Do school vouchers for private schools improve public school education, or do they lead to worse academic performance? Scholars read the top four pros and cons to decide if school vouchers are a good idea. They also participate in an...

Teach your class about colonial America through an examination of primary documents. First though, start vocabulary notebooks for content-specific and academic vocabulary. Pupils can keep this record during the entire module. Once this...

Fourth graders view a PowerPoint presentation "Setting goals." They use Kidspiration to organize long and short term goals for academics. Students write essays about Goal Setting. Students work in groups and create a dialogue involving...

Though this presentation is designed for the Texas Academic Skills Program's (TASP) writing assessment, it could work for any class that is preparing to write a five-paragraph persuasive essay. Slides take intermediate writers through...

Young scholars listen to an African folktale about an animal character that can walk and talk and retell the main events of the story in their own words. They illustrate the folktale utilizing a relief printmaking method as a replica of...

Practice recognizing the short vowel /i/ in written and spoken language. Introduce the target sound with a fun tongue twister about Lizzy the lizard. Through matching and listening activities, learners discriminate the vowel sound /i/...

Help young readers recognize the short vowel /a/ in written and spoken language. Through matching and listening activities, they discriminate the vowel sound /a/ from other phonemes. Learners associate the phoneme with its letter...

Help your class increase their awareness of concepts related to reading and spelling. They identify the digraph /oa/ in spoken language and spelling. After a brief discussion, they read A Toad on the Road, listening for the target sound....

Review common digraphs with your early elementary schoolers. They identify the digraph /ea/ in written and spoken language. After a brief discussion, they apply the rule for identifying and spelling words containing the /ea/ digraph....

The letter a produces so many sounds! Increase your class's awareness of concepts related to reading and spelling. They identify the digraphs /ea/ and /ai/ in spoken language and spelling as a long vowel sound. After a brief discussion,...

Spell and read words containing ai and ay. First and second graders identify vowel digraphs in written and spoken language. After a brief discussion on the combinations of letters that comprise digraphs, they practice reading and...

What is the difference between religion and religious studies? Readers find out after reading an online handout. It outlines common assignments in religious studies classes, such as critically evaluating religious texts and writing...

If you're looking for engaging, cross-curricular, inquiry-based activities and projects to support your class reading of Carl Hiaasen's Hoot, you've come to the right place!

Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address provides the text for a series of close reading exercises that model for instructors how carefully crafted guiding questions can help readers think critically about what they read, thus developing...

Students at-risk in high school and primary grades pair up to read and write together. They create books modeled after authors and illustrators. They hold a parents' day to display their completed books.

Conduct a close reading of George G. Toudouze's well-known horror story "Three Skeleton Key." This plan breaks up the reading into several steps and provides text-dependent questions to ask along the way. Learners will have the chance to...

As part of a group of lessons, your class will return to the primary text for this unit, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Key vocabulary as well as close reading strategies continue to be the focus skills; however, this lesson...

Here is a mid-unit assessment for a group of lessons studying the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The first half of this instructional activity calls for several forms of review. Your class will review the content of the...

Prior to reading Unwind, Neal Shusterman's 2007 young adult science fiction novel, class members research the common definition of words drawn from the novel that will come to have a very different meaning to them as they are...

Varier wag? I'fecks? Posterns? As part of their vocabulary study, readers of The Winter's Tale try their hand at crafting Shakespearian-style sentences using words drawn from the play.

Tenth graders complete a variety of activities related to the first two chapters of the book The Outsiders. They define metaphor, simile, idiom, and hyperbole, and take a vocabulary pre-quiz. In small groups, they write a character...

Sometimes explaining an argument can lead to confusion and miscommunication. Narrow down the details in written arguments with a group activity in which learners pretend to be aliens from another planet, struggling to understand each...

Need some help getting young football fans to focus on something besides the Super Bowl? Use a list of football-themed activities for art, math, science, nutrition, language arts, and social studies to get their heads in the game!

When it comes to writing effective arguments, writers must do more than simply make a claim, counterarguments must be considered. Aspiring writers analyze counterarguments in editorials, and then learn how to write counterarguments in...