Two lessons take a close look at drug prevention. The first lesson, split into two sessions, challenges learners to gather information from an article, answer questions, then create a poster that encourages others to stay away from...

A series of hands-on activities follows a reading of The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. Learners create a paper collage to explore the beginning, middle, and end of days of the week, numbers, and more. They grow a butterfly...

Let's take a trip to the future. Scholars imagine their future wealthy selves by completing a worksheet based on the year 2025. Then, acting as journalists, they conduct interviews with their classmates to prepare to write an article for...

Name that statistic! Classmates each write their name and the number of letters in it on a sticky note to place on the board. As a class, they determine the median, mode, and range of the name lengths, and create a dot plot of the data....

The Fair Play Act of 2009 came about due to the actions of one woman. Young historians research Lilly Ledbetter and what she went through to get pay equal to that paid to men for the same work at Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. The...

Strong emotions may arise at anytime and any where. This activity boosts self-awareness and management for when young learners require assistance with their feelings. Tips include: remaining calm, breathing, explaining how they feel, and...

Young scholars identify feelings through facial expressions and body language. Learners listen for a feeling word, then act it out and discuss how they portrayed it.

Responsible speaker + critical listener = effective communication is the equation at the heart of a responsible listening lesson about the power of words. Class members view the clip of the courtroom scene from the film A Few...

What facts are essential, and what facts are irrelevant when making a decision? As class members continue with the Fallout Shelter exercise, groups develop questions and interview the 10 volunteers acting as candidates for the bomb...

"The Wife of Bath's Tale" and "The Pardoner, His Prologue, and His Tale" from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales take center stage in a lesson that asks scholars to update the tales, craft a script, and either video their version or act it out...

A timelapse video hooks learners' attention to the phases of the moon. After discussing their observations, pupils use the Moon Giant website to view the moon on their birthday and complete a bar graph. The class creates an anchor chart...

Scholars complete a KWL chart to indicate what they know about Cesar Chavez and then research what they want to know about this farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist. To complete the instructional activity, scholars...

Massive storms, shipwrecks, survivors stranded on an island ruled by an aging magician, and strange creatures—Shakespeare's The Tempest appeals to today's middle schoolers. For this unit, seventh graders read selections from an...

Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole. All were forced off their ancestral lands in the southeastern United States as part of the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Young historians research the tribes' reactions to this removal and...

To understand how the allotment policy embedded in the Dawes Act, passed by the U.S. government in 1887,  affected the tribal sovereignty of Native Americans, young historians examine various maps and documents and Supreme Court...

O. Henry's short story, "The Give of the Magi," launches a study of what motivates people to act as they do. Class members identify what they believe are the motivations of the characters in O. Henry's tale and then craft a one-page...

S. E. Hinton's The Outsiders allows middle schoolers to reflect on mob mentality. After reading an article and watching a video about herd mentality, class members find examples in the novel of when characters go along with the...

Scholars examine how Brutus and Mark Antony employ ethos, pathos, and logos in their speeches to persuade the angry crowd in Act 3, scene 2 of William Shakespeare's tragedy, Julius Caesar. To set the stage, groups first identify the...

Shakespeare's Julius Caesar is, among other things, the study of a ruler's ambitions. Young scholars watch videos, read articles, and keep a Commonplace Book while studying the play. At the end of Act III, pupils stage the play that...

Stars exist from a few million years to over 10 billion years, depending on their mass. Scholars perform a play acting as stars to learn about their different life cycles. They develop an understanding of many of the fundamental concepts...

Learning about literature can be so much fun; it can also be made more accessible through projects and dramatic play. As they explore theme, character, and setting, the class gets creative and makes a dramatic recreation of a classic...

It's hard to believe the abolition movement was once seen as scandalous. Help learners understand how the US Constitution changed everything. A variety of activities such as corresponding reading activities, group work ideas, and...

High school seniors investigate what national, state and local rules say about voting. After examining the Constitution's articles, clauses, and amendments, researchers look at videos, listen to podcasts, and read articles to gather...

A suggested sequence of events lays out five hands-on activities and four creative assessments on the conservation of momentum. Using spring scales and mail scales, junior physicists examine Newton's Third Law. After you have taught the...