Here is an app version of a powerful tool that allows you and your students to have one place where you can capture, organize, and share items in multiple media formats.  The different uses for this app are as varied as your ideas...

The power of a picture. During the events surrounding World War I, propaganda posters were widely distributed in American society to sway the emotions of its citizens. By analyzing World War I propaganda posters in the first installment...

Teach your class about the Declaration of Independence while giving them practice working as a team. The resource breaks participants into groups and has them answer questions about specific grievances from the Declaration of...

How does recognizing the author's purpose help you draw conclusions about a topic? Using two articles (both are attached), learners brainstorm why each author wrote each article. Are their purposes similar or different? Learners use a...

Although the article that launches this lesson is about the history of the Periodic Table, the objective is reading comprehension. Using the eight-page informational text, learners answer five comprehension questions and craft one essay....

From large to small, show your class how to organize them all! Included within the guide is everything you need to take their knowledge of classification from the cellular to the species level. The worksheets focus on...

A carefully crafted three-day lesson integrates poetry and visual art. By analyzing and comparing Langston Hughes' poem "Mother and Son" and Romare Bearden's collage "The Dove," readers explore the theme of hope. The lesson activates...

Gather some information, print it onto sentence strips, and then have your class physically shuffle the cards to better understand the importance of organizational patterns in writing. Middle school learners examine information for a...

Use the Visual Thesaurus to predict the subject matter of Rick Riordan's book The Lightning Thief. A pre-reading activity encourages middle schoolers to use context clues and word meaning to discover what the book is about. After...

What caused the collapse of the environment on Rapa Nui (Easter Island)? Who constructed the Moai? What was their purpose? Class members assume the role of investigators and use evidence drawn from field studies, ships' logs, and...

They Call Me Güero: A Border Kid's Poems by David Bowles is the focus of a five-week language arts unit unit. Fifth graders listen to various poems and participate in thoughtful discussions, examining vocabulary and learning new words in...

Read The Quicksand Book by Tomie dePaola while taking notes about the story.  Perform a read-aloud, and work your way through the text with your youngsters. With this plan, learners also write about ideas from a previous day, and...

Are you looking for a way to teach sequence of events in your narrative writing unit? Bring this lesson to your middle school class, as it prompts young writers to create a narrative sequence map of events that have happened at school...

Young researchers use the Internet or books to find out about colonial women during the American Revolution. They organize information in a graphic to demonstrate their understanding of the research they gathered before writing a...

Imagine how the wolf would tell the tale of Little Red Riding Hood or The Three Little Pigs. Young writers re-imagine classic tales by adopting the point of view of another character in the story. After reading models like The True Story...

Students study questions and answers within a text to learn about writing structure and organization. For this writing structure lesson, students investigate books in class by asking questions for the text. Students then format their own...

Write what you know, sound advice for any writer and something many famous authors are known to have done. Use these materials to explore how Shakespeare's life influenced his plays. This resource is packed with readings, video segments,...

What a great project. Graphic arts students consider the social, political, and economic impact made by a chosen invention. They build an argument to substantiate their reasons for choosing said invention. They create an oral...

Bully, bullied, or bystander? Paul Langan's The Bully is the anchor text in a unit that examines bullying and violence. After a close reading of the text, readers imagine themselves as the characters and consider how they would react in...

Oral history has brought a multitude of lessons, stories, and factoids to our current knowledge of the past. Let us continue to use oral history traditions through a instructional activity that encourages pupils to discover and...

Research the lives of famous women in this social studies lesson. Middle schoolers use various sources to research a famous woman and create a presentation about the accomplishments of the woman. They can find the central idea throughout...

Middle schoolers read a poem and complete a TPCASTT chart. They make a prediction about the title (T) , paraphrase each line (P), identify poetic devices and nuances (C-connotation), explore mood and tone (A-attitude), point out shifts...

Middle schoolers effectively research using the internet, encylopedias, magazines and newspapers. They desegregate into needed and un-needed information based on their research findings. Pupils recognize and appropriately site sources...

Fourth graders investigate how outlining can aid in comprehending text. For this reading comprehension lesson, 4th graders outline an article they read in groups of two. Students take turns reading the article, identifying the main idea,...