Some organisms spend their entire lives in leaf litter. The third in a series of six is a great lesson plan exploring the community of leaf litter. Groups gather and then spread leaf litter over white paper and remove leaves/twigs while...

Assess your new learners' writing abilities and knowledge of literary terms with these diagnostic activities. Part of a back-to-school unit, this is meant to provide the teacher with information about the ability levels of their class....

After reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and an article about the use of the novel, class members engage in a Socratic seminar focused on whether or not Twain's book should be banned.

Turtles are not known to be speedy movers, but have you ever tried to get them to move in a specific direction? How about getting them to move in a perfect circle? With this app, young computer programmers have to be on their toes to...

Werner Herzog's film, Lessons of Darkness is the topic of this lesson on art, politics, and culture. Learners discuss the concepts of utopia, dystopia, detournment, and Scorched Earth then compose a paper which describes dystopian reality.

Experiment with light and dark in a series of interactive activities that lead up to reading and writing poetry. Class members have the opportunity to observe their feelings while sitting in the light and dark and to play with shadow...

As part of their study of Things Fall Apart, class groups develop a multimedia presentation in response to the question, "In what ways does Achebe use literature as a means to express and comment on culture and history?"

Students create a geometric pattern using mandalas, polygons and symmetry. In this geometry lesson, students analyze the mathematics involved in making the mandalas, including the shapes and symmetry. Students create their own mandalas...

Students examine NASA's next flight commander, Colonel Eileen M. Collins. They explore other extraordinary American women in various fields and create biographies celebrating their achievements.

Introduce your young learners to opera by dressing up as Mozart and recounting some of the fascinating details of his life and music. After exploring the Metropolitan Opera's site for kids, the class listens to a reading of Kyra...

Challenge young mathematicians' understanding of squares with this geometry puzzle. The task is simple, identify as many squares as possible in a 3x3 array. Allow learners to work independently or in pairs as they search for squares,...

Puzzling over what geometry instructional activity to teach next? Look no further. This simple activity teaches young mathematicians how shapes can be decomposed into smaller figures, and how smaller figures can be assembled into larger...

What an eccentric way to learn about each level of cellular organization! Allow emerging biologists to utilize white paper and create their own foldable charts to describe each level of organization in the body. You may also adapt the...

Getting tired of seeing went over and over again in student writing? Banish boring verbs with a list of 250 different substitutes for that mundane word went. Organized in alphabetical order, words such as bustled, inched, and tottered...

Practice listening and writing skills with this resource. This is a test created by the New York State Testing Program. Learners listen to a passage called "Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa" twice and write responses to the selection. They...

Really? Rapping The Odyssey? Really. A discussion of the oral tradition of story telling and its links to Epic poetry sets the stage for a series of activities that encourage improvisation to integrate music into other classrooms....

Leonardo da Vinci is the focus of a hands-on activity that encourages scholars to become inventors. Pupils brainstorm and sketch their idea, compose a detailed depiction using a mirror writing technique, and antique the paper for a...

Students compose short compositions using Doodle Pad.  In this Musical composition lesson, students a clef and note lines to prior knowledge of the treble clef and note lines to write short songs on the computer.  Students use...

Sixth graders demonstrate the musical and historical context of a given folk song by notating the melody, creating an accompaniment, and displaying it on the web for assessment.

Students, after viewing various examples from students around the world, as well as writing in their Writer's Notebook, create, compose and revise a Haiku poem that sketches a "snapshot" or image in time. They incorporate the theme or...

Students study the significance of flowers in art from two periods. In this Medieval and Renaissance art activity, students research the presence and meaning of botanical illustrations in twelfth, thirtieth, and fourteenth century...

Middle schoolers analyze perspectives of war. In this war and religion lesson, students collaborate to research anti-war and pacifist positions on war as well as "just war" theory. Middle schoolers compose essays regarding perspectives...

Fourth graders improvise music and dance to express their analysis of types of rocks. They discuss the three classes of rocks, list describing words, and create a short musical piece and dance to symbolize the rock they are dancing.

Students show their knowledge of properties of objects as it pertains to sorting and creating patterns. In this food pyramid power instructional activity, students show their ability to use whole numbers in different representations by...