Individuals select a plant, illustrate it in their journal, record observations, and create a life story for their plant that accounts for its features and any unique properties. Using these descriptions, a partner attempts to locate...

Designed for middle school scholars, a instructional activity explores the life of Jeremiah Handley, a young man when the Civil War broke out. Pupils read Handley's personal story, accounts of battles, and view images to understand what...

Historical accounts of various events have proven to differ depending on the point of view of the person documenting the event. Learners read and analyze two first person accounts of acts of slave resistance seen at a southern...

How did Native Americans react to the arrival of the Lewis and Clark expedition? Here, learners review excerpts of journal entries that chronicle the arrival of the Corps of Discovery to the Shoshone and Blackfeet tribes. Your young...

Discover colonies! Young historians will listen to a primary source journal entry read aloud with a backdrop of wave sounds. They discuss the entry, add historical facts to a chart and personal insights to another. Then they listen to...

What a great resource to share! Based on the book Lost Names by Richard Kim, this valuable lesson plan focuses on the Japanese occupation of Korea during WWII. Additionally, it employs first-person journaling as a mode of understanding...

Look critically at the slave laws instated in Colonial New York. Your class examines primary source documents, slave laws, a narrative account from a slave's perspective, and Slave Codes. They write diary or journal entries in response...

Napoleon Bonaparte once said, "What is history but a fable agreed upon?" A series of lessons encourages learners to look beyond the basic fable agreed upon related to events in history and consider multiple accounts of the event....

Although the lesson is specifically about the San Francisco Bay area, it's good enough to be adapted to any local region. Children research what the landscape in San Francisco was like prior to settlement, they consider the types of...

Scholars watch videos, study an animated map, and read a firsthand written account to explore the impact of the Battle of Franklin during the Civil War. Academics analyze images, complete worksheets, and create journal entries to...

Fourth graders focus on fluency by reading the book Charlotte's Web. In this reading strategies lesson, 4th graders partner read, do guided reading, and independent reading to increase fluency. Students use Venn Diagrams, discuss...

Young scholars read a first person account of the bombing of Hiroshima written by a Japanese physician. By reading Michihiko Hachiya's journal, they discover the fatalities caused by the bomb itself and later by radiation poisoning. To...

Students complete activities for the autobiography of Maya Angelou. In this autobiography lesson, students write a journal entry about their life and discuss the morphology of the word autobiography. Students use active reading...

Key to social-emotional learning is understanding who we are. The first instructional activity in an Understanding Identity unit asks class members to consider the factors that shape one's concept of themselves, the parts of their...

Young scholars study term deposits and the attributes of long and short-term savings. They examine their spending habits while looking at how different types of accounts meet different economic goals. They complete worksheets that are...

Class groups investigate the economic and political implications of a country's policies on genetically modified foods, craft a position paper detailing that policy, and share their findings with the class. Armed with this...

Get your young writers outside of the traditional essay writing mode with Free Write Friday. Free Write Friday encourages your class to use personal experiences or knowledge to write more creative pieces. Young writers could experiment...

Students determine how interests is calculated and a how it accrues. They examine charts and graphs that show the intricacies of interest. They determine how to increase their own saving by using interest while working with a partner to...

Students complete two activities to study Charles Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection. They read Darwin's journal from the voyage of the Beagle and look at the scientific ideas that influenced the development of his theory.