Connect art to social issues with a extended inquiry project. Individuals or small groups select a social issue and a type of art to explore. They complete a KWL chart for both the social issue and the art strand and take time to create...

Here is a packet of lessons which are designed to help you to foster your pupils' creativity. The lessons are designed to develop their fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration on ideas. The are built around field trips to a...

Elementary schoolers learn about young John F. Kennedy. After a teacher-led discussion about his high school years, pupils examine a photograph of Kennedy and four of his friends taken on the grounds of the Choate School in Connecticut....

Explore narrative writing by participating in a role-playing activity. In this perspective activity, learners define first and third person in writing and discuss how it changes the mood of the reader. The first activity has pupils write...

Students practice mirroring human moves by performing a dance in class.  In this physical education lesson, students utilize different spaces around them to perform a dance expressing their full motion.  Students cooperate in...

Here's a fresh approach that combines research, business and personal letter writing, and creative story telling. Student groups research different decades in the life of a famous Japanese astronomer. They then craft a decade fact sheet,...

Explore gender stereotypes by analyzing how male and female characters are depicted in comic books. Using the provided Comic Book Analysis sheet, students record the attributes of male and female comic book characters. Then the whole...

Let's make colors! Your class will participate in a creative art project that introduces them to the concept of color blending and allows them to discover color combinations through exploration, trail, and error. First, the teacher will...

Students take a field trip to an art gallery reflecting on the paintings they like the most. Individually, they use magazines to find pictures related to their personality. In pairs, they make a mask to represent their ethnic group and...

What a great activity. Kids create humorous ceramic character (heads) spikes to enliven a planter. Modern art is full of expressive and exaggerated forms and your class gets to create them out of clay. This would be a lovely activity to...

Young scholars study water conservation. In this water conservation lesson, students investigate the scarcity of water and determine reasons for conserving water.  Young scholars estimate how much water they use in one day and...

Discover Impressionist painting as students investigate the 19th century combinations of colors characteristically used. Students experiment with their own paintings, utilizing primary and secondary colors.

Young scholars investigate drawings of couples. For this art history lesson plan, students examine the techniques artists use to convey emotions such as caring, love, and togetherness. Young scholars utilize these techniques to create...

Using geoboards, computer programs, and hands-on manipulative materials, elementary schoolers engage in a study of two and three-dimensional geometric shapes. This lesson is chock full of good teaching ideas on the subject, and the...

The Boston Massacre may be an iconic event in American history, but perhaps the British soldiers had another point of view. Using primary sources, including reports from Boston newspapers and secondary sources from the British...

Students in a Spanish class are introduced to the techniques of creative writing. In groups, they focus on the pre-writing section of creative writing and keep a folder of their works throughout the instructional activity. They end the...

Students inspect visual arts by exploring images on-line. In this art analysis lesson, students discuss the history of art and the its ability to communicate with people through images. Students utilize pencils and charcoal to create...

Children of all ages examine original art in an art gallery. They view art at an art gallery, then view reproductions, and compare and contrast the two works of art.

What is a ‘Zine? Although the referenced PBS video that launches this study of self-published magazines is not available, the activities detailed and the step-by-step directions for creating ‘Zines would engage young writers. This...

Students study the use of trees in art.  In this investigative instructional activity students create art using leaf rubbings and develop a classification method for trees. 

Turtles are the stars of the show in a creative lesson plan designed for very young learners. In it, learners are shown pictures of real turtles. They discuss the shell and the head, then they compare them to other animals. Pupils are...

An excellent series of five lessons on China awaits you and your young geographers. In these lessons, learners engage in hands-on activities, watch streamed video, access websites, and complete activities in cooperative groups in order...

Students examine "masterpieces" and mass-produced objects as they discuss humankind's inventiveness and creativity. They also analyze the role of problem solving in the creation of masterpieces and mass-produced items.

This writing pre-assessment has minimal instruction but maximum support and encouragement. It begins with a review of the book, Rain School, through a think-pair-share and small group discussion. The discussion...