"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 plan allows children to invent their own...

Smart Solutions is the theme of a unit created to meet the needs of English language earners. Through a series of lessons, scholars follow a routine—move, speak, and listen— to cover topics including stores, shops, celebrations, pets,...

Support English language development with a family-themed unit consisting of a series of lessons designed to get your scholars moving, looking, speaking, writing, and listening. Conversation topics...

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...

Middle schoolers engage in a instructional activity which reminds them that root words indicate the base meaning of a word, and that those roots are found in many different words that have similar meanings. Pairs of pupils use...

A unit covering stories of Ancient Rome examines spelling rules, suffixes, verbs, quotation marks, writing, and dictionary skills. Lessons follow a similar routine; reading, skills practice, and extension activities, followed by...

Middle schoolers get hip to the jive with a lesson plan about slang. They closely examine examples of slang and use context clues to infer the meaning of the terms. Groups read and summarize an article about a teacher who created a Gen Z...

Having a hard time defining bullying with your seventh graders? Discuss the different types of behavior one would see in a bullying situation with a series of lessons, worksheets, and group activities.

The purpose of this first lesson in a series of five about enfranchisement and suffrage is to determine what class members already know, or think they know, about voting and voter registration. Groups...

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...

After a review of what suffixes are and how they are used, middle schoolers utilize a worksheet that is embedded in the plan to work in pairs to strengthen their understanding and skills in using these very important parts of our...

It is an out-of-body experience. Scholars take a look at the sidebars outside the body of the text in The Exterminator. They discuss the purpose of this type of text feature and work to determine the gist. Learners write unfamiliar...

The fourth in a five-lesson unit examining human rights and personal responsibility asks class groups to investigate a current rights issue, and using the provided graphic organizer, summarize the issue, consider which rights are being...

Two online lessons, one in math and one in language arts, are here for you. In them, learners play online games which reinforce important skills in literacy and numeracy. The thing I like about both of these lessons is that they get the...

How does fire keep itself going? Explore the ways that heat uses fuel and energy with a activity about the fire triangle and combustion. Several activities demonstrate how heat moves from warmer objects to cooler objects, as well as the...

Stanchion, spar, spinnaker. Right wing, sweeper, hip check. Every subject has specialized vocabulary. Here’s a fun way to introduce your learners to this jargon. Provide class groups with newspapers and have them search pre-selected...

A Reading Closely: Guiding Questions handout leads readers to discover the gist of The Omnivore’s Dilemma. While reading, pupils look closely at the words in the text and discuss their meaning. They use dictionaries when needed to answer...

Scholars demonstrate their knowledge of root words aqua and aud, and develop vocabulary skills by completing of a chart, handout, and worksheet using creative thinking skills, a dictionary, and a thesaurus.   

A phonics lesson focuses on morpheme structures—compound words. Pairs choose letter cards, identify a compound word that starts with that letter and write it on a whiteboard. Extension opportunities include additional practice pages.

Readers of Man's Search for Meaning use context clues, create stories using words from the text, and retype these stories as part of their vocabulary study of Viktor Frankl's book.

All sources are pretty much the same, right? If this is how your class views the sources they use for writing or research projects, present them with a media literacy instructional activity on smart source evaluation. Groups examine...

Explore the power of words with your class by analyzing the connotations of fictitious sports team names. Learners discuss team names and the mental images they convey. They create logos to illustrate the meanings and...

What is the relationship between two variables? Groups work together to gather data on arm spans and height. Using the interactive, learners plot the bivariate data, labeling the axes and the graph. The resource allows scholars to create...

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...