Let's eat! Scholars read pages 24-25 of The Inuit Thought of It to discover the foods eaten by the Inuit. They sketch a visual gist of the section in their journals and write a summary paragraph about the text.

The second segment of a seven-part series reviews the challenge of determining whether gargling with salt water helps a sore throat. Individuals journal what they know about the challenge and what they are trying to figure out to...

Jack London's heart for adventure has come to define the spirit of America and its frontier. Selected passages from the foreword The Cruise of the Snark take eighth graders through London's construction and voyage of his ship before...

A role-playing scenario has middle-schoolers imagining that they are refugees forced to flee their community and integrate into a new one. Then, some play the roles of members of the new community and the class brainstorms ideas about...

Help your kindergarteners identify the main idea in a story. Small groups work with the teacher to make predictions and draw conclusions. They are able to determine cause and effect relationships. The lesson is divided into several days,...

The final session in a sequential, three-lesson sculpture study designed by the education staff of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles has class members using the criterial they developed to critique each others' symbolic sculptures.

Strap on those backpacks, it's time to travel through history with this literature unit based on the first four books of The Magic Tree House series. While reading through these fun stories, children create story maps, record...

Mrs. Who, Mrs. Whatsit, and Mrs. Which would not be so confused if they had a study guide as great as this. Scholars increase their comprehension of A Wrinkle In Time through many supports such as guided questions, background...

The Society for the History of Psychology provides a list of teaching activities designed to acquaint learners with the various fields of psychology and introduce them to prominent psychologists. Details for several of the activities are...

Fifth graders prepare for their end of the unit essay assessment by continuing to look at what makes an earthquake a natural disaster. They complete a graphic organizer and write a topic sentence. To finish, they view a model essay and...

Involve your readers in finding works of literary genius. Have each individual write down compelling sentences that they read or hear, whether in a newspaper, advertisement, book, movie, song, or any other place! Once each person has a...

What constitutes an effective apology? After considering a series of scenarios, class members develop criteria for an effective apology and then use these indicators to evaluate Canada's Prime Minister Harper's apology to former...

Make a study of Timothy and his development as a character over the course of the first half or so of The Cay. This idea focuses in particular on chapters 10 through 12. Learners start out by working on double-entry journals created in...

While originally created to accompany The Cay, this poetry lesson could be used on it's own, especially if you are working on dialect. Class members conduct a close reading of "When Malindy Sings" by Paul Laurence Dunbar and listen to an...

Breaking barriers is not an easy thing to do. Scholars read a section in Promises to Keep and summarize how Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball. They write the gist of the passage in their journals and then complete...

Learning is never-ending. Scholars learn about effective conclusions as they continue watching a video of an opinion speech. After analyzing the speech's conclusion, they work in small groups to write an ending for their own speeches. 

Frogs are the theme of a lesson plan that challenges scholars to examine photographs, read informational texts, then ask and answer questions. Scholars work collaboratelively as they rotate through stations, discuss their observations,...

Depending on your perspective, solitude can be lovely or very, very lonely. Kids take a look at the simple landscape illustrated in Antoine de Saint Éxupery's The Little Prince, and write a short journal entry about their...

Chapter 3 of The Autobiography of Malcolm X discusses how central ideas are developed in a narrative. Readers use the provided annotated bookmark to record evidence of ideas such as racial identity, integration/separation, and systemic...

Scholars scour thematically aligned texts to gather a bank of words they can use in an original acrostic poem. 

Building on the previous activity in this series of lesson seeds, this plan focuses on the use of dialect in Theodore Taylor's novel, The Cay. Class members examine specific lines of text, use their reading journals to respond to the...

Strive for racial justice within your classroom community with help from an 80-page resource guide. Five modules move scholars through thoughtful, and reflective grand conversations to making a plan, then taking action. Learners write...

Young mathematicians construct their own understanding of integers with an inquiry-based math lesson. Using colored chips to represent positive and negative numbers, children model a series of addition and subtraction problems as...

Class members analyze the details of a section of E. B. White’s Death of a Pig to determine a central idea. Learners use turn-and-talk to discuss the details and ideas they identify. They then work in groups to annotate the text, respond...