Louisa May Alcott's Little Women is a literary masterpiece as well as a timestamp of the formative mid-nineteenth century in America. Using a primary source set of photographs, letters, and portraits, readers discuss the ways...

Ease into informational text with the lesson suggested here. Part of a unit series, the lesson draws from previous lessons and acts as a natural moment to add in informational text. Class members read one section of My Librarian is a...

Learners read a book and observe the wind and how it affects the environment. They explore what wind does by looking at pictures, reading a book, and by completing an experiment. They will use their own knowledge of the wind and compare...

Here is a nice set of activities and discussion questions to accompany your class reading of No Pretty Pictures, a memoir of a young girl's experiences and struggle for survival during the Holocaust.

Show your class how to read a map and decipher all of the markings and features. Start out by connecting maps to their homework from the night before and their current reading, in this case That Book Woman, and a related informational...

In lab groups, young scientists place aluminum cans with a bubble-solution cap into different temperatures of water to see what size of bubble dome forms. As part of an atmosphere unit in preparation for learning about convection...

In class, your emerging environmentalists construct dust catchers. They take them home for a week or two, and then bring them back into class to examine under a magnifier. From this activity, they learn what makes up dust and that...

Get things cooking with the first lesson in this series on the science of food. Working in small groups, young scientists make and record observations about different mystery foods. These descriptions are then shared with the class and...

What better way to learn about plant life than by creating a class garden? Young botanists start with a brief discussion about radishes before planting seeds and watching them grow. To determine the importance of water,...

As a demonstration or as a hands-on activity, your class watches as the combination of vinegar and baking soda produce carbon dioxide gas. The intent of the lesson is to help youngsters understand that gases occupy space. It is included...

Turn your classroom into a greenhouse with a lesson on plant growth. First, investigate the different parts of seeds, identifying the seed coat, cotyledon, and embryo. Then plant the seeds and watch them grow! Measure the new plants...

Totally gross out your class with the eighth lesson in this series on food science. Explore the microscopic world of bacteria by taking swabs of different classroom objects and growing colonies in petri dishes. An engaging activity that...

How does gravity affect the life cycle of a butterfly? Learn first-hand what types of investigations astronauts perform in space by following along with one of NASA's experiments. Create butterfly habitats in the classroom with specific...

The classroom becomes a safe and inclusive place for your ELLs as they create documents about their lives. Learners create, read, and present story books based on their own personal experiences. They use digital cameras to take...

Students, in groups, identify examples of shapes around the school site. They take digital pictures of these shapes and use them to construct a class book.

Students examine the emotions behind different facial expressions. They explain how it feels when someone smiles at them and practice smiling and speaking to someone with eye contact. They also demonstrate the characteristics of active...

High schoolers design and build full-size boats made out of two-liter plastic bottles, chicken wire, and plywood. Then they race the boats, with the boat's designers "manning the hull", in the school's swimming pool.

Explore various ecosystems from around the world as your class discovers the interdependence of all living things. Using the provided sets of ecosystem cards, young scientists work in small groups building food webs to demonstrate the...

Mickey Mouse, Elmo, and Tintin? Belgian cartoonist Georges (Herge) Remi’s famous comic character launches a study of primary and secondary source material and the impact these sources have on storytelling. Class members also examine the...

Uncover the science behind the beautiful phenomena of rainbows with a simple demonstration. Shine light through different-sized containers of water as young scientists learn that rainbows occur when visible light is split up into its...

Using a simple circuit with the battery representing the brain, future physiologists test to see which solutions conduct electrical "nerve impulses." Enlighten learners with plentiful information on electric signals in the nervous system...

Using paper chromatography, water watchers discover that several substances might be dissolved even though they aren't visible. In this case, you will prepare a mixture of three different food colorings for them to experiment with. A...

Ecology candidates culture pond water organisms over a few days time, then they experiment to find out how increasing nutrients affects the population. As part of a unit on water, this exploration gives your class an understanding of how...

Learners explore variety of plants & cacti in their Arizona community by collecting samples and taking photographs. Can be adapted to other areas.