Young scholars investigate new vocabulary words with a fun, collaborative activity. Given a deck of word cards, pairs of students flip over one at a time and independently look up the term in a dictionary. They then take turns rolling a...

Scholars work together to define words and answer questions using a dictionary cube.

Finding engaging ways to help your middle schoolers build their vocabulary is not easy to do. The lesson presented here offers a great way to motivate them to build vocabulary by making it into a game. Teams of pupils use a dictionary...

Here is lesson 5 from a 7 lesson unit on using blogging to create a community of writers. The aim of this lesson is to get students writing about what Archaeologists do and how they use material data to study the past. They compose a...

How can learners evaluate research sources for authority, accuracy, and credibility? By completing readings, discussions, and graphic organizers, scholars learn how to properly evaluate sources to find credible information. Additionally,...

Young readers learn how to get at the root of new vocabulary with this fun language arts activity. When working in pairs, children begin by matching unknown vocabulary words to their Greek or Latin roots. When all the vocabulary cards...

Teach budding mathematicians how to square a triangle with an interactive that shows a graphical proof of the Pythagorean Theorem. Pupils alter the lengths of the legs using sliders. Using the inputted lengths, the applet displays the...

Watch the damage from a forest fire in this interactive simulation activity that challenges learners to estimate the burn area using different approaches. Learners are given a worksheet to track the different burn patterns and practice...

After watching the documentary Dark Water about a traditional Chumash ceremony and reading a Chumash origin story, viewers are asked to create a coat of arms and to craft an essay that details a family tradition or their own origin story.

Convert a table to probabilities. Pupils set up the winning rules for the sums of two dice. Using the rules, the applet fills out a table showing the winners for each combination. Learners determine the probabilities of winning for each...

Adjust the overlap to compare probabilities. Using sliders, learners adjust the shape of two Gaussian curves. The interactive calculates the area of the left tail for one curve and the right tail for the other. Pupils set the interactive...

"Who says a pen has to be called a pen? Why not call it a frindle?" Inspired by this quote from the award-winning novel written by Andrew Celements, this lesson allows children to invent their own...

Here is a unit designed to support English language development. Scholars speak, move, and write to learn more about topics that focus on community and local concepts. The series of lessons aids to reinforce concepts...

What elements are needed to have a revolution? How do historical revolutions from across the globe and generations compare with one another? This is an excellent activity that incorporates group work, source analysis, and an engaging...

Grab some marbles from a bag. The applet simulates drawing marbles from a bag. Pupils determine the number of four colors of marbles in a bag and how many marbles to draw. Using information on whether order matters in the draw and if...

Primary sources are valuable for understanding the context of historical events, but the diction and dialect in these documents can be difficult to understand. Middle and high schoolers participation in a transcription process in which...

How good is the fit? Using an interactive, classmates create a scatter plot of bivariate data and fit their own lines of best fit. The applet allows pupils to display the regression line along with the correlation coefficient. As a final...

Slide the class into a skewed view. Learners alter the location of the median relative to the mean of a normal curve to create a skew distribution. They compare the curve to a histogram distribution with the same skewness. 

Oh, what fun! Young logophiles and neologists create a dictionary-sounding definition for imaginary words and try to fool their classmates.

While the lesson plan focuses on right triangles, this activity offers a great way to practice the area of all triangles through an interactive webpage. The activity begins with the class taking a square paper and cutting in in half; can...

Do you hear what I hear? Encourage scholars to use their listening skills and participate in a series of activities that demonstrate how the sense of hearing is crucial to the human and animal world. Activities guide learners...

Control the spread of a contagious disease. An applet allows pupils to run a simulation on the spread of a disease. Rules govern how the disease is spread and the length of time it takes to recover. Learners view the spread visually and...

Go round and round to compare theoretical and experimental probabilities. Learners set the number of sectors and the number of spins for a spinner. Then, a table displays the experimental and theoretical probabilities of the spinner for...

Here is a lesson which may be best suited for a library science teacher, or one that can be done by a regular teacher when in the library. In it, learners explore the best ways to use print and electronic resources to find information...