Young environmentalists learn how to craft a persuasive essay about an environmental issue they consider important. After studying the components of a persuasive essay and examining a student model, writers brainstorm possible topics and...

A great resource for your unit on Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. Small groups conduct research about related topics (list included), write papers, present PowerPoint slide shows, and take a student-created test. Fill in a few...

Lesson 16 in the series of 28 is a mid-module assessment. Learners simplify expressions, write and solve equations, and write and solve inequalities. Most questions begin as word problems adding a critical thinking component to the...

Are you just about to teach persuasion in your class? If so, you should consider this short unit. In small groups, learners create a product, develop a magazine ad for the product, and pitch this product to the class using a visual...

First graders explore language arts by undergoing a writing assignment. In this descriptive writing lesson, 1st graders identify the skills necessary to write in depth about a subject which they must do based upon a specific topic....

Designed specifically for lower elementary pupils, this is a great biographical research project in which students research a famous American, and then design creative poster boards to help them "become" the famous...

Physics lab groups finagle with laser lights to determine the critical angle of refraction for both water and Lucite. Because there are no detailed steps or an answer key for this enlightening exercise, an inexperienced physics...

Assess pupil understanding of rational and irrational numbers with a mid-module assessment that is the 15th lesson in the 25-part series. The questions represent the objectives in the first half of the series. Topics include decimal...

Upper graders explore equality by writing an essay. They read the story Pink and Say by Patricia Polacco, and discuss the meaning of the story and its relevance to Civil War events. Learners investigate the five writing process steps and...

Challenge young scientists to design their own experimental procedures. They write the procedure for properly preparing two grams of a water-insoluble ionic salt. To finish, they perform the experiment and collect data to prove their...

Why didn't Rapunzel's hair stop growing?  Why did it take the fairy godmother so long to intervene in Cinderella's affairs? Young writers consider unanswered questions like these and compose news articles investigating the true...

Third graders are introduced to light in an eight part unit which includes activities, additional resources, and rubrics for each part. Students address topics such as energy, reflection, absorption, and refraction through hands-on...

Your learners combine their knowledge of real and imaginary numbers and matrices in an activity containing thirty lessons, two assessments (mid-module and end module), and their corresponding rubrics. Centered on complex numbers and...

Here is a good interdisciplinary project that combines creative and narrative writing with studies of the Holocaust. Your young historians will compose a diary of experiences from the perspective of an individual living during the time...

What a great list of brief research projects for reviewing the era of westward expansion in the United States! Learners are directed to choose and complete three of the projects on the given list, which includes opportunities to design...

Elementary learners explore language arts by completing a text identification activity. They discuss the importance of a main idea in a story or paper and how to present it properly. Then they practice identifying the main idea in sample...

A set of instructions and a 100-point grading rubric have been designed for writing lab reports. Appropriate for middle schoolers, this lays out what to include for each of the six steps in the scientific method: title, hypothesis,...

Planning an elementary science unit has never been simpler! These twelve lessons guide young scientists through an exploration of simple machines and their many uses in the real world before asking them to apply their learning...

During an inquiry-based instructional activity, scholars decide which variable to test and then design an experiment to determine the needs of producers. After two weeks, they complete a full analysis and research paper.

Students design circuits to power 3-9 volt devices such as CD players or flashlights. After measuring the voltage and current requirements for the item, they design a loaded voltage-divided circuit to power it. Students work in teams to...

Fourth graders explore the mass and length of peanuts by pretending to parent a peanut. In this mode, median and range lesson students graph their measurements and then use them to find the mode, median and range. Students discuss peanut...

Beginning botanists view slides of plant vascular tissue. They watch Magic School Bus Gets Planted, which you can find online, and then write a summary of what they have learned about plants. This lesson could be used with upper...

Explore the effect of outliers through an analysis of mean, median, and standard deviation. Your classes examine and compare these measures for two groups. They must make sense of a group that has a higher mean but lower median compared...

We all want to know what we're thinking. Scholars analyze and report data collected in a previous survey on peer attitudes toward current events. They calculate the mean, median, range, and standard deviation before creating histograms...