Most species of animals include a variety of fur or hair color, but why? Scholars watch a video about a changing environment for mice. As the rocks around them change hues, different colors of mice begin to thrive. Discussion questions...

Imagine being part of a team of scientists that discover the oldest human remains in North America. Imagine being part of the crew that documents this discovery. Class members get a change to be part of such an exciting adventure in a...

Close your colonial America unit with a performance-based assessment. Class members will show their proficiency in several skills including using details to back up inferences, determining the meaning of words in context,...

Allow your class to figure out what they will be studying through an inquiry-based anticipatory set that involves analysis of mystery documents and practice with making inferences. The lesson plan document includes a detailed description...

Informative writing is emphasized in the standards. Help your learners reach that goal with the plan for paragraph writing outlined here. After reviewing the work from the day before and adding to their vocabulary notebooks, class...

This is a skills-based assessment that asks test takers to use textual evidence to determine the main idea of an excerpt from an informational text as well as respond to text-dependent questions. The assessment is the middle point...

Character analysis isn't always earth-shattering. Using a graphic organizer, pupils analyze Moon Shadow's point of view following the earthquake in Laurence Yep's Dragonwings. Also, scholars co-create an anchor chart showing the...

Collaborative groups utilize their knowledge of parent functions and transformations to determine the equations associated with graphs. The graph is then related to the scenario it represents. 

If only life came with an owner's manual. Pupils assemble with their research teams to discuss which of Steve Jobs' rules to live by most resonates with them. Scholars also read informational texts in pursuit of finding the gist and...

So the mean is not always the best center? By working through this exploratory activity, the class comes to realize that depending upon the shape of a distribution, different centers should be chosen. Learners continue to explore...

Here is an online teaching tool that you can use to help fourth graders understand the proper ordering of adjectives. An explanation is given for eight different types of adjectives in addition to guidelines about how to order them. This...

Have you ever studied historical words and found that they were deeply rooted in racism or prejudice? Select a long list of these words to have your class examine. What familiar roots do they have? Do they know when this word originally...

High schoolers read sales promotion reports and create a sales promotion summary using information from the report. They develop a graphic organizer to outline their information for a presentation. There is an assessment checklist...

Develop spoken fluency, persuasive speaking skills, and confidence by having your class practice their public speaking skills. They compose and deliver persuasive speeches as they participate in five different speech tasks. A...

Connect poetry to a naturally kid-friendly topic: ghosts! Draw on your class's prior knowledge of the paranormal to help them access the classic poem "Haunted House" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. After a fun warm-up activity describing...

Start talking trash with your elementary English class! Then lead a discussion comparing formal and informal language. Divide the class into groups to answer a questionnaire and analyze a set of sentence cards to analyze. This is a cool...

This lesson focuses on unit conversion, proportions, ratios, exponents, and the metric system. Discuss measurement with your math class and demonstrate how to solve several health-science word problems. Give learners a chance to visit an...

The importance of fashion on society is identified and new vocabulary associated with fashion is defined. Using the internet, your class will identify the major fashion capitals of the world and write about one. To end the lesson, they...

Young astronomers follow a step-by-step procedure for dividing a lump of dough into parts, resulting in a scaled volume set of puny planets. Along with the printable directions is a template chart of planet names on which learners can...

Have you ever watched a political speech and felt your heart beat a little faster, and your opinion either solidify or begin to slightly change? Rhetorical devices can be a strong tool in an effective and powerful speech. A short lesson...

As part of their study of the 1963 March on Washington, class members do a side-by-side comparison of the original text of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream Speech" with a transcript of the speech he delivered. The take away from the...

What happens next? Work on story sequence with a lesson plan that prompts kids to put a story back in order. Additionally, they discuss what would happen if one event was missing from the sequence.

Young writers have written, revised, and peer-edited their historical fiction narratives by the 10th lesson plan in a language arts unit. Fourth graders finally combine their revision notes to create a second draft. The double-spaced...

Is this a statistical question? The opening lesson in a series of 22 introduces the concept of statistical questions. Class members discuss different questions and determine whether they are statistical or not, then they sort the data...