Scholastic
Mindful Listening
Teach your middle schoolers to use their ears to their highest potential! Pupils practice active listening skills and reflect on how careful listening might prove to be important in and out of the classroom.
Curated OER
Sound Ideas
Complete a unit of lessons on hearing and sound. Learners conduct sound experiments, research the history of the telephone and scientific contributions of Alexander Graham Bell, and create a model of the human ear.
Museum of Modern Art
Modern Art and Ideas
The Museum of Modern Art provides this educators' guide to Dada and Surrealism. Featuring the works of such artists as Jean Arp, Salvador Dali, Joan Miro, and Meret Oppenheim among others, the guide is ideal for art history and...
Curated OER
Marvelous Moods
It isn't always easy to tell another person how we feel; and little ones have an even more difficult time identifying and expressing their emotions. They get a chance to discuss and explore how they can express how they feel in different...
Blogger
Slope Intercept Form (y=mx+b) Foldable
Each piece of the y=mx+b formula represents something important about graphing. Take those important ideas and connect them to each part of the formula with notes or examples underneath each tab representing y, m, x, and b.
University of Minnesota
Fraction Operations and Initial Decimal Ideas
Add another strategy to the toolboxes of young mathematicians with this elementary math lesson on using number lines to add and subtract fractions.
Teaching Tolerance
Oral History Project
Get up-close-and-personal with history using guidance for an oral history project. An engaging resource takes pupils through brainstorming through feedback for a project to interview and collect oral histories from members of their...
EngageNY
Whole Class Model Letter Writing: Organizing Reasons and Evidence and Using Transition Words
Where's the evidence? Scholars practice ordering the evidence and reasons for their class opinion papers by physically sorting them. Next, they work collaboratively to write a body paragraph, using linking words to connect their ideas...
Illustrative Mathematics
Joining Two Midpoints of Sides of a Triangle
Without ever using the actual term, this exercise has the learner develop the key properties of the midsegment of a triangle. This task leads the class to discover a proof of similar triangles using the properties of parallel lines cut...
Creative Visions Foundation
Open Your Eyes and Ears to Human Rights Issues
A human rights defender is someone who promotes and protects human rights for all. Scholars explore the subject with the fourth and final lesson from the Introduction to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights series. Pupils share...
National Library of Medicine
Your Environment, Your Health: Runoff, Impervious Surfaces, and Smart Development
Can a sidewalk increase the amount of pollution in local streams? Scholars learn the answer to this question though research and experimentation in the fifth unit in the six-part series. Pupils study runoff, impervious surfaces, and the...
Scholastic
Narrative Writing
If you're looking to start a unit based around narrative writing, make sure to consider this resource while you're planning. This book covers five topics: writing personal narratives, writing narratives about others, writing narratives...
Curated OER
Active Reading with American History
Explore connections within and between informational texts with this lesson about encyclopedia articles. Middle schoolers write encyclopedia articles focusing on topics in American history. They discuss how to determine credibility...
National Endowment for the Humanities
People and Places in the North and South
North and South: two opposite directions and two opposite economic and social systems in time of the Civil War. Pupils peruse census websites and primary source photographs to understand what life was like for the everyday person before...
Curated OER
Persuasive Letters and The Tell Tale Heart
Students write persuasive letters based on "The Tell Tale Heart." They brainstorm topic sentences, main ideas, and details. They analyze the character and determine if he is innocent or guilty. They create a map listing their reasons to...
Curated OER
Maize to Maquiladoras: Movement from Mexico to Arizona
Fourth graders label maps of Arizona and Mexico to show the people, goods, and ideas that have moved between the two places. In this Arizona and Mexico lesson plan, 4th graders summarize the effects of the movement on Arizona life.
Curated OER
Around the Room Short Story
Collective story writing is a great way to reinforce the concept of story elements and collaborative learning. Young writers discuss story elements such as, setting, character, action, climax, conclusion, foreshadowing, dialogue, and...
Curated OER
Anne Frank and Louisiana - There is a Connection!
How is Louisiana connected to the Holocaust? After reading The Diary of Anne Frank, eighth graders complete a research report about a survivor of the Holocaust who currently resides in Louisiana. Though the idea is a good way to connect...
Bright Hub Education
Teaching "Gone with the Wind" in High School: Ideas & Activities
Plan on using Gone with the Wind as a reading selection? Here's a packet of prompts for activities and assessments.
Curated OER
Zoom Broom
Learners explore comprehension strategies as they listen to Zoom Broom by Margie Palatini. As the story is read, teacher and pupils will stop occasionally to make text-to-text, text-to-self, or text-to-world connections. They also...
Teach Engineering
Designing a Sustainable Guest Village in the Saguaro National Park
Brainstorm ideas to design a sustainable guest village in the Sonoran Desert. The first installment of a nine-part unit teaches young environmental scientists about the basics of the Saguaro National Park and about sustainable design....
Curated OER
Making an Inference from an Implied Message Within a Text
Show your scholars that they make inferences every day and might not even know it. Through scaffolded instruction, they break down the process of drawing information from context. Using example sentences and didactic questioning,...
Mathematics Vision Project
Module 5: Modeling with Geometry
Solids come in many shapes and sizes. Using geometry, scholars create two-dimensional cross-sections of various three-dimensional objects. They develop the lesson further by finding the volume of solids. The module then shifts to finding...
Fluence Learning
Writing About Literature: What Is Happiness?
Jack London's heart for adventure has come to define the spirit of America and its frontier. Selected passages from the foreword The Cruise of the Snark take eighth graders through London's construction and voyage of his ship before...