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...

Invite your class to investigate racism and civil rights by analyzing the great Dr. Martin Luther King's speech. Your learners will read the words from the "I Have a Dream" speech and analyze the political and racial overtones. They will...

Third graders practice dictionary skills. They use a digital camera and insert pictures from a floppy disk into a document. They play a game in which they are handed an anonymous definition of each other and must find each other in class.

An Online NewsHour article about scholarly ethics launches this study of plagiarism. Since historians are supposed to bring original ideas and perspectives to their publications, they must give credit to the ideas of others. After a...

Students explore economics by creating a budget. In this financial goal setting activity, students investigate their use of time by completing a worksheet. Students identify financial goals they would like to achieve in the next several...

Second graders create a reading, vocabulary,picture dictionary on the computer. They participate in becoming familiar with some basic capabilities of a word processor. They build vocabulary, spelling, and dictionary skills, reinforce...

Who named the shapes, or the days of the week? Should words be removed from the dictionary if they're no longer commonly used? Are there too many words in the English language? Language arts students explore these and additional...

Students create dictionary of terms for citizens of a democracy, using events and biographies from both their state's history and U.S. history.

"Why do we have to learn a foreign language?" Have you ever heard that question before? Give your novices this project, and have them research different jobs that require the use of a foreign language. They create a PowerPoint...

In this language activity, scholars use Greek root meanings to determine the meaning of words. After being shown how Greek roots are used in many words, such as, photosynthesis, pairs are given two excellent black line masters...

Students study life cycles including developing their understanding of the human life cycle. They decide where they are in the human life cycle and provide reasons for that placement. They compare the human life cycle to that of the...

Third graders express and interpret information and ideas. They identify a variety of feelings and their effect on people. They explain how someone's actions can cause someone else to have a specific feeling.

Students practice looking up the definitions of words using a dictionary. They put the defintion of the word into their own words. They create a PowerPoint slideshow to show illustrations related to their vocabulary words. Using the...

Students create picture dictionaries to encourage the development of letter-sound recognition. In this alphabet project, students cut out pictures from magazines and glue them onto tagboard, and then write the name of the picture below...

Third graders make a picture money book. In this money lesson, 3rd graders read The Monster Money Book, discuss money terminology, watch a video on money and draw an example of the barter system. Students use the Internet to find...

After going over the five steps of the writing process, pupils fill out "Getting to Know You" worksheets. They trade papers with each other, and have the task of writing a descriptive paragraph about the person whose worksheet they...

Students explore healthy foods and dictionary organization. Students create a list of healthy foods. They construct their own food dictionary, with illustrations. Students model how a dictionary page should be filled with a picture,...

In this language arts lesson plan, 8th graders verify the meaning of a word in its context, even when its meaning is not directly stated. After a class discussion on how to use context clues, students pairs are given a worksheet of...

Students explore ways in which they are smart. In this "getting to know you" classroom team building lesson, students discuss various ways people can be smart and describe ways in which they are smart. Students listen to "Smart" from...

High schoolers identify differences between jobs and careers, and identify career areas within the broad field of oceanography. They research, compare and contrast requirements needed to become a practitioner of various oceanographic...

Students write letters, create models, create a photo display, and make charts about the rules that a state has. In this rules lesson plan, students learn about and make different displays of how states come up with rules, change them,...

Third graders examine the concept of alphabetizing. They develop a class dictionary, creating definitions of themselves, and typing in their names, pronunciation, and the definitions, and inserting their picture into their document.

If you could travel anywhere in the United States, where would you go? Use this question to interest your fourth, fifth, and sixth graders as they experiment with Mapquest or other direction-based resources. They choose where they'd like...

Third graders create a class A to Z Feelings book to explore emotions, discover new words, pose for a "feeling" icture, and write about the feeling.