What do a cheetah, Audi commercial, and air have in common? They're all topics of an engaging inquiry-based, hands-on workshop for educators about background knowledge, reading strategies, the CER model, and argumentative writing. The...

Why are bees so important? After several activities where kids investigate the form and function of flowers, they learn about the different types of bees and label them. They then examine pollen under a microscope and decide which bees...

Students empathize with the colonists. In this lesson on the Declaration of Independence, students collaborate to problem solve a school dilemma that enables them to understand the issues and difficulties that occurred in the creation of...

Katherine Paterson’s young adult novel Lyddie is the foundation of a differentiated instruction unit that not only explores the rise of industrialization and labor but women’s rights issues as well. After learners read the novel, they...

Budding novelists work on character development by relating to the characters in their stories. They imagine their own hopes and dreams and recall those of characters from books they've read. Learners also consider struggles the...

Explore the world (our world) of melting ice caps. Why are these caps melting? What is the effect of melting ice caps? Dive into the ever-present issue of global warming with a resource that has learners looking at data and participating...

After examining a physical map of the world, learners conduct a close reading of Yesenia Montilla's poem "Maps." They note the interesting words and phrases, the way the poem is structured, and list questions they might have. After...

Jane Hirshfield's poem "My Skeleton" asks readers to pause and think about the amazing, often taken-for-granted structure that protects and gives form to human bodies. After observing the human skeleton's image, class members read the...

Words can be a powerful tool in the hands of a poet. Class members examine a poem written by Ross Gay in response to the death of Eric Garner and a news report of the same death. They then read an article about the death of Tamir Rice...

Sixth graders review literary devices. They use both fiction and nonfiction texts to review metaphor, simile, alliteration, imagery, symbolism and personification. This lesson has a scripted guide for the teacher to follow.

Dive into Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and determine what it means to conform in society, and discuss as a group with the thoughts and plans available in these documents. Included are multiple activities and brain targets that form the...

This detailed overview of a curriculum unit suggests using travel literature to engage and stimulate your third graders’ interest in reading. The suggested reading list includes fiction and non-fiction materials and offers urban children...

Fifth graders analyze a poem. In this poetry analysis lesson students read a poem, analyze it, and write a response. They write about their own thoughts on the poem's meaning and any feelings they have about the poem.

State reports can be a lot of fun, especially when the learners get to choose the state they study. This research and writing-focused social studies lesson engages learners in collecting information, essay structure, research, and...

I do, we do, you do is the method and delivery of this lesson on cause and effect relationships in text. Second grade readers work with their teacher, then their peers, and finally on their own to read, identify cause and relationship,...

What a skillful way to incorporate Shel Silverstein, a wonderful author, into the classroom. Composed of three tasks, children are led through a series of text-dependent questions that force them to unveil the meaning of Silverstein's...

Picture that! Pupils view photographs of the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, discussing what they know and wonder about each image. Then, scholars watch a short video about the historic event and complete a KWL...

Ninth graders examine a character from the short story, John Steinbeck's, "Flight." students respond to questions about the story and illustrate the character's journey.

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...

Sentence construction is both a science and an art. This bare bones lesson ties an analysis of earth's geology to sentence formation. Although referenced as a major part of the activity, there are no links to the technology or resources...

Young scholars work as a team to use the ProScope Digital USB Microscope and a computer to collect microscopic images from a variety of organisms. When they compare these specimens, they are able to determine how they are alike and...

Poets write love letters, but how often do the objects of their love write back? Compare Christopher Marlowe's "A Passionate Shepard to His Love" to Sir Walter Raleigh's response, "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd," with an engaging...

Make up your mind to complete a lesson plan about "The Tell-Tale Heart" and forever rid yourself of simple sentence structures. As ninth graders analyze the first two paragraphs of Edgar Allan Poe's short story, they consider how text...

It may not be 4 o'clock in the morning when you have ended these labors, but it's still time to work on textual analysis. Study the resolution of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" through the thematic lens of guilt and confession,...