What is the white man's burden anyway? Kids find out about views from our social past as they read Rudyard Kipling's "The White Man's Burden." They read the poem, then answer four, two-part critical thinking questions that ask them to...

Introduce middle schoolers to the different strategies used when reading prose versus poetry. Groups use a Venn diagram and a poetry analysis handout to compare the characteristics of an informational text and a  poem on the same...

For 30 years, Long John Silver has sailed the seas. An eBook version of Treasure Island introduces readers to the tales Long John Silver has to tell. This 1883 version of the text includes an introduction to encourage critical...

As you work through a literary analysis unit based on Karen Russell's "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves," use a writing assessment to measure your class's skills. They choose one epigraph from the story to analyze and track...

Wrap up your literary analysis unit with a discussion activity as tenth graders prepare for an end-of-unit assessment. After they have read and annotated Christopher Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepard to His Love," Sir Walter Raleigh's...

Germany seemed to be unstoppable in the early years of World War II, but the tireless and sacrificial work of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) helped to steer the war in another direction. After exploring primary source documents,...

The inevitability of World War II has arrived: Berlin has fallen. Young historians watch contemporaneous footage of the event, analyze primary source documents, and write a news report that details the roles of the Soviet, British,...

Karen Russell's short story "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves" has a unique structure that adds value to the story. With the fourteenth activity in a unit about literary analysis and textual support, analyze how Russell has...

Data indicates that some racial groups smoke more than others, and that with that racial group, there are smaller groups whose smoking habits vary as well. Secondary learners read a graph that details the differences between the Asian...

Was Oedipus' destiny determined by fate or by his actions? Using details from the text, ninth graders delve into a critical thinking exercise based on Sophocles' Oedipus the King. Now that Oedipus has learned his true identity, readers...

How much can you learn about an important topic from a single image? High schoolers analyze an infographic that represents the number of stops performed during the Stop and Frisk police procedure. After building background information...

Question what you read with a lesson based on Bloom's Taxonomy. As kids read The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, they formulate questions with cues from a graphic organizer, and answer them to work on critical...

Young historians practice in-depth, quality analysis of primary source texts in this three-lesson unit, which examines excerpts from the slave narratives of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and Caleb...

What was Bryce's mistake? Through analysis of a student work example, learners develop their own ability to compare the fractions one fourth and one half. Central to this activity is the concept that, when comparing fractions, the whole...

This editable worksheet is set up so that biology pupils read four case studies and identify points that are present in each, such as overproduction, heritable variation, struggle to survive, and differential reproduction. They also...

Sweethearts® candies are a beloved Valentine's Day treat—so much so that eight billion hearts are produced every year around the world! Learners use number sense reasoning and critical thinking to solve nine word problems about the...

Help your class examine humanity's unpredictable nature through "Life Steps Almost Straight." Learners read various works from philosophers such as Viktor Frankl, The Buddha, and Nietzsche to gather textual evidence and explain their...

If you've never heard of the Equal Rights Amendment, it's probably because there isn't one in the United States Constitution. Delve into the contentious history behind the ERA, its founders and supporters, and reasons for its political...

Here is a fantastic, comprehensive resource on the roles and powers assigned to the president of the United States. It includes several critical thinking exercises and engaging activities, from cartoon analysis and the opportunity to...

Though often used in shows of patriotism, Bruce Springsteen's 1985 song "Born in the U.S.A." is critical of America's role in the Vietnam war and its treatment of American veterans. High schoolers analyze the song's lyrics in an activity...

Without the benefit of history, Western Europe in the 1940's had no idea what was about to befall them. Class members use primary sources, including political cartoons, videos, and internal documents, to analyze how much of a threat...

Warsaw, Poland, suffered much of the blunt of World War II—but according to Polish letters from the early days of Nazi occupation, other parts of the country were much worse off. High schoolers use the letters and contemporaneous...

The devil—and the truth—is in the details. As ninth graders approach the ending of Sophocles' Oedipus the King, they analyze the words of the Messenger and apply these details to the central ideas of fate and prophecy.

From scarcity and supply and demand to entrepreneurship and the stock market, here you'll find a multiple-choice assessment that includes 34 questions covering all the major concepts of a traditional economics course.