High schoolers compare and contrast the genres of poetry and hip-hop. They view a poetry slam and write about it in their journals. Learners view a Lauryn Hill music video and respond to it in their journals. They compare and contrast...

Students experience several different tone colors in the song and also add layers of color to their copy of "The Owl" to compare and contrast how an artist would create the element of color.

Eleventh graders compare and contrast Supreme Court decisions dealing with the application of civil rights during times of war, with emphasis on discrimination and detention. Working in groups, 11th graders review cases and analyze how...

Compare and contrast reptiles and amphibians using a reading guide handout. Although it is designed to accompany a particular textbook, most reading or video selections covering these types of animals will go over the same facts. If you...

Propaganda is an important topic that most high school social studies teachers address. Here, students compare and contrast methods of public persuasion during WWII with those used in the contemporary War on Terror. Research, discussion,...

Upper graders put their knowledge of the U.S. Constitution to the test when they are asked to mark which of several statements are from either the Constitution or the Communist Manifesto. A class discussion follows. Use this resource as...

Students compare and contrast a website layout and the layout of a Greek theatre. In this Greek theatre instructional activity, students research the Greek theatre and produce a bulleted list of five facts about the Greek theatre....

Students create new sentences using adverb clauses identified from a book.  In this narrative writing lesson, students write new sentences from some of the dependent clauses used in a book read to them by the teacher.  Students...

Why are rules so important? Just ask the main characters in the children's book Officer Buckle and Gloria. After a class read aloud, compare and contrast the safety tips mentioned in the story with your classroom rules, noting any...

Ninth graders compare and contrast different Carnavals throughout Latin America. In this Latin American lesson, 9th graders study the geography and colonial history of Latin America.

High schoolers read London's "To Build a Fire" and Crane's "The Open Boat" and compare and contrast the authors' style as they explore the genre known as American literary naturalism.

Readers of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings are asked to craft an essay in which they compare how Maya Angelou uses figurative language to depict herself and Mrs. Flowers. 

The third lesson of five in an eighth-grade poetry unit has young scholars comparing Shakespearean sonnets with Petrarchan sonnets. To begin, they examine the different structures of the two forms and their different rhyme schemes. After...

After reading and discussing Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich, pupils compare/contrast the concept/theme of love within several multiple pieces of literature. They must support their claims with textual evidence. In addition, they analyze...

First graders discuss and predict if a given object sinks or floats. They record their predictions on a data sheet. Pupils test the objects and organize them into floating/sinking groups. Students observe the floating and sinking of a...

What is a community? Find out with a lesson plan that sheds light onto the different types of communities—school, local, and global. Scholars read informational text detailing the life of a young girl from Cape Verde and take part in a...

A creative lesson shines a spotlight on Christmas celebrations throughout six different countries. Scholars read an informative text and share their new-found knowledge with their peers. After hearing about each country, pupils choose...

Walt Whitman's "Captain, My Captain" and Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" provide seventh graders with examples of odes. After reading and discussing these and other examples, young poets craft an ode and respond to the ode of a...

The teacher demonstrates how to use a graphing calculator to create box-and-whisker plots and identify critical points. Small groups then create their own plots and analyze them and finish by comparing different sets of data using box...

Introduce your young readers to fiction written by women authors. For each story, they explore the way these daughters discover and claim their own identities. Individually, class members use the literature to examine their role in their...

Practice the strategy of summarizing to gain meaning and knowledge from an informational text. Young readers highlight supporting details and main ideas, and then they use this to summarize two articles: "The Great Quake" and "What...

Difficulties with brain injuries still continue today. After reading Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science, class members read a series of modern personal essays about brain injuries and choose an essay to compare...

Catch-22, Joseph Heller's send-up of military organizational bureaucracy, provides readers with an opportunity to consider the importance of the anti-hero. Class members fill out a worksheet comparing and contrasting the qualities...

Students compare the digestive systems of the buffalo and of the zebra, diagram their systems, and compare their lengths. For this digestive system lesson plan, students learn about their diets as well.