and current events. They listen to the song, "I Can't Cry Hard Enough." view scenes from September 11, then create presentations using images, a...