Your learners explore growing patterns by describing, extending, creating, and evaluating practical pattern problems in this three-day collaborative unit. Beginning with concrete patterns and function tables to extend and...

Human fingerprint patterns are the result of layers of skin growing at different paces, thus causing the layers to pull on each other forming ridges. Here, groups of learners see how patterns and fingerprints assist scientists in a...

Analyzing the sequence of actions in dramatic stories leads to deeper comprehension of story structure. The class identifies the main actions in each section of a story and develops frozen tableau's for the identified actions of the...

Students examine Greek and Latin root words. They research the history of the English language, solve word games and puzzles, write paragraphs about the impact of Greek and Latin on the English language, and create flip chart study guides.

What is the initiating event? What is the protagonist's goal? What attempts are made to achieve this goal? What is the outcome? Model for your class how to map out the structure of any narrative. Readers then search for answers as the...

Here is a learning activity that incorporates a classic puzzle in mathematics. Young mathematicians are guided through a series of statements that describe rounds of pupils opening and closing lockers. The first person opens all 20...

At one point, all mammals carried only two color receptors, but now most humans carry three. An informative presentation and hands-on activity demonstrate how this evolved through genetics. By participating in the activity, pupils...

Pupils watch as the teacher makes sounds with her hands. They think of a word to describe the sound. Students discuss the way the word sounds like the sound. They complete the "The Sound Monster Activity." Pupils are told that the...

The third lesson of five in an eighth-grade poetry unit has young scholars comparing Shakespearean sonnets with Petrarchan sonnets. To begin, they examine the different structures of the two forms and their different rhyme schemes. After...

First graders listen as they are read a book containing exmaples of word families, they listen for rhyming words. They focus on word families, words that have rhyming sounds and share the same spelling patterns. Pupils work in small...

Students define a square and connect this information to a square root. In this square root instructional activity, students make a chart listing square numbers and their roots.

Pine needles are actually modified leaves. In the 16th installment of 20, young scientists explore plants. Through an analysis of leaves — shape, veins, and edges — pupils see how to classify plants based on structural features.

Don't think negatively about exponents. Young mathematicians dissect a fictional conversation between pupils trying to evaluate an expression with a negative exponent. This allows them to understand the meaning of negative exponents.

Bring a set of pre-lab, lab, and post-lab lesson plans on volcanoes to your earth science unit. Sixth graders explore the three types of volcanoes found on Earth, plot the specific locations of these volcanoes on a map, and...

As the title suggests, this packet is loaded with activities that can be used at any time. The common element in all the exercises is that they are connected to books by Dr. Seuss.

Class members look again at the end-of-unit essay prompt for A Mighty Long Way. After reviewing the requirements of the essay, they use their Gathering Evidence note-catchers and color-code the evidence that matches the two questions in...

Seventh graders describe how the traits of an organism are passed from generation to generation. They distinguish between asexual and sexul reproduction. Students identify traits through genes and those resulting from interactions with...

Build your classroom community with an activity that uses apples to examine oneself and their classmates. Participants draw four large apples on blank paper then exchange them within a small group. Group members write a character trait...

Good discussion questions, quizzes, and tests teach as well as assess. Readers of The Great Gatsby will learn much from the materials in a 36-page packet designed to help students prepare for the AP Literature exam. Included in the...

What a fantastic collection of activities for celebrating Groundhog Day! This resource includes a variety of holiday reading selections, groundhog facts, links to printables, story comprehension lessons, and much more!

A reading of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech launches a study of rhetorical devices such as hyperbole, allusion, metaphor, simile, personification, connotative language and parallel structure. Class members then...

Learners identify and construct figures that tessellate. They investigate which regular polygons tessellate and how to modify them to make other tessellating figures. Students explore how naturally occurring tessellations have been...

Tenth graders explore the structure and content of galaxies. Through discussion, lab, and hands-on activities, they discover the general structure of the three types of galaxies as well as the effect they have on the structure and...

Tenth graders read and study, in-depth, a specific classical tragedy, in this case, Oedipus. They explore strategies from making meaning out of or interpreting texts, as well as strategies for determining how authors create meaning in...