Support your instruction of The Cay by Theodore Taylor with this extensive unit of materials. Provided here are prereading activities, worksheets and discussion questions for the entire book, and reading quizzes that you can use to check...

Eager readers have waited a long time, very patiently, for a set of literary analysis lessons that connect text structure to the work's central idea. As ninth graders continue reading "The Tell-Tale Heart," they focus on the central...

Improve high schoolers' public speaking with an engaging activity. Class members select three personally relevant quotes from a list. They then write a short speech for each quote, explaining how the quotes are personally relevant....

Connect Martin Luther King Jr's famous speech, "I Have a Dream," to The Cay by Theodore Taylor. Taylor refers to the speech in his dedication, which creates a natural segue into talking about the speech and how it relates to the novel....

Magnets don't grow in fields, but magnetic fields are important to understand. The lesson covers the effect electricity has on magnetic fields. Scholars use a compass, magnets, and electrical wire to test magnetic fields and energy...

Close readers and forensic detectives alike deal with collecting strong evidence. Ninth graders become involved in an instructional activity about Sophocles' Oedipus the King, in which they find connections between Oedipus' stated words...

Don't desert a resource on the desert! Scholars work in groups to build on their ideas from the previous lesson to design a sustainable guest village in the Saguaro National Park. Each group produces a PowerPoint presentation to share...

Reading a scientific article about cross-species synchronization may sound like a yawner. But "Monkey See, Monkey Do" is a fascinating tale that just happens to be about yawning, within and across species. After a close reading, class...

Students choose a paragraph from a book of their choice, identify the main idea, and draw an illustration of the main idea. They write original paragraphs, illustrate them, and trade with a partner, identifying the main idea of the...

Students identify main idea and supporting details from a short reading selection using a two-column note taking process. In this literacy lesson, students work in groups of three to four, then compare their papers with the other groups'...

Bring a lesson about Negro League Baseball to your Black history unit, or any other research unit throughout the year. While the lesson plan itself is simplistic, there are several good ideas that you could use, such as creating trading...

The world would be a much different place without the help of pollinators. Read about the important role bats, hummingbirds, and various insects play in plant reproduction, exploring the interdependence of living things in an ecosystem....

Read informational text which relays how medical care differs around the globe and throughout history. There are three separate lessons, each focused on a particular case study, regional medical availability, and cultural norms. Learners...

Learners work with big boxes to connect big ideas. In this early childhood problem solving lesson plan, students develop social, language, math, creative-thinking, and problem-solving skills as they work together to plan and design a...

The second and third movements of the Eroica, Beethoven's Symphony No. 3, provides listeners with an opportunity to connect to French Revolution and to Napoleon Bonaparte. As they listen to the music, individuals draw what their ears...

You can mix almost any subject with an arts curriculum. Find out how to use drama to find the main idea of a literary text. You'll read a story, and then learners will make tableaus showing what happened, or what they think will happen...

As part of a group of lessons, your class will return to the primary text for this unit, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Key vocabulary as well as close reading strategies continue to be the focus skills; however, this lesson...

Help young mathematicians make cents out of the US currency system with this two-part math activity. Children first learn the names and values for each type of coin, before learning to count and compare the values of coins using the...

Here is a great way to bring core content to your special education classroom. Included is a set of instructional ideas intended to help learners increase their verbal and written expression through storytelling. Tape recorders, story...

Looking for ideas for teaching numbers to your Spanish class? Try out one or all of these 16 activity ideas! 

Introduce your middle schoolers to the lives of past Native Americans. First, learners work together to put photographs in a sequence. Then, using their sequence, they create stories to share with the whole class. No matter how old your...

The Grapes of Wrath. The Jungle. Native Son. The Things They Carried. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian. To address a current social, political, economic, or environmental issue, class groups pair the reading of a...

Pairs help each other with reading fluency using phrase flashcards! Learners take turns reading short phrases aloud. They have one minute to read as many correctly as possible while their partner sorts the cards into a yes or no pile. At...

Using a familiar decodable text, pairs take turns reading sentences. The partner who isn't reading follows along silently, helping if needed. They alternate sentences until the entire book is finished and then reverse to read the other...