Here's an interesting way to incorporate technology into your classroom. Have your young readers conduct an e-discussion of a story they are currently reading. Learners can post and/or respond to the comments of others reading the same...

Involve your readers in finding works of literary genius. Have each individual write down compelling sentences that they read or hear, whether in a newspaper, advertisement, book, movie, song, or any other place! Once each person has a...

What is a community? Explore the idea of community by investigating countries that have experienced severe damage. Learners discuss the horrible aftermath the 2011 earthquake had on Japan's infrastructure after the tsunami it caused....

Your class experiences dozens of messages about beauty every day by reading magazines, watching movies, and listening to the radio. Have them analyze society's view of beauty in groups after discussing several resources, including...

Many of your class members will have heard of Executive Order 9066 and the Japanese internment camps of World War II. Some may even recognize the terms “Issei” and “Nisei,” but few will have heard of Enemy Alien Hearing Boards, of the...

Get your class up and moving as they explore how to express movement and dance through words. Designed around two poems by Lillian Morrison about break dancing, the activity truly captures the creative and multi-sensory aspects of...

In this language arts instructional activity, 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...

Students see that artists make many different kinds of lines. They discuss how artists use line to show ideas such as motion, mood, or emphasis. They geet a "scribble" to transform into a picture using Colorific markers or erasable crayons.

We need the help of your history detectives! After giving them a set of questions to answer, reading groups must create their own timeline of the events. Then, as a class, have each group present their timelines. What is different? Why...

"I all alone beweep my outcast state." After a discussion of the "Shakespeare in American Life" segment in which Maya Angelou's relates her reaction to Sonnet 29, class groups create and perform a scene about an outcast that includes the...

If your class loves movies, this lesson is sure to interest them. After discussing the purpose and structure of movie reviews, young writers compose a movie review and discuss why people may read a review before they go see a film. The...

Young mathematicians investigate the use of symmetry in graphic design. After first learning about reflection, translational, and rotational symmetry, children use this new knowledge to identify symmetry in letters of the...

Do your language arts students love to draw? Use this instructional activity to reinforce poetic techniques with illustration. After drawing what they think poem would look like with no words, middle and high schoolers work on several...

Clever! Earth science learners construct a model of a planet containing a magnetic core. The planet, Terrabagga, is made out of a paper grocery bag, magnets, a dead D battery, and rubber bands. Pictures of each step of the construction...

Students create an advertisement promoting good behavior. This character-development lesson plan from Boys Town High School involves students studying the history of the Got Milk?advertising campaign. After a discussion of marketing...

Turn your classroom into a music studio as groups work together to determine why music sounds different when performed live versus a recording. After listening to some different music, each group picks a poem, creates a recording, and...

Working in groups, learners create a mnemonic device, give an oral presentation, and create a pictorial representation of the correct sequence of the planets and asteroid belt from the sun. An assessment rubric is included in the...

Students examine artwork by Keith Haring and discuss his drawing techniques and process. They write a group story as an interpretation of one of Keith Haring's drawings, and create their own posters.

Students develop their geography skills. In this Lewis and Clark instructional activity, students collaborate to calculate the time and distance of different segments of the expedition. Students compare their estimate to Lewis and Clark's.

Students consider the notion of beauty and what impact the media and popular culture have on it. In this cross curricular instructional activity, students examine print ads, write down and share their thoughts on them. Then students form...

Pupils create a safety poster in small groups after a discussion on playground safety issues. They concentrate on bike safety, skating safety and general playground safety. After sharing the posters with the class they role-play safety...

Get out the glue and those oil pastels its time for an art project. The class explores shape, art, and color as they draw fish with glue, let them dry, and then color them as they wish. This project would be wonderful after discussing...

High schoolers plot the earthquake epicenter data on the base map of the North Atlantic ocean floor using different symbols or colors to characterize different values.

Mitch Weiss and Martha Hamilton's Rooster's Night Out, a retelling of a classic Cuba folktale, launches a cross-curricular study of Cuban cultural traditions. Class members draw the characters from the book, participate in math and...