Does the fastest one always win the race? Look deeper into The Tortoise and the Hare with a set of discussion questions for before, during, and after reading the story.

Learning is never-ending. Scholars learn about effective conclusions as they continue watching a video of an opinion speech. After analyzing the speech's conclusion, they work in small groups to write an ending for their own speeches. 

Many informational texts are written as factual, but can your learners determine when an opinion is presented as fact? Have your kids read several articles on the same topic and record the statements that contain either facts or...

Inferencing is a necessary reading skill to uncover non-explicit messages in text. Use the set of resources as a way to guide learners toward becoming expert inferrers through reading prompts and literature with text and without text.

Making inferences and drawing conclusions is a key component to successful active reading. Encourage your class to use context clues and prior knowledge to infer different elements of a story, including the setting, plot, and character...

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" serves as an exemplar for a mini-lesson on semicolons. Working alone or in small groups, class members first circle all the semicolons in the letter, and then consider how this...

Fish, fowl, foul fish, or foul fowl? Just what is a siren? Young scholars listen to a video clip and draw what they imagine when they hear the word "siren." After watching several videos depicting sirens, class members read "The Sirens'...

To better understand the migrant experience during the Great Depression, pupils analyze two primary resources: photographs by Dorothea Lange and a U.S. Map that shows the Dust Bowl. They compare and contrast Lange's images to Steinbeck's...

Turn readers into investigative journalists. The 11th and final lesson that accompanies The Twits by Roald Dahl asks the question "What happened to Mr. and Mrs. Twit?" The lesson uses mind maps and group discussion to help answer...

How does a nation turn into a global superpower? The 16th installment of the 22-part series on American history investigates the rise of the United States to global importance in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Groups...

Oral history has brought a multitude of lessons, stories, and factoids to our current knowledge of the past. Let us continue to use oral history traditions through a lesson that encourages pupils to discover and appreciate...

High school classes can use manipulatives too! Offer hands-on, interactive lessons that venture away from the typical day in your algebra class. Young mathematicians will be involved in collaborative learning, visual...

Scholars work in pairs to decide whether leaders wrote the Declaration of Independence for the rich and powerful or for every man. To draw their conclusion, pairs read excerpts from two historians and complete a graphic organizer...

Introduce literature circles with Roland Smith's novels. Your seventh graders will see the activity modeled as you read The Three Little Pigs together and apply the format to a Roland Smith novel of their choice. The lesson includes...

Double click that mouse because you just found an amazing lesson! This cross-curricular Ornithology lesson incorporates literature, writing, reading informational text, data collection, scientific inquiry, Internet research, art, and...

Get high school historians to step outside their own shoes by responding to JFK's inaugural address from the perspective of a civil rights activist, a soviet diplomat, or a Cuban exile. After a class discussion about the address,...

After viewing the documentary The Last Roundup, a documentary about the transitioning of Santa Rosa from a privately own island to a National Park, class members debate the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment that permits the...

You want your class to meet all of the Common Core standards, and here is one way to tackle the first speaking and listening standard. Given a theme to focus on from "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" by Leo Tolstoy, small groups come up...

Kids compare what printed text looks like with the naked eye and under magnification. They discuss the extremely small scale that must be used to measure the size. They learn about the micrometer unit, then draw scale models of a variety...

The conclusion of the American Revolution brought about a new conflict—choosing the stye of government for the newly formed United States. Using the views of both Federalists and Anti-Federalists, learners work in pairs and groups to...

What is poetry? Does hip-hop qualify as poetry? Do Shakespeare's monologues qualify as poetry? Class members grapple with these questions as they examine the poetic elements and themes presented in different texts. Groups of four study...

Class members explore cultural diversity through a variety of texts that showcase the importance of traditions. Then, they interview their family members to research their own cultural background and write their findings on quilt...

As part of a final discussion of The House on Mango Street, groups examine a concept question about the text, record arguments for and opposed to the question, and then a draw their own conclusions.

Learning to craft quality questions is a skill that can be taught. Class members use the Question Formulation Technique to learn how to create and refine both closed-ended and open-ended questions. They then view West of the West's...