With the Common Core State Standards' growing focus on informational text, it's the perfect time to showcase this PowerPoint to your team of teachers. It's 59 slides focus on seven best practice structures: reading-as-thinking,...

New-to-school learners create a fall quilt consisting of three different paper geometric quilt squares. They use various geometric shapes that when assembled will form a scarecrow, pumpkin, and a crow. Assembly will require sorting...

Art, music, poetry, and the beauty of the seasons is what you'll find in this very nice unit idea. You can use any of the suggested books and activities to engage your second graders in an exploration of the changes that take place...

Historical fiction novels give readers a chance to step into someone else's shoes. An educator's guide from Penguin Common Core Lesson Plans provides resources to accompany three historical fiction novels written by Ruta Sepetys: Between...

Before your high schoolers read Julius Caesar, have them complete this thought-provoking activity! To familiarize them with some of the play's most important lines, break the class into pairs and have them create a skit around...

Connect the dots to complete a huge puppy! What preschooler or kindergartener wouldn't find such a task rewarding? The dots are numbered from 1 to 30, so this will definitely meed Common Core counting and cardinality standards for...

After looking at four examples of shapes divided into two exactly equal parts, junior geometers try their hand. One valuable thing about this worksheet is that the shapes are not only the standard circle, square, and triangle, but also...

Eighth graders investigate historical documents of the United States by reading the Mayflower Compact.  In this U.S. History instructional activity, 8th graders analyze the wording of the original Mayflower Compact of the first U.S....

A challenging lesson on writing a book for children awaits your fifth-graders. They must use laptops, document cameras, and a projector to create and present an original piece of writing. A checklist that has all of the requirements for...

I can't wait to try this activity with my class. It's versatile and could be modified to fit any character analysis lesson. To analyze characters thoroughly, learners create life boxes. Each box will pertain to a character from any...

Help your class learn the alphabet with this resource that asks learners to collate a 26-page alphabet coloring book! Youngsters color each letter of the alphabet and a corresponding animal; for example, they would color in an octopus...

Bully, bullied, or bystander? Paul Langan's The Bully is the anchor text in a unit that examines bullying and violence. After a close reading of the text, readers imagine themselves as the characters and consider how they would react in...

  Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and caldron bubble. Macbeth’s witches provide young actors an opportunity to try their hand at small ensemble acting. Using Act I, scene I of Shakespeare’s play, groups of three take...

How can art represent math? Use a lesson on place value collages to illustrate the different meanings that numbers have in their designated places. Kids observe photographs and paintings that show place value, then work on their own.

Looking for a motivating and creative technology lesson? Then this lesson is for you! After viewing a movie trailer, middle-schoolers follow that design to create a video preview of a book's story elements. They also create a storyboard...

After watching a video of Peter and the Wolf, and identifying the instruments used to represent each character, class members use rhythm instruments to represent the actions in the song, "What Would I do."

Practice saying, sounding out, and identifying the long I sound with your class. They say each word on the sheet, unscramble the letters to spell the word correctly, and write the correct word on the line provided. The worksheet states...

Students observe the sounds of different brass instruments in order to understand how to create different pitches. In this musical instructional activity, students create a "brass" instrument from everyday household objects. The students...

Students explore the concept of design, and identify items in their lives that have been designed. They explore the concept of book design and create and arrange their own page layout.

Did you know that Green Eggs and Ham is written in iambic pentameter? Model the rhythm of language using Dr. Seuss’s tale. Direct class members to march about the room tapping their right foot on the first syllable and stomping their...

What is a soliloquy, and who is Julius Caesar? Explore soliloquies with this lesson that gets your kids up and moving! Learners line up, facing each other. Then they read the soliloquy (one side reads one line, and the other side reads...

High schoolers unearth multiple meanings based on connotation and cadence. After defining denotation, connotation, and cadence, readers evaluate similar words to compare connotations. They then play with how cadence affects meaning by...

Animal names are a great way to practice syllables with words your young scholars will be familiar with! Using images, students examine 7 animals and color in the number of paws that correspond with the number of syllables in that animal...

Art is a thoughtful and beautiful to motivate students in so many subjects. This lesson has students practice basic computer skills while examining a famous piece of art. They consider the color, style, and feeling of the piece. A...